gotta love germans!

so i didnt spend long in the city museum, maybe like 2 hours because andy left work to come meet me at some busy square in the city center. so i walked over there and i kept calling him and saying ok i think i am here but i dont see you...and he was saying "no go here" blah blah but i didnt see it so i ended up leaving that square and getting all lost but after 10 min i finally found him, he was across the street the whole time lol. so then he took me on a little tour of that main city center area. we were on konig strasse (king street) which is the name shopping mecca of dusseldorf, equivalent to 5 th ave. the street was actually very wide, with a pond in the middle, so like park ave how it was divided by something in the middle of the street. that pond had a very pretty neptune fountain, which is apparently famous according to andy. so anyway we are walking down this street, and we pass an abercrombie and fitch store, which i was a bit surprised to see all the way in germany, i didnt know that it had global appeal. so being that andy works in the marketing department of his company, he says to me "this company is very smart about how they market themselves" and i say why? and he points to the front door, and there was a scantily clad sexy model there standing outside, with lots of ladies around him taking photos with him! i was like "wow, its making me want to shop there, and i hate that store!!" i didnt know whether i should go take a pic with him, or give him a winter jacket. but anyway we continued on. after a short while we started walking to his car because we had to go pick up sophie from her music lesson and then we were going out to eat. So we are talking about australia and everyone from there. he was telling me about how andre is in hiedelberg and connie is looking for a job in berlin etc etc. so i asked him several times to tell me the story of how him and Sophie met but he kept avoiding the question whenever i mentioned it, so i think maybe he forgot lol. So anyway we go to the car, he pulls out the gps to go to the ladys apt where sophie is for her lesson, but the gps "Roberta" is having trouble finding the signal. He keeps talking to her like she is a real person saying "Hello roberta, wake up, can you take us to Sophie now?" Lol so roberta eventually guided us and we got there a bit early so we sat in the car and waited. He asked if i had any photos on my phone of michael so i went on fb and showed him the latest ones we were tagged in together like from the end of the term, graduation and Christmas. He said he approved and michael was very good looking! :-) so a little later sophie came out and then we went back into the center, the pedestrianized area with lots of shops, bars and restaurants and went to a restaurant there. Because the menu was in german i needed their help in telling me what there was to choose from. So they said there was a veggie burger but some of the things it came with on the side they didnt know what they were. So when the waiter came around they spoke German together and i said i didnt speak German and he said he didn't speak English very well but he wasn't particularly friendly about it. so andy asked (in german) what came the veggie burger and i dont know what the waiter said but andy told me it was meat. Im like thats dumb! So i saw there was a veggie wrap and so i asked the waiter "is this vegetarian" and he said "obviously" in an obnoxious way. I didnt say anything but i wanted to be like "well obviously veggie burgers are vegetarian too!" Andy and sophie paid for my meal (i was supposed to pay them back but i forgot to give them money when we got back to their place) so i dont actually know if they left a generous tip (i clearly wouldn't have!) But they agreed he was unnecessarily rude to me. So anyway we were at the restaurant for a while, it was actually an American chain, something along the lines of chillis, but ive forgotten now. So sophid told me she also takes german night classes, even though she is nearly fluent! I said wow you are so busy!! And then they said 1 night a week they both take salsa lessons, which was sparked by our nights out in Sydney. I was like wow how do you guys have time for everything!? Props to them.  So at one point while we were having dinner, we hear a marching band parading down the street. old town area where i was earlier. I forgot to mention in the previous post that i saw a really funny outdoor urinal that was like a body capsule you go into and pee in private but the image on the outside was of a giant naked boy baby peeing. Europeans have such a great sense of humor! That would never ever happen in the usa, well we would need to realize the necessity for public toilets first!! But yeah its nighttime by now so the urinal is lit up so the giant naked baby is glowing and it just looked so great! I wonder if the light from the inside creates a silhouette on the capsule so that us on the outside can kinda see what is going on inside!? Ok anyway, so andy and i are in this aldstadt srea and there is a marching band stomping through and a relatively small crowd of people following them. they stop at some point in the square and continue playing their instruments. after the little show is over there is a proclamation from a balcony of what i think was the town hall, but obviously that was in german so i had no idea what he was saying, but andy was translating as he was going along. basically it was the official closing speech of karneval. then everyone cheered and started shouting something related to karnval, not alaaf but i guess a more localized term. and with that, there was no more karneval! i was sad to see it go! ok the night continues in the next entry!