Dusseldorf

June 20, 2012

Lee

Dusseldorf 

Sometimes I take my job for granted, getting caught up in the day to day issues and not realizing that I have a pretty amazing situation going working for RPM Nautical. This week was not one of those weeks. RPM is involved with setting up a new underwater field school in Saranda, Albania and I get to head over to Albania along with one of RPM’s diving intern and field school student Lee to check it out. Probably not most people’s average work week is my guess and I am very fortunate to be involved in something that is so cool.

What at first glance might not appear so great, the 36 hour travel time between departure from Key West and arrival in Saranda, actually turned out to be fairly amazing.  Sometimes the journey is equally as valuable as the destination and this journey was way better than expected for a couple of reasons, one we had a couple of cool stops along the way and secondly Lee turned out to be a wonderful travel companion.

The second reason should come as no surprise really as she is very well traveled having spent the better part of the past three summers overseas, two working as a diving intern aboard our vessel the R/V Hercules. In addition she is just a pretty cool person, one who I really enjoyed getting to know during the trip over. It is always enjoyable to travel with someone who is more of a traveler than tourist and is low maintenance. 

The trip took us to Miami first where we had a long layover before boarding an overnight flight to Dusseldorf, Germany where we had an even longer layover, over nine hours before we caught a flight to Corfu, Greece. While many people might have opted for the relative safety and comfort of spending the layover in the airport, we choose to take the train in to town and explore the city.

It turned out to be a great decision. Dusseldorf is a short twelve minute train ride from the airport and is a fun and wonderful place and we got to spend basically a full day exploring and hanging out. We began by winding through the streets from the train station, making our way down towards the Altstadt or old town, the historic section of the city located along the banks of the Rhine. It was a Saturday morning when we arrived and at first it was fairly quiet in the city, but as the day progressed the city literally came alive in front of our eyes and by mid-afternoon the streets were packed.

There were a couple of festivals occurring that we were able to check out, one was a book fair that had hundreds of vendors along a beautiful canal and the Chinese- Dusseldorf festival. Both were pretty cool, but the highlight for us was our traditional German lunch at one of the famous breweries located in the old town. We stopped in at Uerige, one of the five breweries in town that brew the beer that Dusseldorf is famous for, Altbier a hoppy beer which translates as old style beer, a reference to the pre-lager brewing method of using a warm top fermenting yeast like British pale ales. The beer is cleaner and crisper than most beer and is made only a few places in the world and Lee & I sat and sampled a good portion of the tasty brew for much of a fun afternoon.

We eventually had to wonder our way back to the train station, past the amazing collection of graffiti that is found throughout the newer sections of the city and then it was back to the airport to catch a flight to Corfu. We had to spend a night in Corfu at the lovely Calivieri Hotel before catching the morning ferry to Saranda early Sunday.

http://www.uerige.de/en/start/