Going to the "Pott" ====================

The trip to Oberhausen and the Sealife Aquarium there went
surprisingly smooth, junior fell asleep about half an hour
into the ~3 hour trip and kept sleeping until a couple minutes
before we arrived at the hotel. As the 3rd of October is a
national holiday here, the Autobahn was pretty empty, which
also made the trip really relaxed.

The hotel in itself was quiet nice, i suspect it was build
around the 50s and had never really been modernized, but it
was clean, it was cozy and it was cheap.  We spend the first
evening exploring the surrounding area (*sigh* how i miss the
Ruhrpott) and eat some really good Doener at a small corner
shop. As the weather got progressively worse over a couple of
hours we decided then that it would be better to return to
our room. How glad i was that this was a rather robust and
really family friendly hotel! Junior - who was completely
winded up - had an absolute blast running around, screaming
and playing. Luckily he tired himself out quickly and fell
asleep shortly after.

The next morning - while it rained and stormed hard - we went
on our way to the sealife where we spend several hours. Junior
- i cannot say this otherwise - went completely crazy and was
absolutely blown away as only a child can be. It was great
and a joy to witness that. After exiting the Sealife a lot of
time later, completely exhausted by our struggle to keep up
with our son we decided to move to the local shopping mall
nearby to grab something to eat and have a look around. As we
are living in a very rural part of germany, real big malls
are something we are not acustomed to... what we found out as
my wife went to look for a restroom. Junior and i stayed at
our table and waited... and waited... and waited. About 20
minutes later i got a call from my completely lost wife who
was near a nervous breakdown.  I told her to stay where she
is and describe to me which shops are around her and started
my journey to find her. It took about twenty minutes and a
couple of calls until i could pick her up again. It would have
been faster if junior wouldn't have discovered the multiple
toy stores and bolted right into them. Finding mom seems to
be a lower priority than checking out Legos it seems.

After this little adventure we decided that it would be best
to start our drive home on which junior also fell sound asleep
and kept this way until we were a couple kilometers from home.