Tuesday, 30 September 2008 (Rob)

Pardon me if I don’t exactly type coherently. I had quite a good time tonight; but I digress, there was a whole day before this. Today was a lovely day for the first full day of our Coking.com seminar. Everything went pretty smoothly and the attendees seemed to enjoy themselves. There isn’t much to tell to you that are outside of the Coking.com community other than the fact that it went well and the food was delicious as always. After the presentations and breakout groups we went on a tour of a Zimmermann & Jansen Factory in Duren. It was quite a nice tour and it was very informative. I learned more about the valves that I am already supposed to almost be an expert on according to some. I am part of a team that gives a coker seminar, yet I only know the basics of a coker…odd, I will learn more as time goes on, isn’t this how it always goes? The tour was great and then we went to dinner in Downtown Köln at an amazing restaurant. The food served was 5 star and the company was to match. I mostly was with my parents and 2 gentlemen for Eveready, a company that does pigging. If you don’t understand me, feel free to ask me to clarify and I gladly will.

 

After dinner we headed back to the hotel and I changed into some more casual attire. I guess it wasn’t very casual, but I changed out of my Coking.com shirt and Tie and into another button up shirt under my suit, I was looking pretty classy J. Me and the guys from Eveready headed down to the night scene in Köln, unfortunately it took us a while to find it. We started out a Beerhaus that was dead and then jaunted on over to another that was dead as well. We asked a bartender where the happening spot was and she gave us the names of a few places. It happened that they were all right next to each other, we managed to skip the strip club SHE suggested, lol. We first stopped off at a laid back coffeehaus type place and had a few beers. After this was not cutting it we headed next door. The almost did not let us in because we are American. They asked where we are from, then they kind of frowned at us as we gave them the answer. They probably don’t get many of our kind down that way, two Canadians and one American. The place we went to was called Diamond Club I believe. It was kind of a Disco as they call it, basically a dance club. As I walked in I noticed I was getting glares from a few different guys, this let me know that I was looking good that night. We had a good time and a few more drink at the club when it was suddenly 2am and we decided we best get back to the hotel before it got ridiculously late. It was quite a night, but all in all it was an excellent time.

Unfortunately I must go to bed now so I will have to post pictures from the past 2 days tomorrow. Sorry.