Düsseldorf, Germany

Düsseldorf has been an easy city to get around in and find things in.  I found a laundry place within two blocks of the hotel and was happy to only pay 18€ for clean, neatly folded laundry.  I also got a little adventurous and thought I would take on the challenge of…getting a hair-cut (thoughts of Annie Lennox and memories of a bad experience as a kid going to an Icelandic stylist aside)!  I found a small, basic outfit that seemed to cater towards both men and women – it seemed to be run by a family who had likely come to Germany from Turkey.  I told her “nur ein bißchen über alles” (only a little bit everywhere), so that’s what I got.  She didn’t speak English, but we talked a little in German.

Our time here can’t be called a vacation, but we’ve enjoyed the evenings where we can check our restaurants and our walks with the dogs.  The park where we have spent a lot of our time is the Hofgarten – Düsseldorf’s “Central Park”.  It is a large park that extends through the city to the Rhein River, and we’ve been able to do some runs and walks with the dogs – German bunnies, mallards and coots have been of real interest to the dogs.  I definitely enjoy the parks in Europe.

Hofgarten - the flowers are really beautiful!

Those damn cyclists are everywhere, rain or shine!

Jordan appreciates good garden sculpture.

The grass here is perfect.

Altbier – sehr gut!

At the recommendation of one of the many very nice staff at our hotel here in Düsseldorf, we had dinner at a place called “Lieblings”, just a few blocks away from our hotel.  We were presented with the alcohol menu separately from the dinner menu, and alles war auf Deutsch.  German has been coming back to me, and I am certainly more comfortable speaking it now, but there are, most definitely, lots of words that I do not remember (or never learned!).  And, I had forgotten our phrasebook (my crutch!), so our dinner had become really a lottery of sorts for Justin.  I really like vegetables (Gemüse) and know THAT word, so it was easy for me to order a fantastic rice dish with veggies and curried tofu.

A fantastic risotto with curried tofu and other vegetables!

Justin picked out a dish – Lachforelle – hoping it would be good.  It was salmon.  He doesn’t like salmon (very much).  We swapped.

Lachsforelle - salmon done German-style! It was very good.

The best part of our meal, though, was the beer.  It was quite amazing, actually.  I ordered the big glass below – a Frankenheim Altbier.  Altbier is apparently a special way of making beer by a “pre-lager brewing method of using a warm top-fermenting yeast”.  The name means “old beer”, and this beer is a specialty of Düsseldorf – Altbier actually used to be called “Düssel” because of the area.  I must have really enjoyed the glass because when I went to order another one, I accidentally said, “Ich möchte ein anderes Bier, bitte” instead of “Ich möchte noch ein Bier, bitte” – end result was I got a DIFFERENT beer, instead of another of that really fantastic beer.  The other beer was okay [sigh].

Enjoying some of Düsseldorf's fine beer!

Justin wanted to try out the beer selection before committing to a big glass, so he ordered the little beer in the picture above – a Krefelder.  His little glass of beer was kind of like a dessert – he thought it tasted like chocolate beer.  In a way, he was almost right, as it appears that “Krefeld” is a style of beer that is also common in this region along the Rhine River.  “Krefeld” apparently has a connotation of dirt or mud, and refers to adding root beer or cola to a dark beer!  It was excellent, too, but a little was plenty!

We’re planning on finding more German beer to sample!