Tuesday, August 16, 2005

The first day in Dusseldorf

We got up at 7am this morning to have breakfast and head to a short opening serivice in our area. After that we had a tour guide take us to Dusseldorf via a hanging train: it is like a skytrain, but hanging instead of riding on top of something. It was a pretty good view from the train, but I got a bit of motion sickness. We walked through the town a bit and found a world youth day food station so we could pick up our lunch and supper for the day. The food wasn't that bad considering that they had to make enough for 17,000 or more people that were billeted in that area. After that we gathered our stuff and headed to the LTU arena via the train. Let me tell you, this arena is huge. It can hold 65,000 people. About 10 minutes after we got our seats, the entire stadium was full and there were people standing outside listening because there were not enought seats. It was pretty amazing looking around at all those people waving their flags and cheering. The parts of the mass had to be repeated in several languages and you can only imagine how long it takes to give communion to 65,000 people...so the mass went for a while. At the end when the band had finished playing the world youth day theme song, everyone began to cheer and wave their flags. If you were there you would have thought that someone had just scored the winning goal at the world cup or something. It was crazy!
After the mass the festivities began. Everyone got to get a taste of German music and culture along with some music from other cultures. We didn't stay until the end though, because we wanted to try and get back by a desent time. Or so we thought. The trains were packed! I'm not talking shoulder to shoulder packed...I'm talking chest to chest packed. There was no room to move at all. Hopefully things get better as the week progresses. Anwyas, it took quite a while to get back to our billits...we didn't really get to their house until midnight.

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