Visiting old friends

Trip to Germany for 3 days

After that wonderful weekend with my boyfriend it was already time to say goodbye again. I wasn't returning home yet, but I wanted to visit a friend of mine who is living next to Cologne, in the small city Moers. I got to know her around 2009 in an online chat and we got really good friends. We were sending us birthday and christmas packages, we communicated via videochatting sometimes, sent us postcards from our holidays and she even wanted to visit me before but unfortunately it didn't work out because she missed the train. I had visited her once before, in August 2014, but from Regensburg it's quite a long way to go - it took me about 9 hours to arrive by car. 

So as I was in the north of France and Cologne wasn't that far away (about 4 hours), I had planned to visit her during my stay in Amiens. Of course, I hadn't known before that I would fall in love with my boyfriend and would have preferred to spend some more time with him before I had to leave. But it was just 3 days and I didn't want to cancel it - I had already realized in the past that it wasn't a good idea to neglect friends for a boyfriend and even if he wasn't happy about my trip, I was looking forward to going there. When I visited her the last time, she was still living with her Dad and her sisters and it was a mess there - they were loud and it was weird to stay there. But as we had passed most of the time outside the house it had been a nice weekend anyway. 

Relaxed first evening

This time she had just moved into a new appartment where she was living alone, so I was looking forward to my visit even more. I started with my car at 9 in the morning and hoped that there would not be too much traffic. But as it was Sunday morning that wouldn't be a problem I thought. The trip was really okay, so after some breaks and a small accumulation I finally arrived at my friend's place in the early afternoon. I brought my present and my luggage into her appartment and found out that it was quite a nice place. Even if she didn't have a lot of money she had found some cute furniture and a very comfortable bed. We chatted a bit about my stay in France, my new boyfriend and her new life in her apartment. As the last time we saw each other, it was a bit weird because we didn't so that often - we had only met three times. Once, my Dad and me visited her during her year abroad in Italy, the second time was Summer 2014 and the third time was now. We also didn't write the whole day as I did with my best friend, and our lives were quite different most of the time. But anyway we could have a lot of fun, liked the same books and movies and had the same humour. So we ate some chocolate and played video games almost the whole evening, because the weather wasn't that good and we didn't want to go out that evening. 

Visiting the Zoo of Duisburg

We talked about plans for the next days and after some time asking Google for ideas we agreed on visiting the Zoo in Duisburg, a city nearby, the following day. The second day we would just visit the city centre of Moers a bit, watch a movie and meet her boyfriend and two other friends to go Bowling in the evening. So after having finished all the plans we had something to eat, watched a bit TV and went to bed early - we wanted to start to the zoo before lunch time. I could sleep really well in that new bed, so we both woke up quite late in the morning. It was already 10:30 am! We had a quick breakfast and a shower and got ready to start our trip. At 11:30 we finally started to Duisburg. 

After having had some problems finding the right way to the right parking (we had almost crossed half of the city even if the zoo was right next to the highway exit) we arrived at the right place and entered the zoo. Fortunately the weather seemed to be good, at least it didn't rain. So we walked along all the animals and other attractions, such as a Chinese Garden. It was a zoo as all the other ones I had seen before, too, but with my friend it was quite a funny time. After half of the park we had a short break for lunch and relaxed a bit. The reason wasn't that we were so hungry, it was more the rain that had suddenly started and surprised us. So we sat in the hut and waited for the rain to stop, which fortunately was soon. After one hour we continued our way through the other half of the park and had even more fun together. Especially when we came to the meerkats. I had always loved them but this time it was even more funny than usual - there was a cat next to the cage and they were completely shocked by it. Wherever it was moving they were moving, too, and it was incredibly funny to watch this. We took a lot of pictures and waited until the cat was gone before we continued to all the other animals we hadn't seen already. 

After a while it became cold and we thought that we had already seen enough (almost all) animals and could leave the zoo to have something to eat. Therefore, we had to cross half of the zoo again to get to the exit where we had entered the park before and where we would find my car. It had started to rain again so we hurried up even if I had an umbrella - but with two persons under it we became wet anyway. We passed by a McDonalds to have something to eat and drove right into a traffic jam afterwards at the highway. It was just the time when everyone finished work, so the streets were full and even if it was only a short piece of the highway we had to drive on, it took us more than 30 minutes to leave it at the right exit. So it was already quite late when we came back, and we just watched TV a bit in the evening before we went to bed. 

Shopping Adventure - Parking in Dusseldorf

The next day we changed our plans a bit - as the weather was good, we decided to go to Düsseldorf and do some shopping at Primark. We took my car and arrived after about half an hour. The only problem was that the city centre of the city was so busy and I was a bit overstrained by all the cars and lights there. Furthermore, the parking we had found in the internet before, the one that wasn't that expensive but in the centre, was closed because of construction works, so we had to find another one. And due to all those busy cars I found the most expensive parking ever, but we just realized it when we were already half in it. So we had to enter and as we didn't want to continue searching we just stayed there. What I didn't like at all was that the parking lots were almost half as big as the ones I knew! I really had problems to find a free one and when I found one it crashed my side mirror at the pillar before I finally was able to enter that parking lot. We decided to hurry up because the parking was really expensive and rushed to Primark which was about 20 minutes away. 

When we arrived Primark was full of people, as always, even if it was Tuesday at lunchtime. Didn't they have anything to do? Some of them really looked like students! But well, it was not our job to watch if they had to be in school actually, so we just entered and agreed on meeting after 1,5 hours at a special place again. Primark was just too large and our preferences too different to stay together during the shopping trip. The store did have 6 floors! Actually I didn't like Primark so much because the quality wasn't good and most of the things didn't look good. But little things like underwear or accessoires were cheap and didn't have to be of such a good quality, so I went to that floor and looked for some things. Later, I also found some sports clothes that seemed to be of quite a good quality. And as always, in the end I had found too many things but didn't pay that much. I waited at the entrance for my friend and she came with her shopping bag and told me that she hadn't finished yet. There were quite long queues at the fitting rooms, so I could definitely understand that. I came with her and after half an hour she had also paid. We checked the watch and found out that we had about 20 minutes to pay our parking ticket in order not to pay another full hour which was about 7 or 8 euros. So we rushed back to the parking, ran almost, hit some people and shopping bags, but arrived 2 minutes before the limit. I was happy that we had saved at least a bit of money and hoped my other side mirror would stay safe while we were leaving the parking. He did, and we went back to Moers. 

Bowling Night

Back to her appartment it was late afternoon and we relaxed a bit - the "short time shopping trip" had been quite exhausting and in some hours we would go Bowling with my friend's boyfriend and some friends. After a shower they arrived and we took my car to get there, because the others didn't have one. It was a nice bowling place with a special offer that allowed us to have pizza and two bowling games for 15 euros. But obviously there was a new person working there that didn't know that offer and we had to discuss a bit before we could show it to her with a smartphone and it finally worked. So we ordered the pizza and something to drink and started to play bowling. It was a nice evening even if the boyfriend of my friend had a little problem about losing, so sometimes the atmosphere was a bit tense. After having eaten the pizza and finished the two games (both of them were won by the bad loser fortunately) we decided to play some billard afterwards. It was even funnier than bowling, because I really liked billard. But after a while it became boring, so we paid and returned to my friend's appartment. I said goodbye to the others and we entered the house to go to sleep. I would leave the next morning/lunchtime, so I packed my things and we went to bed. 

Back to France

The next day we slept until 10am, and my friend would have preferred to sleep a bit longer but I wanted to return to Amiens to spend some time with my boyfriend, too. So I packed the rest of my things and said goodbye to my friend. She returned to bed and I passed by the supermarket to buy something to eat and some things I could not buy in France. But not too many, of course, because I would leave 1,5 weeks later and it wasn't worth buying even more things to fill my already heavy luggage. Even if I could put as much as I wanted into the car I preferred not to have too many things to bring down from the 3rd floor to my car. After having called my Dad (included into my German Flatrate), I started my way back to France and was looking forward to seeing my boyfriend again. Now I could fully enjoy the last days with him and hoped that our relationship had a chance for the time after my semester abroad - at the moment I couldn't even think about losing him. 

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