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| Dusseldorf: Look at those lights |
When thinking of weekend breaks, Dusseldorf is not somewhere that immediately leaps like a salmon into the mind. More like a fat dog than a salmon (ok, ok, but you try and think of something that doesn't leap very well). Yet this is not fair. It is a pleasant city, with a good night life.
But what is it with those Germans and their towers. Forget the lederhosen, the large beers and the women with hairy armpits. They are just clichés. No. The real obsession they have is with those God-forsaken towers. Why are they so special in Germany that every major city has one? And they are drooled over like some kind of catwalk model. I'm sure there is a legitimate reason for this but given that I am not exactly a culture-vulture, it is beyond me.
Apparently Dusseldorf's is better than the rest. And why is this, I hear you ask? It's in the lights, so the locals claim. By some complicated calculation you can tell the time by counting the number of lit up dots. I cannot be bothered to go into it but trust me, it'll take you a while to work out what the time is. Even the DDorfers (I'm not sure that's how they are called but let's go with it) take around a few moments to work it out. As a result, it is then an unknown period of time later and the process needs to begin all over again. Maybe those Germans are not so efficient afterall. Nevertheless, even a homeless bum should, in theory, be able to work out the time. How nice. In England they’re lucky to get a shit soup at Christmas.
The Altstadt (old town) is nice and is the centre of the city's nightlife. By the way, it is described as old in a nice way. Not in a Welsh kind of 'old' where it is grey and stinks of piss. No, this is 'old' as in wise and thought-provoking. In fact, after several local beers lots of thoughts are provoked, as is the odd piss so maybe it's a mixture of the two.
There's a river too.
