Journey to Gottingen

Work trip to Gottingen after a tiring Zumba workshop the day before.

We grabbed dinner at a nice Japanese restaurant at Haneda Airport. The food was food though it was on the expensive side.

The tempura was very good and I guess Japanese food is always good when you're flying out of Japan.

After a rough check in which took more than an hour. no thanks to the travel agency that my company engaged in who made a mistake in the booking details. While waiting for things to be settled, we bumped into a friend who helped us snap this.

Because it took such a long time for things to get settled, everyone on my flight has already checked in before me and because of that I didn't have a choice in choosing my seats.

I was given a middle seat in the centre seating area of the plane that has a 3-4-3 configuration. Just my luck that I had to be stuck between two bigger strangers who took both the hand rest on my sides. Plus I had to deal with this guy on my left who went barefoot on the plane and kept his feet up like this most of the time. Definitely not a very comfortable flight with Air France.

Arrived at Paris for my transit and I'm loving what I see on sale at the airport, but I wasn't in the mood to eat.

Boarded on this plane to Frankfurt and this flight was a lot of more comfortable.

The seat is big and I had a nice window seat.

I'm fascinated at how flat the land looks from above and that most buildings are short.

Finally arrived at Frankfurt airport and I decided to buy some bread for my train journey to Gottingen.

Very nice looking train station. I only wish that the they would sell all tickets with a fixed sit.

I was contemplating for a long time if I should try my luck by buying via the machine or the counter but I decided that a counter would be safer as the machine is super complicated and I didn't want to risk it.

The seats were also very nice, only down side was that because my ticket didn't had a fixed seat number and I didn't know that I could actually book a fixed seat via an app beforehand, I was super lost on where to sit. But I assumed that I could seat at any seat that has my from and to destination listed on the display panel. I was half correct as you won't know which seat has been pre-booked and which has not!

Look at how big the seat is!

I got to enjoy my bread before I got chased off my original seat a few stations down because apparently, the seat that I was on, was booked by another person. So I just moved on to another seat. One safe way to make sure that you're not on anyone's seat if you didn't have a fixed seat is to sit at a place whose from location is the location you want to travel to. This way, you will be off the train before the person who is supposed to be sitting there boards.

After arriving at Gottingen station, I walked out and found the bus stops. From there, I boarded a bus to my hotel. As I didn't have any internet connection from here on, I just winged it. It was nice because it felt touristy. I got to ask people for directions, ask the bus driver for the ticket price and had a brief view of the city.

Got down at the stop nearest to my hotel but couldn't locate it as I didn't have google map but luckily there was an old lady walking by and I just asked her for directions.

Finally arrived and checked in to my hotel -Best Western Parkhotel Ropeter.

My room was surpringly big. I have 2 beds and a proper living area with TV, which I never used. 

This study table is the most commonly used space in my room other than my bed as I had to work. Had to wake up early in the morning to check my mails and reply them late at night too before bed.

The big bathroom with toilet.

There's a big bathtub, but I didn't take any baths in it.  Luckily I brought my own shampoo and conditioner as they only had the common soap which is for both body and hair.

View form along the corridor. It was spring and there are some sakura trees on the other side.

After checking in, I decided to go walk around the area for food but unfortunately for me, it was Easters and nothing was open!

Walked along this road and as you can see, it was really peaceful. There weren't many car in the area.

I arrived at the mall and it's totally empty!

There is no one and the shops are not open!

I decided to walk back to the hotel and try the mart nearby but nope, it was not open too.

Arrived back in my room and helped myself to a free bottle of sparking mineral water. I prefer the non-sparkling ones but they only had this.

I decided to just grab early dinner at the hotel because I was super tired and hungry from the long travel and all the walking before that. Plus I was really feeling the muscle strain from the zumba workshop.

Went to the ground floor and found the breakfast area. You can choose to dine inside or outside.

The dinner place was a different restaurant and here's the menu.

Lol, I was the only person in the entire restaurant before a family of 3 entered just as I was having my main dish.

Overall, the atmosphere there is quite nice.

I ordered soup a wild garlic cream soup and it was yummy, though a bit too salty, which is why I kept eating the bread. I ate quite a lot of bread and I couldn't finish my soup.

I had caesar salad for my main. The waiter asked if I would like salmon with it and he told me that it will just be a small fillet of fish but it was HUGE! I only ate half of the entire dish. I don't like wasting food but the portion was seriously too big for me! 

I initially wanted to at least finish the salmon but again, it was too salty to eat on it's own! I don't know why everything is so salty!

But dinner kept me full the entire night and I had a pretty good sleep, though I did wake up at 4am every day.