Eindhoven - Day 2.

Today, time in this part of the world changed. We lost an hour. It's called Sommerzeit, they have it in many places. I think they had it in Korea, too, back in the eighties. But they got rid of it soon, that's what I heard. Gaining an hour in winter is great, but losing it again when the day gets longer pretty much sucks. You wake up after the usual amount of sleep and still feel lazy, just because we've lost that hour. 

We still took our time to breakfast properly. Different to my low-fat milky pimped-with-almonds Kellog's Special K yesterday, today was like a legit meal. We had fresh bagels with cucumber, salad, cheese, eggs and more than two other toppings, and real coffee for a change, I'm talking freshly ground beans, italian style brewing and everything. Stuff you would normally pay good money for. It's like next level petit-dejeuner. I should really try to upgrade my daily breakfast skills at home.

Around two, we left home for Roermont. It's a small city closer to Germany, but still in Holland, where they have this huge outlet shopping village. It looks like any other regular village, they have streets and trees, coffee shops, park benches and trash bins. Only the houses are different, they're all stores. It's a shopping mecca right across the boarder, a bit like Carneby Street in London, but much bigger and constantly on sale. And sometimes they even have their stuff on yet another sale. 

Then it's just crazy, and you end up buying two pairs of shoes when what you were looking for was a hat. In the evening we had a leisurey dinner at a restaurant called McDonald's. I had a Quarter Pounder just because I like the sound of the words. Quarter Pounder. That's two tasty words. Soon after that we had to break things up. My brother took a train back home and Leo took me to Mönchengladbach by car. After all the walking and all the people, sitting in a car was real nice. Good to calm down a bit and prepare for the next train rides.

I took a Regionalbahn to Neuss and got a coffee for my wait. It was only a couple of minutes, but enough time to sit down in the warm for a bit. The next train took me back to Cologne and it strangely felt like coming home, although that's not where I'm from. I guess it's always nice to recognize a place, even when it's just a train station. I got another Capuccino and continued jotting down some words to make sence of a few thoughts. Then the last train finally got me home. The last fourty minutes of another superb trip.

It's funny, but I think nothing really worth mentioning happened on my way back. Well, perhaps things did happen and I just failed to recognize them. Maybe I was even too busy thinking about my next trip, but my brains were working hard, I couldn't even read the book that I brought along. By the way, I'm really lazy on the reading side of things these days. It's because of the translation I'm working on, it keeps me occupied. a lot. Maybe I should read some Jack Kerouack for inspiration.