For the three hour trip to get there, see part 1 and for my impressions of the con itself, see part 2. Now my phone would give me restaurant options in the wider area and my GPS navigation system also has an option to look up restaurants you can even specify the cuisine and direct me there.
So I programmed the GPS for home, drove out of the parking lot and decided to just stop en route and find a place to eat. There was just one problem. My GPS directed me onto a major road almost immediately and there was nowhere to stop nor was there a restaurant, open or otherwise. I eventually passed the Rheinpark Center mall , a s Brutalist slab of concrete. The mall had a parking lot where I could have stopped and likely food options as well.
However, it was Saturday just after midday and the parking lot and likely the mall as well were packed with shoppers. Also, I was still on a major road with nowhere to stop. So I drove on and found myself back on highway A Finally, there are parking lots, i. In short, parking lots are quite common and a good place to stop and get your bearings, should you need to. However, I was in the Ruhrgebiet, where there are more highway junctions and interchanges than exits. So I passed several junctions, but not parking lot or other place to stop.
It might be in the middle of an industrial zone or a residential neighbourhood and there might not even be a good place to stop your car. I parked the car, pulled out my phone and perused the restaurant search function of the GPS system as well as the map function to check if there were any restaurants in reasonable distance. The nearest town is Haan , which is quite small.
Neither my phone nor the GPS in my car showed many restaurants nearby. If I was still on the road around six PM or so, I would stop somewhere for dinner. It was a good plan, but there was only one problem. I was really hungry. So I opened up my bar of chocolate and ate a few pieces, which somewhat soothed the hunger. At around this point, someone suddenly knocked on the window of my car, half scaring me to death.
