Angela Merkel said she was driving?

After Paris Brittany and I decided that we wanted to take the ICE train to Düsseldorf to see Malte Wagner, our dear friend from my time spent in the political science department of the University of Copenhagen, where we both studied together under the guidance of Joakim Gundel.

The Germen ICE train was everything that you would expect from a German high-speed train. I was struck by how far behind Canada is from Germany and France in terms of our attitude towards rail travel. Could you imagine a bullet train running through the Windsor to Quebec City corridor and as a result of this being able to travel from Toronto to Montreal in three hours?

Our time in Germany was spent in the town of Bochum, which is located between the cities of Essen and Dortmund. We had a blast hanging out with Malte and exploring around this region of Germany. We took a day trip to Cologne and walked up the stairs of the city's famous cathedral, which was one of the few buildings in Cologne that survived the RAF bombing during World War Two. We sampled the local dark beer Kölsch, which was fantastic. Brittany and I had the chance to ride on the Autobahn in Matle’s VW Golf, what a ride. When I saw the speedometer hit 185 km per hour, I looked at Malte and where he was looking and it was 3 km down the road but I soon realized that, that is where you have to look when you are driving at that speed.

Düsseldorf was a great city to spend a sunny late June day wondering around and admiring its modern contemporary architecture, Brittany and I were both really liked Düsseldorf, the water front in Düsseldorf serves as good model for Toronto's long staled plans for waterfront revitalization. From Düsseldorf we said goodbye to Malte and headed back to Amsterdam and then in couple of days we will be heading back to Canada.

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