Preface:
I swore that I never, ever write a daylog. Well, I was wrong, as the weird policy of nodermeet aftermath nodes to be noded as daylogs forces me to. All part of raising the bar, I guess. Anyway, here goes::
It all began back in October, when I decided to advertise the Cologne nodermeet. Many brave adventurous noders confirmed their interest, when suddenly, four weeks before the whole thing was supposed to take place, the servers started to sprout legs and make their way from California to (of all places) Michigan. Not that there's anything wrong with Ann Arbour, though. Anyway, as only two of the expected noders had my email adress and the cache at Google almost instantly wiped out, nobody had the chance to contact me, reducing the 12 person nodermeet to 3. Bummer. Not to worry I thought, as the two champions of engineering and software design, Spiregrain and Strawberryfrog would honour that favourite city of mine, so I was delighted as their emails arrived, confirming their flights (leaving at the ungodly hour of 6:30 from Stansted Airport). The night before we exchanged phonenumbers and clarified the modus operandi: I would pick the two of them up ca 9:45 from Cologne's main train station. I joined the best girlfriend ever in our communal bed, knowing that everything was taken care of.
Unfortunately we didn't include WAGN in our calculation: At 08:10 MET my mobile began to interrupt my slumber: Strawberryfrog, sounding impressively pissed off, announced that they missed the flight due to "late engineering work" on the Stansted Express route and due to lack of preparation WAGN failed to get them in time to the Airport. Taking the Ibook back to bed, I went through a couple of permutations and decided they'd never make it to Cologne before 16:00 with the available Ryanair flights and went back to my slumber. Half an hour later the mobile rang again, and the sound of a jet engine and Strawberryfrog's yells made clear that they were on their way to Cologne Airport with Germanwings. Rejoicing, I jumped out of bed and tried to make myself representable for the arrival of those two heroic noders.
Indeed, 2 hours later the two of them arrived with the shuttlebus at that most beautiful of German trainstations and so we exchanged greetings and started off to see that self declared "heart of the world". An initial walk through the dome failed due to a starting mass, but we manged to conjure up brillant weather and walk along the rhine, see the medieval city hall and get some food, impressions of the local women and initial beers at the Cafe Fleur. After that we took a cruise down the Rhine to soak up the sun (and the koelsch) before I left the two heroes to rest for an hour.
After that it was Koelsch tasting at my flat and then dinner at the Petersberger Hof, before the two of them had to get some well deserved sleep. In that time the two of them managed to convince my significant other that just because one hangs a considerable amount in front of E2 one doesn't necessarily have to be a deranged individual, which gave me (and her) some hope back. The next day we met at my flat, watched the Blackadder Christmas Carol and then hit one of the local breweries to make our transition to Niederrhein Airport easier (meeting some very pleasant locals and gaining the title "Saufziegen"). 1 hour and 42 minutes later we were in lovely Weeze and managed to admire some V Bird's before squeezing ourself in our own 747-800 to Stansted. There we entered a minicab and made it before 23:00 to our respective homes.
A great time was had and hopefully we'll do the same again next year in New Zealand!