Part III: Dinner at Zollhof Trattoria

Third and final part (for me) was the dinner at "Zollhof Trattoria" which is located in the media harbour. To make a long story short: we had a great dinner which resulted in an 2,000 Euro invoice! :-D After the dinner (0:30 am) some of the others went to a nearby club. Unfortunately I had to call it quits since  I had to get up at 6:15 the following morning.
Folks, I had a great time with you. I will be pretty busy until fall. But after that I am open for new new meet-up's! :-D Hope to see some of you guys again. Whereever. :-)

Our guide Lauro took us to the other side of the Rhine. We then crossed the bridge and walked towards our final destination: the media harbour. Since it was still quite early we took a rest at a beer garden on our way. Here a well earned cup was awarded to Lauro by charming Charlotte and presents were being given to Charlotte (...upcoming birthday?) and Bennie (...upcoming trip to Brasil). Bennie's present was a paragon of perfection. Simply beautiful and fitting. ;-) I couldn't resist but bring out two toasts. One for Lauro (of course!) and one for our master and "creator": Eric Bjorndahl.

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.