So my 3 week travel bender starts in disaster! Absolute disaster! Im meeting my friend in Berlin for the trip to start, as im investigating my cheapest options I see my friend Ryan Air has cheap flights to Dusseldorf, upon more research I find out that is very close to my dad’s birth place. I figure this is the best news ever! I can go and visit where my dad is born, check out another random town and more importantly pick up my dad’s birth certificate so that I can start applying for dual citizenship. Wasn’t I off balance!

After spending some time emailing the registration office of Gelsenkirchen and getting all the information I thought I needed, I set off on the trip. Now fail #1 would be that I didn’t learn the german language as I mentioned I would of, fail #2 would be assuming Gelsenkirchen is a small town of English speaking Germans.

Gelsenkirchen was not a small town, not at all! And in fact it had taken me the entire day to find the registrations office, this was not as simple of a task as I thought it would be. I started off at the information center and they directed me to the second part of the town (the town was huge and made of 3 main parts which took about 40 minutes on tram to get from one end to the other) “WHATS THIS!!! ” I have to get on a tram! I thought I could just walk to the town hall, pick up this piece of paper and start my sight seeing… oh well, Ill see more of the town this way I guess.

So as I traveled around the town, I realised this was not going to be as easy to find as I thought it would have and I probably did not do as much research as a should of, I simply assumed this would be easy to find.. silly me. The information centre told me to go to one place, people in that place would tell me to go to another, everyone who was asked the question “do you speak English?” would reply “ a little” infact they really did mean a little! Well at least the Germans were a friendly bunch.

The whole time I was asking for “city hall” and always received a very confused look in return, apparently it was the “registrations office” I was looking for (I found that out after going around the first and second half of the town about 5 times, back and fourth… registrations office was in the third part of town (as I said, not a small town) I found this out due to these really cool pay phones/internet screens they have in the middle of the streets. Pay phones arn’t Dead they are jsut upgrading to internet phones! brilliant! “goodbye red phone box, hello pink internet box”

This pay internet phone allowed me to check my emails and find success!

So I found out it was the “registrations office” I was looking for, thanks to mr pink internet phone box thingy, I was eventually pointed in the direction of the Horst castle…. (hold for lauhgs…) This was the castle I had planned to visit when I get sightseeing time, straight after I got my dads birth certificate (ironic I know!)) So I made my way to the castle.

I walked inside with my fingers crossed, excited as anything when I realised it was the registrations office, I was finally in the right place! The ladies at reception spoke english, it was only half way through the day, maybe things were turning out!!! Only being a Friday, apparently the Germans like to take a 3 day weekend. The registrations office was closed and I was told to come back on Monday. Now clearly the fact that I would be in Berlin on Monday would cause a problem with returning. GUTTERED!!!

So disappointed! Tired! And birth certificate less I continued to walk around town, about time to get some lunch I believe, I stopped by a cool cafe and ordered some great food, unsure of what im ordering.

so apparently “italienische frikadellen auf rucola bratkartoffeln” means “meatballs, fried potatoes on rocket salad” I say it meant yummy!!!

I also managed to take a photo of the toilet doors in the cafe for my “Toilet doors around the world” album

After lunch I strolled along the town, to be honest. it felt like thats all I was doing all day! There were not many sights to check out. My dads old house is now the football stadium, the music museum was closed, I was too late to do a tour of the statue park… (the list of fails continues) but it was a nice clean Germany city with friendly people, great food, clean parks and waterfalls and great transport… as expected from a Germany town.

Moral of the story, perhaps to do my research a bit more, perhaps to follow maps (as I learnt from the coming trip im no good at!) Well im not too sure yet but the funniest part would be, once I found out about the registrations office being the castle, after it took me all day to find my way I turned to sightseeing map and saw the words “Horst castle- now the cities registration office” on my map.

So perhaps this was simply a comedy moment or a learning lesson of some sort. All I knew was that I needed a beer and a train to Berlin ASAP

Setting up for a well needed beer and venting blog session before hitting Berlin