Well as you can gather from the title, I had quite the interesting experience; thus, why I'm writing this post three days too soon. I arrived in Cleves at 10:30pm and met my friend Bacchus. We knew that the hotel was about a 30min walk, but never having been there before and it being dark made the walk take almost an hour. That wasn't really so bad. The shock came when we found the hotel. On the door was a letter from the lawyer explaining the situation;
basically the hotel had been closed about four days prior due to bankruptcy. I don't know how this crazy shit happens. (Once again, thank goodness we know German as well as we do...) Luckily I'd only paid a deposit, that I'm working on getting back now. We knew that there weren't many hotels around, but we figured we would wander around and try to find one. It was even crazier because the whole town was shut down. We were both used to university towns where cafes and bars are just getting started at 11pm, but it was deadsville there. Worst comes to worst, we would check out when the next train left the following morning and somehow chill on a bench or maybe the police station for the night. We eventually saw a sign for the hostel, but couldn't find the hostel. (Probably didn't have room anyways; that's why we were booked at the hotel to begin with.) We stumbled upon the Tourist Information Center and found a list of hotels with their numbers in the window. We called one and they confirmed that they had a room available and advised to get a taxi, because the way by foot would have been a bit difficult. We found a taxi at the train station and made it to the hotel at about 12:40am, 2hrs after my original arrival. The whole ordeal might not have been as bad if I hadn't needed to use the bathroom soooo badly! At to make it better (literally) Bacchus managed to keep me laughing hysterically the whole two hours. I have laughed that much and that hard in a long time. I actually really needed it. Based on the price of the hotel, we decided to only stay one night. It was extremely far out. The Golden Tulip provided an amazing night and lovely bed and bathroom. Breakfast was great too, though it was extra and basically served as lunch too. We just couldn't understand how the first hotel managed to book us. I called like two days before they closed to ask a question and they answered it no problem. No mention of them not existing in a week.
We decided we couldn't just go to the city and try to leave right away.. we weren't really feeling it the next day. We went to the tourist information center and got a map and some brochures and proceeded to check out the castle and a church. We had heard about a museum by a park and a small zoo too, so we head out in that direction. The museum had the most abstract exhibit. By abstract I mean there were square panels of wood just completely covered in chalk of one solid color.(looked painted). It basically looked like pieces of colored wall that had been cut up. We walked around the park and managed to take a path that took us along the back side of the tiny zoo, getting to see probably most of the animals for free. We also found a very nicely equipped park where we revisited our childhood for a while. The only bad thing about the day, besides not knowing plans for later, was having to carry our stuff with us. 'Twasn't much, but enough to be a pain on your shoulders.
After figuring out the possibilities with our existing train tickets, since we were skipping town two/three days early, we set out in the general direction of Krefeld/Duesseldorf. We decided we'd had enough for one day; it felt like it had been a lot longer than 15hrs. After stopping in Krefeld for a hearty meal we thought we owed ourselves, complete with a glass of beer, I set out for Aachen (his train left later) and arrived home by 7:45pm. It was quite the short adventure.
At this point, I can only laugh about the entire experience. Usually I would have either been calm and pissed or super pissed, but I wasn't. I'm not sure why, but the fact that we were too busy laughing about it definitely helped. It sure makes a great story.
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