"Meeting Steve (steventill ..." a Düsseldorf Travel Page by sabsi

Steve and I had been talking on the email and the phone for ages before we finally got a chance to meet!

In August 2002 Steve and his wife Susan came over to Düsseldorf to stay with me for a few days and it was my first attempt in being a tourguide for Düsseldorf, Cologne and the Rhine area of Germany.

After I picked them up in Cologne and I picked my car up from the garage in Mettmann we went home to my place so that Steve could finally play with Elmo again.

Afterwards we went into Düsseldorf's city centre for some cake at Leysieffers at the "Kö" - because I thought that this is the appropriate place to bring two cake addicts first thing.

We headed to the media port afterwards - my favourite area here and the area to impress tourists ;-) It worked I think. Steve's camera was basically working nonstop from here.

We gave the elevator up the tower a miss (I never heard so many excuses before ;-) and walked towards the Gehry buildings.

People who passed by here must have thought that a photo shooting was taking place here. We took so many pictures.

Afterwards it was time for dinner. The weeks before I had always looked through menus everywhere to find out whether they offer good vegetarian stuff so that I could bring Steve and Susan there. I had never thought of the Minol but as we were close to this place - one of my favourites - we had dinner there.

VT tourist Steve took pics of his dinner of course .... very embarrassing at first but you get used to it. So used to it that I started taking pics of food, too ;)

After a while we walked back to the Old town. Don't believe Steve that he found out how the clock at the Rheinturm works without problem - he is a liar. He had no clue. By having no clue he even confused me badly so that I failed to explain it correctly ;-)

We stopped for a few Altbiers in the Altstadt on the way home of course. And I showed my tourguide qualities when promising that it's never empty on Ratinger Strasse and we took the tram home - perfectly planned by me of course -- with a 25 minute break at Uhlandstrasse when changing trains ;) Well I tried my best to show them REAL LIFE in Düsseldorf ;)

First thing in the morning usually was trying to get the mouse back ;-) You couldn't leave the computer or the living room for a second without Steve taking the opportunity to check his mails or sending VT comments to himself in my name ;)

We went down the Rhine on Friday (see more about this on my Koblenz page - I'll try to continue this story there).

Saturday morning we had to do some shopping so we got out the map of Düsseldorf and searched for the REAL supermarket ;-)

It was so funny to go shopping with them, I died laughing. And I found out that in England there's nothing like breaks on shopping trolleys or cleaning stuff for ovens like our "Elektro Puzzi". "Vorsprung durch Technik" was the motto of the day ;-)

After shopping like crazy we went to my company's wine tasting event in Mettmann. When Steve and Susan said they would come over to Germany they said they would like to try wines - perfect timing that we had a wine tasting the day they were here.

So we had way too many wines for way too little money. The next five minutes after leaving the wine tasting we spent with a sighseeing tour of Mettmann. ("This is the market square. Full Stop").

Later that evening after Steve had impressed us with eating the whole pot of super-hot Chili sauce at my favourite Italian restaurant I tried to convince them that "Father Ted" was a funny series. As they had never watched it before we got my videos out and later that night "Fup off" and "DRINK" was in Steve and Susan's word repertoire as well ;-)

On Sunday Bigs came over early in the morning, we had a big breakfast with all the stuff we had bought on saturday and we headed off to Unbehaun's ice cream shop and on to Cologne.

That's why this travelogue will end on my Cologne page.
8 chapters just aren't enough to tell a story....