At the moment, I’m in Dusseldorf, Germany in an empty hotel, 5am local time. My wife and I are the only people here. There isn’t even any staff around since they’re all gone for the Christmas holidays. I’m not sure how the arrangements were made, but my mother-in-law somehow worked out a deal with the owners that we’re able to stay here while the place is closed.
Now, combine my situation of being in a deserted hotel with the fact that there is 3 feet of snow outside. I’m told there has been this much snow for over a week. Not being able to run, with nothing to do, I’ll be climbing the walls by the end of the week. It’s beginning to feel like a scene from the The Shining.
The roads don’t seem to get plowed, at least not around the holidays. My wife, who is originally from this area, is even questioning why they’re not yet cleared. And, you can forget about sidewalks being shoveled. No one does that here. The cars seem to manage to get through ok enough on most main roads though, albeit slowly. The snow there is all packed down at this point. But, there’s no sign of pavement anywhere.
This will make for some interesting running, if any. I have no idea when I’ll be able to even attempt to see what it’s like. This is because I have nothing with me except the same jeans and tee-shirt that I’ve been wearing for the past 40 plus hours. We’ve literally had the trip from hell with delays and layovers, and to top it off, only two out of three suitcases made it through. The one missing is, of course, the one with all my clothes, including my running shoes. To make matters worse, the connecting flight with the 6 hour layover was between Continental and Lufthansa, so I’m not even sure which airline has my bag. Both are clueless as to where it is.
So I’ve lost one day of running so far, which was yesterday, the day we arrived. I only had a 5 mile recovery run planned anyway. Today, the prospects don’t look good either. Even if I had my running gear getting out there will be a shit show, but I’d gladly take it.
There’s a gym nearby, which I’ve used on occasion. They’ve allowed me to purchase a weekly pass when I’ve stayed in Düsseldorf in previous years. I might try to get access to one of their treadmills. That is, if they’re not closed for the entire holiday week. That kind of thing is more common here than you might realize and there doesn’t seem to be a predicability as to which businesses will do this.
I was looking forward to coming here, because there is absolutely nothing to do except the one thing I love to do when there’s nothing else to do. The running here is fantastic along the Rhein river. It’s a nice open landscape with a path that goes on for miles and miles with beautiful views of the river and city. There are a few bridges that can be crossed so that you can return along the other side.
The Rhein is not the only place to go either. There’s also the area around Graphenberg Wald. I blogged about this last year around this time. The week I come here, is a week where I typically think and worry about nothing. The days are short in terms of light, sunrise at 10, sundown at 4:30, and they go by pretty slowly. Now, that, mixed in with getting a good solid run in every day really allows me to feel like I’ve had some time off when I return home.
But, without the possibility of getting that run in, the vacation becomes the antithesis of what I described. It turns into something more like a jail sentence. This is my first morning waking here, and I’m already stressing out about how I’m going to get through each boring day. Let’s just hope this vacation doesn’t end like the movie did.
Inevitable at this point
