I got up at 4:00 am on Saturday morning to meet
Spiregrain at
Liverpool Street Station, take a train to
Stansted airport and a
Ryanair flight to
Köln (
Cologne, in
Germany) via Niederrhein-Dusseldorf
airport. The
WAGN train stopped short at the little town of
Bishops Fucking Stortford instead, leaving a lot of angry and upset people. By the time we got to Stanstead our flight had left. A substitute flight to Köln-Hahn airport via
germanwings was purchased, so we got there ahead of time due to a closer airport. Attempts to extract money from
WAGN (may they go out of business swiftly) and
travel insurance are ongoing. This was
Heisenberg's E2-less German international
nodermeet.
The weekend was great - our host Heisenberg gave a guided tour, translated, and bought the local beer, Kölsch, which is brewed only in Köln, is around 5% alcohol, and comes in little 200ml glasses. This may sound inadequate, but the temptation is to down it, and the efficient waiter will replace the glass unless you put the beermat on top of it. It's like beer on tap.
So they also have a big old impressive cathedral, which was once the tallest building in Europe, a placid river (The Rhine), and a smart town. All in all it seems a very pleasant place to live if you hold a EU passport and speak fluent German.
Got back home by 11pm Saturday night - avoided the accursed WAGN train by sharing a taxi this time, for a few hours sleep.