TB Meet-up in Duesseldorf - just great!

My first meet-up - and I almost missed it! It wasn't until April 15th when Melanie (--> mellemel8) asked me whether I would go to Duesseldorf on Saturday. Duesseldorf? That's just a stone's throw away. 40 km (25 miles) from the place where I live. Perfect! Suprisingly enough there were no other appointments for the meet-up day - I would go! Found out that abou four to five people would show up that I had "talked" to before.

On Saturday I got into my car and drove to Duesseldorf. Got a parking space just 50 metres away from the "Zollhof Trattoria", the designated dinner place. Took a taxi to the main station then and met... my TravBuddys! Although this took place in Duesseldorf I soon found out that amazingly I was the only one holding up the German flag - with all due respect to Ana (who was born in Germany, but she is Spanish) and  our magnificant organizier and tour guide Lauro. Later in the evening some more Germans showed up (Karina and Niclas - not a TB member yet) but we still were a minority. Fascinating. Obviously more Germans have to been bitten by the travel bug. Or I have to promote TB better in my homecountry! :-D

Lost the thread. Where was I? "Warming up" could be taken literally because it was a shabby day. No sign of spring at all. Unfortunately Lauro had forgotten to make some fine weather arrangements... Anyway, chatting with all the TravBuddys was interesting and fun! And it would become more funnier as the day went on. :-)
Finally our above mentioned organizer and tour guide Lauro arrived and we were off.