Before another whole week passes I should post these few pictures from the “Coffee, Culture & Cocktails” Event on Saturday. Although there are neither coffee nor cocktails visible ;-) I’m not a huge “throwing a party” kind of person, so I knew I wouldn’t do anything big for my 35th birthday. I choose to spend it with just a few people at a nice location, doing something I planned on doing for a while: Visiting the new “Ruhr Museum” at the extraordinary former coal mine industrial site “Zeche Zollverein”. This site is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and even though I’ve been there a couple of times already, it still amazes me every time. It’s just fascinating to see how nature seized back it’s place on this large former industrial site. And of course the industrial relicts are still impressive after all this time…
On Saturday afternoon I met up some friends on the site. First stop for birthday coffee and cake (well waffles in that case) was the Kokerei Cafe. It’s a very unique location for a cafe, beneath and among the relicts of the former coal mine. Unfortunately the service was unique as well. But not in a good way. I can’t remember ever having experienced such a unorganzied group of waiter/waitresses. Plus the one who served us in the end (after they had figured out who should serve which table) was rather grumpy and not the most friendly person.She forgot some of the order and she couldn’t do math. Oh, it was so bad. On the other hand, we had something to talk and gossip about and we’ll definitely remember that afternoon :-) I felt rather bad for some tourists from southern Germany though, because they waited over 30 minutes for their salad and in the end they left without having gotten any food, because they had to be somewhere else afterwards. I usually always tip the waiting staff, but this was the first time in a looong time, that I didn’t. Seriously, those folks did not deserve any tip.
Sunshine, blue sky and an extraordinary location to roam around made up for this experience though. We spend a lot of time just walking around, taking pictures, talking about movies and TV series and the internet, all those common interests ;-) And of course we gossiped a little bit about the guest of the several wedding parties which took place on the site that afternooon. In the end we choose to not visit the museum, because it would have been a waste of the wonderful weather to spend time indoors. So we just went up onto the top of the museum where we had a fantastic panaroma view of the Ruhrgebiet (our metropolitian area).
Around 7 PM we headed downtown for some cocktails and yummy, yummy mexican food. And more talks about movies and TV Series and and and… It really was a wonderful, relaxing, sunny, happy birthday. A few of my presents were in fact invitations to similar activities so I’m really looking forward to these. Getting a year older really isn’t that bad after all :-)