Wednesday, December 10, 2014

Homeless in Dortmund

Alvin and I bought our plane tickets to Budapest, leaving from Dortmund airport two weeks before the trip. Unfortunately, the only available times for the flights were early morning; which meant we had to be at Dortmund the night before.

Well, it turns out Dortmund airport closes between midnight and 3am, and the city has exactly one hostel, and it was all booked out. Hotels were out of our price range and couchsurfing failed us, so we decided to YOLO it. We brainstormed a few ideas:

  1. Bring a sleeping bag, set up a tent near the airport, and camp out for the night. It turns out wild-camping is illegal in Germany. 
  2. Find a 24/7 McDonalds, sleep there. There was no 24/7 McD's in Dortmund.
  3. Sleep on the street. No problem here.
Clearly, the only option we had was sleeping on the street. 
So we arrived in Dortmund around 8pm, had dinner, and set out to see the city for a bit. We found a Christmas market, and Germany's biggest Christmas tree. Impressive!! Except it was about -5 degrees outside.

As we walked around the city, we looked for bushes near big buildings. We found a super nice hidden place, but we had to sleep on concrete floor. It was away from the city centre, and not a lot of people walked by (even if they did, they couldn't see anything). I didn't take a picture of the place, since it was night time :(

After about an hour of trying to fall asleep in freezing conditions, I gave up. Alvin and I decided to just hang out at the Hauptbahnhoff (main train staition), which is supposedly open 24/7. 
Then came our savior, KFC. This KFC by the HBf was the warmest, and the tastiest-smelling place we were at all night. So, along with 10 other travellers cozied up inside, we took a short nap.
At 4am, we headed to DTM airport.

Off to Budapest! <<-- will be linked to a new post soon.

After Budapest, we came back to Dortmund airport, and stayed at the most beautiful McD's I have ever witnessed until our car-share ride home arrived.

The only good thing about Dortmund was this McDonalds. (Partly because I planned my trip terribly) Dortmund gets 5 McBreakfast out of 10. 

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