Saturday 15 September 2012

Greetings from Düsseldorf

After a rather delightful trip to Cologne for Gamescom, where we feasted professionally and socially on video games, we embarked on our favourite type of train (double decker) moving northwards to the seventh largest German city, Düsseldorf, for a chance to let Deutschland bewitch us a little bit more.

Meaning "the fascination of variety", Düsseldorf is without doubt one of the most elegant places we've encountered and is true to its translation with classical and cutting edge architecture.

It boasts a rich cultural and fashion scene as well as being the birthplace of electronic music pioneers Kraftwerk. Taking a huge city walking tour through central landmarks, we also found a cafe to indulge in our new drinking addiction - Bubble Tea. A fruity/yoghurty/cold juice drink with mini fruit tapioca bubbles that pop in your mouth when you suck them up through a wide straw.

We continued our exploration from the centre, bleeding out to the media and advertising parks where we found the amazing dancing buildings designed by Frank Gehry in the centre.

Ambling along the Rhein, is it possible to fall in love with a river?, and lying under the TV tower gazing skywards we discussed the rhythm of the city, our German adventures to date and our off piste trip to the Düsseldorf industrial park just 2 hours earlier - where we found an amazing disused paper factory.

A wealthy city that was relatively unscathed by the bombings of World War II, it boasts a heritage of architecture in Altstadt, a superb green axis of parks and an artistic offering that is of dizzying proportions including: the world famous Kunstakademie, the Deutsche Oper am Rhein, tanzhaus nrw as well an Elvis musuem boasting the world's largest private collection of Elvis memorabilia.

The beautiful river Düssel runs along Königsalle (King's Avenue - an urban boulevard that houses international brands and boutiques that puts New Bond Street to shame) and into old father Rhine.


We were only here for a day but know that we will return to Düsseldorf as it's jumped into our top 3 favourite German cities and warrants a much deeper digging and excavating of some of its jewels. Düsseldorf you flipped us out.
 

No comments:

Post a Comment