It’s 6:30am as I sit in a 10th storey hotel room looking south over a heavily tree covered park with a wee lake in the foreground which is home to ducks and geese including a family of nine goslings with their parents who look different from any we have seen in NZ. In the middle distance are large pylons carrying electricity across the Ruhr valley and to the right is the city of Essen with a modicum of sky scrapers. There are hints of other towns and villages but the dominant impression is that disguising this very heavily populated area are hordes of mature trees.
But I get ahead of myself because I am in Gelsenkirchen about which I will write in my next post. Today I want to reflect on our experience of Düsseldorf 40 minutes away by train we discovered yesterday, to the south west by the Rhine River. You may have gleaned from my Facebook posts that getting from Helsinki in Finland to Düsseldorf via Copenhagen was a little frought! Craig and the children accompanied us to Helsinki airport, we bade our farewells and we were ready in good time to travel to Copenhagen. We had heard the Russian President Putin was coming to Helsinki as we were leaving. Whether it was the need for high security at the airport or some other issue we will likely never know, however our flight via Airbus was about 30 minutes late in taking off. It was a crowded flight and we knew that there would be an issue in Copenhagen because scheduled arrival and departure times were only 50 minutes apart. If the Düsseldorf flight was leaving on time it would be a close run thing. We had word before our flight landed in Copenhagen that our departure gate for Düsseldorf was B15. Little did we realise that meant a wolf of at least 15 minutes. Problem was Margaret was wearing dress shoes not running shoes which in the end she removed for the sake of comfort and speed. Well we made it to our second flight with seconds to spare to be travelling on a smaller plane that was as empty as the Helsinki plane had been packed. Good thing was we got a great meal including 3 top of the range chocolates that seemed too precious to eat! It was a lovely flight that allowed us to get a great impression of the Ruhr region before we landed on time at 1pm. But where were our bags? Obviously not on the designated conveyor belt. We had a taxi waiting the driver of which was patient when we called to explain our dilemma and need to do business with the SAS staff before we left. Having done all we could we met Imad our driver who ushered us to a large black Mercedes, leather covered seats, 8 person people mover just for the two of us! A bit over the top really for us but nevertheless enjoyable as Imad explained some of the landmarks of Düsseldorf. We were preoccupied with thinking who has been in this taxi before us: a Bundesleague soccer star, Angela Merkel, perhaps even Putin when he visited Germany, Dodi Fayed when he visited Harrods in Düsseldorf or others eminent and important. We also wondered if something like this vehicle would suit the Perris family of Tawa!? We stayed at Ruby Leni hotel which is central in Düsseldorf and awaited the return of our bags. Margaret lay low for the rest of the day - she was enjoying a talking book she had downloaded. Terry did a recci of the city taking a long walk along Wilhelmstrasse before spending time in a shopping mall before beginning to retrace his steps (he hoped). He felt like he was a local when an elderly German frau asked if he knew where Wilhelmstrasse was. Acting very knowing he pointed in the direction he had just come and set her straight. That Wednesday evening the Ruby Leni had organised entertainment with nibbles so Terry tuned in to listen first to a local German sing some very soulful music before the Irishmen from Vienna came on to sing some iconic Irish music. In the process He had robust conversation with a reasonably good English speaking German man from Limburg in the south. He was there as a singer/musician himself, impressed with the quality of the entertainment. Thursday had us head towards the Altstead (old town) after a good cafe breakfast and a walk along Dusseldorf’s noted expensive shopping area. It was there Marg bought some walking shoes at H&M for 20 Euros! About noon we boarded a boat on the Rhine for a tour of Düsseldorf from the river - see pics. We wended our way back through the Alstead market district including along the street that has been described as the longest bar in the world. Our arrival back at Ruby Leni about 2:30pm brought the good news that our bags had arrived and were in the hotel store room. Much relief and joy which was well expressed in the hug Marg gave the hotel receptionist lady. By this stage Terry’s cold had become full blown with a streaming nose and chest congestion. Sleep was a little hard to sustain so all and all he felt quite miserable. As he writes Saturday morning this has now broken and begins to feel quite behind him. Before bed we had very reasonably priced train tickets to Gelsenkirchen (about 15 Euros for the two of us), Terry had reconnoitred the train station about 20 mins. away and we had taken the decision to walk to the train station with our big bags in tow in good time for our 11:08 departure on Flixtrain. In fact we did this with oodles of time to spare and we had a leisurely breakfast along the way within a stone’s throw away from the station. By noon Friday we were in Gelsenkirchen ready for our next adventure.
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AuthorMargaret & Terry Alve live in Tawa, NZ. Between them they are linked to several families from the UK and Germany who emigrated to Tasmania and Aotearoa-New Zealand between 1850 and 1925. Archives
December 2022
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