Essen to Geseke/Paderborn, Day 7

On Tuesday morning, we woke up at 7 o'clock because Mathias said that he would make us PANCAKES! What an awesome American breakfast to be offered in Germany! The pancakes were awesome, but we were still exhausted, so when Mathias left for work, we headed back upstairs back to bed! It felt great. We slept until about 11am, at which point we packed up our stuff, thanked Mr. and Mrs. Schroder, and headed out.
As always, staying at the Schroder's was awesome. They are really such nice people. Kate was lucky to befriend Mathias!
So we headed to Geseke, a small town where Eva lives near Paderborn, about 2 hours drive from Essen. When we finally found her exit, we found a McDonalds, which we decided would be the best spot to wait and meet Eva at. However, like always, Leanne couldn't contain herself and HAD to play on the playscape! So we took a movie.. :)
Eva finally came and led us to her house. She lives in this very cool second-story apartment in the house behind her parents' house. We dumped our stuff, and headed to the downtown area (very small, but cool) for a walk and to look for food. We finally stopped into a very cool little restaurant that served both Turkish and German food. I had something german that is meat smashed really thin, then fried. Schnitzel keeps coming to mind, but that might be completely off. After this, we headed back to Eva's to relax, drink some tea, and take some siestas. After a while of that, we went out to a bar in town for drinks. Eva brought us to this one bar in particular because it has darts, an old group favorite from Santander!
After a while there, we went home and all called it a night. The next day we had a big day of visiting Paderborn!

Cologne & Essen - Day 6

On Monday, we started real early. Esther needed to be to the airport by 9:30, so we had to leave by 8 from her house. Nothing special happened on the ride. We sang some songs on the radio, talked about what we were doing over the next couple of days, and even convinced Leanne that we DID NOT need to stop at McDonalds for breakfast!
After we dropped her off, we were off. It was finally my turn to drive (driving a stick in germany on the autobahn.... FUN!) Supy and Leanne had to repeatedly remind me that we were not in a racecar... Ooops! So we drove for an hour or two and finally found Cologne. We stopped in the really flashy looking business district first because Leanne had to go to the bathroom so bad. But it was a good thing, because we found a little Bratwurst stand that we had our lunch at. SOOO GOOD! After that, we drove towards the older part of the city where the huge cathedral sits alongside the Hauptbahnhof. We decided to not go up into it, as none of us really had a desire to climb the I-forget-how-many-steps. So we just chilled for about an hour or so there, then we took off for Dusseldorf!
Now German Matt was the one who told us to go to Dusseldorf to go see the old section of town and to see a shopping area called King's Alley. Needless to say, we successfully got lost as soon as we arrived, and got frustrated and left without seeing anything except the downtown streets. :)
We finally arrived in Essen around 4:45, and met Matt in the Burger King parking lot like he told us to. We met his girlfriend, Ella, who was very nice, and they both met Supy and Leanne. We followed Matt to his house and said hello to his Mom and Dad, and pretty much had dinner right away. After dinner, I watched the recent episode of Family Guy with Martin, Matt's brother, and then we all went downstairs to watch Matt smoke his hookah!
Finally, around 9 PM we went out to pick up Celina and head out to the strip of cocktail bars by the Gasometer. The drinks were awesome there. We were drinking things like Swimming Pools, Dragons, etc After about an hour and a half, we headed out, to find McDonalds down the way open and awaiting us. We had the munchies! And of course, like always, German Matt wanted a picture of us "Americans" enjoying our fast food... haha.
When we got back to the Schroeders house, Leanne happened to mention that she wasn't feeling well, so Mr. Schroder fixed her up a hot rum and sugar drink. It was hilarious. Leanne just sipped away at it. But then, he offered Supy and I brandy and coke! After a drink or two with Mr. Schroder, we all watched his fishing video from this year (he goes on an annual fishing trip with his buddies, and every year, they make a movie out of it!).
We headed upstairs for bed, but before going to sleep, we called Meghann real quick to wish her a happy birthday back in New Mexico.