Unity Day

Today is actually the reason why so many UK parkrunners have been over in Europe. Every country who holds parkruns can nominate one day each year when they can hold an extra run (in addition to NYD when all parkrun events can hold an extra one if they want to). The UK has Christmas Day as their special event day. Germany chose Unity Day which is always 3rd October. Lots of us mad tourists decided to combine an extra run in Germany with a run at a normal Saturday event in a different country. Hence why we were in The Netherlands a few days ago.

Today we ran at Volksgarten parkrun. I finally got my 59th stopwatch bingo number - 1 more to go (another daft parkrun challenge)!

Brunch at a local cafe, walked back to hotel. Chilled for a bit, then walked back down to The Rhine as we wanted to do a boat trip. We had been warned the bulk of Germany closes down for Unity Day as it’s a major bank holiday, so we weren’t expecting much to be happening. However the sun was shining and I think the whole of Düsseldorf was down there! Along the banks of The Rhine was a big street market complete with open air discos. It’s the most crowded place I’ve been in since the pandemic. Was great fun though! We stayed out for ages. Did the boat trip. Found a restaurant for dinner. Then hit the sack as we have an early alarm call to get our taxi to the airport tomorrow.