Germany 2019 day 4

When I woke up today I packed most of my things and then went down to the last breakfast. While having breakfast one of the receptionists came into the dining room along with a guy who looked like a construction worker. The receptionist asked around for anyone staying in room 311. Which ofc happened to be my room. When I said it was my room he asked if they could have access to it because there was a problem with the heating in all of the hotel. If I hadn't been diligent with putting the Do Not Disturb sign on my door every time I left the room they probably would have gone in anyway. I asked if they could wait 30 minutes to an hour because then I was checking out. He wasn't happy about it but accepted. The only probable reason I could think of why they needed my room is because my window opened up on to the roof. We finished breakfast and then went to pack the last few things and met up in the lobby. We checked out and went to the fair. Before packing up my laptop I made sure to write a bad review on TripAdvisor.

I was happy to be away from the hotel - nothing about that place equalled a good stay. There wasn't enough light in the room - if my laptop keyboard wasn't lit up I wouldn't have been able to see it at all, and the walls were too thin - during most of our stay there I wouldn't have needed my own alarm; I woke up in time from the alarm from the guy in the room next to me. Anyone who knows me can attest that I am not a light sleeper in any way.

Our time at the fair was spent mostly as the previous days and then we left for the train station around 3pm to take the train to Düsseldorf airport. And once again the German train system decided to give me anxiety. We had looked up beforehand which departure train we would need to get to the airport on time. When we got to the train station it wasn't even up on the big departure screen yet and there was less than 30 minutes to go (the Swedish departure boards usually show up to an hour or more). Some Norwegians ahead of us in the queue for tickets couldn't make sense of the ticket machine so the station guy had to help them. It really isn't all that complicated - just change the language to English first and it all makes sense. When we got our tickets the departure train for the time we had checked still hadn't shown up on the board. There was less than fifteen minutes left. With around ten minutes to go the train showed up on the board, but it didn't say anything about the airport and the station guy had gone up in smoke. We asked around a bit. Most of the people there were from the fair and were going in the same direction. Then suddenly the station guy showed up again out of nowhere (have the Germans invented teleportation?) and we asked him and it was indeed the train that said nothing about the airport but had the right departure time. So we rushed to the track with less than five minutes to go - and then ofc the train is ten minutes late. When the train arrived and we got on and got seats I took out my phone and got on to Deutsche Bahn's website, changed it to English and looked for our departure and train. Found it and it was indeed going to the airport. Relief. Note to DB: it could be a good idea to show on all screens and signs which trains are going to airports. Confused and stressed tourists aren't at all nice to deal with (speaking from experience).

We arrived at Düsseldorf Flughafen Bahnhof (the word Flughafen is so much fun to say that I kept saying Flughafen instead of airport throughout our whole stay) and after a quick look at the screen (double checking it because we are great at confusing ourselves lol) we got on the SkyTrain to the airport.

Düsseldorf airport is a mess. Just as last year. We had to go around the security to get to our check-in desks and because Germany hasn't caught on to the whole self check-in service we had to stand in line. I had forgotten how much we used to queue at airports before self check-in was a thing. Which it still isn't in Germany. After much waiting we got our boarding passes and dropped our luggage and then went back around the security so that we could enter it. Great design, guys! The security control went pretty smoothly until they got to the woman before us. Apparantly a first time flyer who couldn't be bothered to read signs. She hadn't prepared anything before it was her turn and she had brought her entire make-up and toileteries bag with her carry-on and hadn't put anything into the little plastic bags so the security guy had to ask her to leave the queue and she put up a lot of fuss about it, but finally left the queue so my dad and me could prop down our coats and laptops and laptop cases and phones in the crates push them through and then smoothly go through the scanner. Get out of our way, we've done this before! :P

After security we went to find our gate and then had dinner at a restaurant close by. We both chose the burger and a last German beer (no kölsch in Düsseldorf though). The burger was really good but had some interesting components. Like coleslaw made from red beets so the burger was all pink/purple in the bottom :3 and stewed onions in the top. Still made for a great burger that we probably wouldn't be able to find anywhere in Sweden! We also met up with a group of Swedes at the restaurant and had a last chat with them before boarding our plane. This plane was bigger and the ride was much smoother. No delays, and when we arrived in Copenhagen our bags were almost the first ones to arrive! We managed to catch the train we had planned and the switch in Malmö to the commuter train out to my hometown was smooth as ever. Mum picked us up at the station and then we spent a few hours relaxing in the living room before bedtime.