The Week of Murphy's Law

My birthday was last Thursday -- I turned 23. That's when my "Murphy's Law Week", as I'm now referring to it, began. As most of you are probably aware, Murphy's Law states that anything that can go wrong, will go wrong. And wrong it went.


Thursday, my friend Jordan arrived. She is an au-pair about 2 hours away from me. About 5 minutes after she got here, we opened a letter in the mail stating that I apparently broke a German law, obviously unaware. So now I have to pay a large fine. That was my birthday present from Germany. After we steamed about that for a few minutes, I decided to shake it off since it was my birthday, and we still had a great weekend, despite (or maybe in spite of?) Germany's birthday present. That didn't stop things from going wrong all weekend, though. And when something would go wrong, we did the only thing we could -- we got a good laugh out of it.


On Friday, we went to Duesseldorf. Everything went well and we had a lot of fun shopping and exploring the Altstadt (even though we accidentally ate a really expensive Fajita). Duesseldorf has some of the cutest little buildings and restaurants. I love walking around there. It also has the most well-dressed people that I've ever seen in one city. Then on the way home, we accidentally forgot to pay attention on the train and ended up in The Netherlands at midnight. Whoops. No problem, we just got back on the next train and remembered to pay attention this time.

Adorable Restaurant in Duesseldorf

The next day, Saturday, we went to Koeln. There is a train to Koeln every hour at :44. We got to the train station to go to Koeln and missed it by 1 minute. So we decided to go on ahead and eat brunch somewhere since we had to wait an hour. So we went to the closest cafe, which turned out to be mediterranean food. We ordered hummus and a little bit later, the waitress returned with a plate of pommes (french fries). This is where our American accent gets us in trouble sometimes. So we tried to explain we ordered hummus, not pommes, and they brought us hummus with no bread. So we ate hummus with pommes. I do not recommend it. But we laughed about that for a while. Could we have looked more American to the other patrons eating hummus mit pommes? After eating, we walked back to the train station to go to Koeln and missed our train AGAIN by literally 1 minute. So we looked and another train was actually coming at :26. So we sat down to wait. After that passed by, we looked at the schedule again, and of course, that train doesn't come on Saturdays. So we sat down to wait again for the :44, refusing to miss it for the 3rd time. After we finally got to Koeln, we went to the Dom, climbed the 533 steps to the top of the tower, went down the 533 steps, then accidentally went shopping. After running away from the shops before we spent any more money, we went to the Altstadt and had really good Thai soups and salads before returning back home. We had to take a taxi from the train station because it was too late for the bus, and I gave the cab driver 25 euros for a 9 euros taxis ride. Whoops. He probably wants to move to America now since we apparently give giant tips.

Pommes mit Hummus

Yummy Wanton Soup in Koeln

All in all, it was a really great weekend. Sometimes when things go wrong, it ends up making things more fun. Gives you something to laugh about. Although I do really wish I could exchange Germany's present.