Entschuldigung, haben Sie die Uhrzeit?

Ah, Düsseldorf. After a long plane ride, one should always take a few days to put one's feet up and relax. We thought we'd hit the ground running (reference our itinerary of a few days ago), but this seems like a much better plan. When we arrived here on Tuesday morning, we didn't know where we were going to stay. I had sent out some Couchsurfing requests, but had only received a "no" and nothing from the others by the time we had to leave Michael's mother's house. We arrived around 8 am local time, 2 am to us, and went through all the customs and security and everything half asleep.
We soon realized we were so totally exhausted that we couldn't manage to make obvious choices, let alone even think up some smart solutions. We wandered outside to see where Düsseldorf might be. We laid down on the grass to rest. Little green bugs hopped around on us, and we were twitchy enough that we couldn't find peace. We wandered back inside.
We wandered around the airport. We wandered to the information booth, pretended to speak German, wandered out, wandered back to the information booth again... and did that about 3 or 4 times until the woman helping us began to smile knowingly when we approached. I used the 5 Euros I had left over from 3 years ago to get some change. We plunked 50 cents into the internet kiosk and used 3 of our 5 minutes getting from one website to the next, one minute blogging that last crazy (but hopefully reassuring) blog, and one minute taking down a name and phone number that Couchsurfer Robin sent us. For though he could not host us, he delivered unto us our saviors.
After some shenanigans with the phone we managed to call Chris, and over a period of time during which a nap, a train ride, and some pretending to speak German happened we reached his abode, where Ieva let us in. Ieva and Chris have made us feel quite comfortable here. We play games, chat about hitchhiking, travel, school, Twilight, breakfast, and couchsurfing, and hang out like old friends. Yesterday evening they took us along to a dinner party. We ate delicious veganerrific ratatouille, watermelon, and salad. We übed our Deutsch. We played charades (and they all played in English for us, though we tried to push for German). We met Kathi, our host, who is a costume designer and currently works for a costume shop as a seamstress building for theatres all over the world, including the Metropolitan Opera in New York. She and Stina and I talked shop a bit, and decided that if Stina and I move to Berlin, we'll produce a show together, and she'll make it fit in her schedule somehow. We're thinking Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead or Waiting for Godot (which because of the Tonys we now know is pronounced GOD-oh). I'd also like to make something by Thornton Wilder. I think I should avoid Ionesco and other non-English-language plays because if I'm doing it in Germany, I should either do the play in its original tongue or in German... and I could never translate from French to German, and I'm sure I'd butcher Brecht in German... maybe not, though. Anybody else out there have a suggestion? Nikki, want to visit Germany and maybe direct a play? Anybody else want to join us? Apartments in Berlin are only 250€ ($325)

Bis dann!
Brendan