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.

 

Return to Car Boot Corner!

After some very soggy weekends, today we hit the car boot with renewed vigor and nabbed us some amazing August bargains!

The bread man was back so we fueled up on flapjack before heading up and down the aisles of cars and tables, crammed with treasures. Our first purchase was a phone box magnet that when pushed, makes a ringing noise and flashes. It's brilliant and was a bargain at only 50p. Of course, we always pick up Greetings From postcards and the haul this week were mainly of Scarborough which we know and love very well after studying there.

Tam spotted a Space Wars illustrated beauty whilst Abbo was given a free book on village life after buying the vendors favourite book (which no one else wanted to buy); Loving the Machine - a picture packed look at the art and science of Japanese robots. We had a good chat with him and recommended he check out the film Robo-G. There are always loads of funny little snippets of conversation we catch on the way round, like a grandma commenting on a young boy's teeth "Look at yer yella teeth. Bet ya don't brush um from one month tut next!"

We also learnt that slimming world costs £5 a week. Elsewhere, in-line skates and Tony Hawks videogames seemed to be on every other stall. One hand-made, Moroccan prayer rug with tanned stags and cyan background plus fringe, a handful of rings, a watch, some clip on earrings, 4 packs of garish gift bags and some plastic, fruity table mats later we spotted Albert...

Propped up against a camper van, our super fabulous purchase of the day is a 4ft, metal target man! Only £10, FIG11 (whom we have renamed Albert), formerly took residence at the Ministry of Defence but has retired as is riddled with holes. He now stands proudly in our hallway; the first and last line of defence to our little apartment of boot wonders.

Bang bang, bling bling. Boot done!