fun and games
by Rach, who loved the slide as much as the children
Koeln, Germany
The morning:
Yesterday we had seen a playground with a fantastic-looking slide across the river.
Today we investigated it more closely:
The afternoon:
Yesterday Grandpa had found a Starbucks with wifi while the rest of us were climbing the belfry. Today he and I cycled back to it with a view to uploading pictures, publishing blog posts and catching up on emails (not to mention a spot of googling for bicycle prices and Carcassonne rules).
At eight euros an hour plus needing to purchase something, there was no way we were staying! That’s $25 for an hour! GULP. Thankfully someone in the cafe gave us directions to another cafe a little way across town, which would have free wifi. For once I spoke more German than the other person spoke English, but she insisted on using her English….and sent us in not quite the right direction. Up the High Street, what’s more. It would seem this is the one place in Koeln that has a temporary population density approaching Asian ones….and there we were on bicycles, almost stationary, we were weaving our way so slowly. Heidelberg Horrors haunted me, and I decided it would be prudent to ask for help. Asking three people shed no light on the matter and so I re-interpreted the original directions to what I *thought* she might have meant and we backtracked. Still not finding our free wifi, we asked someone else, who sent us “just five minutes up the road…turn right at the corner, cross the main road at the traffic lights, you’ll see a yellow mouse on an arcade and keep going a bit further, you’ll see a small street, it’s right there.” We found the mouse – good to know I’d heard her correctly! We also found the small street, but no cafe. Ah well, ask the fruit lady…..she confirmed we were hot on the trail, but needed to cross another couple of streets before we would get to our goal. This was as much fun as geo-caching! Sure enough, there was our hotspot. Success.
Success for Grandpa, who was connected and emailing before our overloaded machine had even opened. I got open…..and connected……but could not open any web pages. I tried every trick techno-dude Rob has taught me, all to no avail. Last time this happened there was a simple explanation – simple to Rob, who knew what to look for, that is. And so I decided to ride back to the Womo park for diagnosis.
Nothing wrong apparently. Sigh. I’m sure I saw him click a few buttons and hoped one of them would be the magic one.
Back to the cafe.
Open. Connect. Find webpage. Success.
But not for long. Flickr would not upload my photos. Webpages we wanted to browse offline later refused to be saved. The couchsurfing site was down. Ra ra ra. Finally the screen went black in the middle of me emailing my mother and when I woke it up a “critical battery error” warning advised me to connect to a power source immediately or risk losing all my data. There being no such power source available, I turned off and gave up. A girl can only manage so much fun and games in one day.
Time on the road: no roads ~ just footpaths and cycle lanes
Distance covered: 4km on foot or bike for everyone, plus an additional 4km by bike for Rob, 6km by bike for Grandpa and 12km by bike for me
Tags: children, money, postcard: Germany, postcard: Rhein Road Trip, price, recreation
rayres
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