Tsang's RISE Trip

The Boys Go to Dusseldorf

Dusseldorf is the richest city in Germany (according to a nice lady studying in Hamburg that we met on the train back from Prague) and is quite beautiful with the Rhine river passing through it. There are many cafes and restaurants along this river walk and a wide boardwalk to stroll down the street. Today was also the England - Portugal and Brazil - France match with heavy favourites, England and Brazil. We had decided that since all the girls had left Dortmund on conference or travels, the boys would do the same and go on our own outing.

We arrived at the Dusseldorf HBF after sitting in a sauna of a local train car for 1.5 hrs and 1 game of Hearts which I absolutely dominated in and took about ten steps outside the station before we asked the local police force where a good bar by the river was. Sending us on new directions, we went back into the underground, rode the U-bahn to the Heinrich Heine Alle station (apparently, Heinrich is a poet) and got off there to start exploring and to head to the river side. These are some of the pictures we snapped like tourists along the way. I actually have no idea of what we were taking because we weren't really on a site seeing trip. It was more of a let's get out of Dortmund to watch the game beside the river sort of trip. For the first game, we watched the game at this open cafe/bar down on the river walk and it was full with people of all ages. Luckily, as the sun was blazing hot, we settled on a bench covered by an umbrella, but we had to buy the ridiculously expensive 3,80 euro beers half litre beers they were selling. This left me with 5 euros to my name for dinner and anything else I wanted to buy, which was pretty much just dinner. After the unfortunate loss of England to Portugal (honestly, I have never seen so many dives in my life in a professional sporting event. If only they had instant reply, everybody could see what frauds the Portugese players were) in penalties, we went back into town to look for sustinence. It appears that everything along the river was 7 euros and up for nice sit down meals. Not a bargain was in sight and I was beginning to feel that I would probably end up eating soup for dinner. However, in our broken German, we asked a young couple about a cheap place to eat and they replied back to us in perfect english that a 3 euro pizzaria was around the corner. These were the best pizzas I have ever had. This was followed up by hanging out at another cafe and watching the start of the Brazil match and almost seeing a fight break out between some Portuguese and English fans. Not wanting to buy anything more, we headed back to a place on the boardwalk where we could see a screen for free and not be hassled to purchase anything else.














Following a pretty slow first half and a desire to actually see a little bit of Dusseldorf before we left, we wandered around the boardwalk to see what else was in the city. It really is quite nice but I felt like it was quite touristy and I think Dusseldorf is actually a big tourist draw (it's even in my Frommers and Lonely Planet guides). However, as Dr. Neufeld had said, it is not much different than any other major city that has built up a tourist industry with a nice walkway along a river.
We kept walking along the river until we found this open square with one side facing the river. We broke out the frisbee and tossed it around. I do not think our Persian and Indian friends play a lot. After almost hitting several scantily clad middle aged women and old couples in addition to nearly causing a few bike accidents, we decided that maybe frisbee was not such a good idea in a square with pedestrians who are minding their way.

We decided to head back home soonafter and caught our slow train back into town in which I won another game of Hearts. Somewhere along the line, we were checked for our tickets which proved to be problem since somehow we had ended up in the first class car and I personally do not believe we even had enough tickets, but oh well, we played the stupid tourist act and they let us off. There was 3 of us with tickets and 5 of us all together. Two of us had tickets that could carry one more on weekends. I wasn't sure if one of the new guys' tickets was valid where we went, but I think we were just lucky this time. Next time, we will check before we head off on another adventure.

posted by ktsang @ 10:30 AM