World Tour of Germany: Dortmund - Monday and Tuesday
Here is the long-awaited post about my holiday in Germany! I'm breaking the week down into four posts each covering two days and including pictures in with each day rather than doing a separate photo post. I've tried to make the images small so they don't make the posts off-puttingly long so you'll have to click on each one to get a bigger image. But you know to do that by now, right? So if you're sitting comfortably with a suitable beverage, let's begin!
Monday, May 26th
It feels like such a long time since I last had a flight anywhere, especially as I spent 5 years up until late 2010 flying off to the US twice a year - not to mention travelling round the country as part of my job as a youth worker - so I'd become quite the seasoned traveller. Since then, I've not really done much in the way of travelling but even so, it still felt rather weird when I didn't need to get up at stupid o'clock and rush round like a blue-arsed fly! My flight left Manchester at 1.40pm, arriving into Düsseldorf at 4.20 and then I was catching a train from the airport to Dortmund. When I got to Manchester Airport, I went to queue up for check-in but I was directed to use the self check-in machines instead which was rather ridiculous because I still had to queue up afterwards in order to check-in my bag! I had been a little anxious about security but thankfully it was just an x-ray machine, rather than those horrible backscatter things so that was okay. Unfortunately, I had forgotten to remove my Swiss Army knife from my bag and it got confiscated. I was so annoyed with myself about that because I've had it since I was about 17 or so. Grr. I'll have to see about getting a replacement when I have the moneys. The plane was tinysmall! Obviously with flying to the US, I'm used to bigger Airbus type planes, not a little thing like this! It had 2 seats on either side of the central aisle and was barely half full!
It's like a Volkswagen Beetle with wings! < /Eddieism> The second picture was taken at a height of 12½ feet and shows Flughafenbrücke [Airport bridge] across the Rhine between Krefeld and Düsseldorf Airport.
Once I landed, it didn't take long to get through Customs and Passport Control - one of the benefits of flying within the EU - and then I hurried off to catch the train. I was glad I'd booked my ticket online because I got to the platform with just 2 minutes to spare and didn't have time to faff around buying tickets. It was the Express train that went all the way to Berlin and even though I wasn't in First Class, it was so much nicer than I'd expected. The seats were large and so comfy, with a pillowy headrest, a pull-out footrest, free Wifi and these screens as well:
It shows the current time, the next station and expected time of arrival, plus all the following stations. V swanky!
It was just a 10 minute walk from the train station to the Novum Hotel Unique, and took a matter of minutes to check in. Then I was off to my room up on the top floor, eager to see what luxurious state I was going to be living in for the next week.
So this was my room! A huge bed complete with separate duvets, the way that most Germanic/Scandinavian countries do. It was occasionally a bit warm at night for a duvet, so I either had to go without a cover or roast. The other half of the room contained a desk, flat screen TV (with only one English channel and that was CNBC of all things) and a small seating area with comfy chair and side table. And then the bathroom, which had a shower on the other side of that wall next to the toilet and some bath taps but no bath. What a tease.
After having a quick look round the room, and discovering there was no kettle at all which was unthinkable, I went straight back out to the Thier Galerie shopping centre down the street as it contained a supermarket so I could get breakfasty stuffs, snacks and drinks. I was very surprised and pleased to see Arizona iced tea in the supermarket for €1,79 so I got myself a can for tea. The rest of my tea came from the food court!
That's a chicken masala from ThaiCurryDelhi which was quite nice but a lot hotter than I expected, and a Mango Tango doughnut from Happy Donazz. It was their €1 daily special so I couldn't resist and it was So Yummy! The rest of the night was spent unpacking and generally getting sorted for the following week.
Tuesday, May 27th
My plan for my first day in Dortmund had been to do the City Tour as an introduction to the city and where everything was located. However, the weather had other plans; the forecast was for severe rain until Wednesday afternoon so that kind of put paid to that. I decided if I couldn't do the City Tour, I could at least find the visitor centre to see what information, maps, souvenirs etc they had available. When I left the hotel, it was raining pretty hard so I made my way to the Thier Galerie instead and spent some time looking round the shopping centre. It was fairly large but most of it wasn't really anything I was interested in. I found the Elbenwand geek shop but it was only small and rather disappointing. On the bottom floor, near the supermarket, there were a few counters selling freshly baked goods, smoothies, cooked meats and ice cream, more the sort of thing I'd have expected in a market hall than a shopping centre and it was so hard walking past the yummy pastries every time I went to the supermarket!
When I'd had enough of walking past endless clothes shops, I went back out to the Dortmunder U building across the road from the hotel where the visitor centre was supposed to be. I easily spent a good 45 minutes or so wandering round but could not find the damn thing anywhere. At one point, I even went back into the hotel to ask and was told that it was actually inside the U but even then, I still couldn't find it. There was an information desk in the U so I asked there and was told that the visitor centre had closed! Which would explain it. It was so frustrating, I'd spent all that time walking around in the rain getting soaked, going off outdated information on Dortmund's own tourism website. Grrr. To add insult to injury or something, over the next few days, I kept seeing signs for the visitor centre and tourist information, despite the fact that neither seemed to actually exist.
It was getting on for dinnertime so in order to add something good to the day, I decided to go to a tea and coffee lounge called Flayva which was rated very highly on tripadvisor and which I'd been looking forward to trying. I was greeted by a very friendly young woman in a purple Hogwarts t-shirt so this was obviously a good place! I got a sandwich which had the strange combination of turkey and cream cheese.
The turkey was very lightly smoked but it did go very nicely with the cream cheese, and there was a small accompaniment of dried cranberries, walnut halves and a physalis fruit that was a nice touch. And the coffee I had with it was very nice too so it was definitely a good find.
On the way to Flavya, I'd passed a Karstadt, a large department store that we used to go to all the time when we lived in Germany so that had to be my next port of call. I somehow ended up in the stationery department so I spent quite a while in there eyeing up new fountain pens and other fun stuffs. I also discovered that they had a large food hall on the bottom floor which was much bigger and had a greater selection than the supermarket in the shopping centre. That was a bit annoying, especially when some of it was also quite a bit cheaper, so I did wish I'd known about that beforehand. I came out of there to find that it was raining really hard again.
This is the Old Market taken from the shelter of Karstadt, giving some idea of how miserable it was.
It was about 3pm by this time and there wasn't much else I could do so I went back to my hotel room which was very disappointing. It was a shame that the weather had turned out to be so bad and I was annoyed that I'd got soaked spending so long trying to find a place that wasn't there any more. My new trainers were rubbing my feet and I'd been trying to ignore the fact that I'd started having dizzy spells again. On top of all that, I was also rather frustrated by my lack of German; when I'd gone into a couple of shops in the shopping centre, I'd been approached by a sale assistant and had no clue what they were saying to me. Any small bit of German I had just fled my brain so I didn't even know what to say in response. I was not a happy bunny at all and it was really not a good start to the week :(
Still to come: Wednesday and Thursday; Friday and Saturday, Sunday and Monday!
Monday, May 26th
It feels like such a long time since I last had a flight anywhere, especially as I spent 5 years up until late 2010 flying off to the US twice a year - not to mention travelling round the country as part of my job as a youth worker - so I'd become quite the seasoned traveller. Since then, I've not really done much in the way of travelling but even so, it still felt rather weird when I didn't need to get up at stupid o'clock and rush round like a blue-arsed fly! My flight left Manchester at 1.40pm, arriving into Düsseldorf at 4.20 and then I was catching a train from the airport to Dortmund. When I got to Manchester Airport, I went to queue up for check-in but I was directed to use the self check-in machines instead which was rather ridiculous because I still had to queue up afterwards in order to check-in my bag! I had been a little anxious about security but thankfully it was just an x-ray machine, rather than those horrible backscatter things so that was okay. Unfortunately, I had forgotten to remove my Swiss Army knife from my bag and it got confiscated. I was so annoyed with myself about that because I've had it since I was about 17 or so. Grr. I'll have to see about getting a replacement when I have the moneys. The plane was tinysmall! Obviously with flying to the US, I'm used to bigger Airbus type planes, not a little thing like this! It had 2 seats on either side of the central aisle and was barely half full!
It's like a Volkswagen Beetle with wings! < /Eddieism> The second picture was taken at a height of 12½ feet and shows Flughafenbrücke [Airport bridge] across the Rhine between Krefeld and Düsseldorf Airport.
Once I landed, it didn't take long to get through Customs and Passport Control - one of the benefits of flying within the EU - and then I hurried off to catch the train. I was glad I'd booked my ticket online because I got to the platform with just 2 minutes to spare and didn't have time to faff around buying tickets. It was the Express train that went all the way to Berlin and even though I wasn't in First Class, it was so much nicer than I'd expected. The seats were large and so comfy, with a pillowy headrest, a pull-out footrest, free Wifi and these screens as well:
It shows the current time, the next station and expected time of arrival, plus all the following stations. V swanky!
It was just a 10 minute walk from the train station to the Novum Hotel Unique, and took a matter of minutes to check in. Then I was off to my room up on the top floor, eager to see what luxurious state I was going to be living in for the next week.
So this was my room! A huge bed complete with separate duvets, the way that most Germanic/Scandinavian countries do. It was occasionally a bit warm at night for a duvet, so I either had to go without a cover or roast. The other half of the room contained a desk, flat screen TV (with only one English channel and that was CNBC of all things) and a small seating area with comfy chair and side table. And then the bathroom, which had a shower on the other side of that wall next to the toilet and some bath taps but no bath. What a tease.
After having a quick look round the room, and discovering there was no kettle at all which was unthinkable, I went straight back out to the Thier Galerie shopping centre down the street as it contained a supermarket so I could get breakfasty stuffs, snacks and drinks. I was very surprised and pleased to see Arizona iced tea in the supermarket for €1,79 so I got myself a can for tea. The rest of my tea came from the food court!
That's a chicken masala from ThaiCurryDelhi which was quite nice but a lot hotter than I expected, and a Mango Tango doughnut from Happy Donazz. It was their €1 daily special so I couldn't resist and it was So Yummy! The rest of the night was spent unpacking and generally getting sorted for the following week.
Tuesday, May 27th
My plan for my first day in Dortmund had been to do the City Tour as an introduction to the city and where everything was located. However, the weather had other plans; the forecast was for severe rain until Wednesday afternoon so that kind of put paid to that. I decided if I couldn't do the City Tour, I could at least find the visitor centre to see what information, maps, souvenirs etc they had available. When I left the hotel, it was raining pretty hard so I made my way to the Thier Galerie instead and spent some time looking round the shopping centre. It was fairly large but most of it wasn't really anything I was interested in. I found the Elbenwand geek shop but it was only small and rather disappointing. On the bottom floor, near the supermarket, there were a few counters selling freshly baked goods, smoothies, cooked meats and ice cream, more the sort of thing I'd have expected in a market hall than a shopping centre and it was so hard walking past the yummy pastries every time I went to the supermarket!
When I'd had enough of walking past endless clothes shops, I went back out to the Dortmunder U building across the road from the hotel where the visitor centre was supposed to be. I easily spent a good 45 minutes or so wandering round but could not find the damn thing anywhere. At one point, I even went back into the hotel to ask and was told that it was actually inside the U but even then, I still couldn't find it. There was an information desk in the U so I asked there and was told that the visitor centre had closed! Which would explain it. It was so frustrating, I'd spent all that time walking around in the rain getting soaked, going off outdated information on Dortmund's own tourism website. Grrr. To add insult to injury or something, over the next few days, I kept seeing signs for the visitor centre and tourist information, despite the fact that neither seemed to actually exist.
It was getting on for dinnertime so in order to add something good to the day, I decided to go to a tea and coffee lounge called Flayva which was rated very highly on tripadvisor and which I'd been looking forward to trying. I was greeted by a very friendly young woman in a purple Hogwarts t-shirt so this was obviously a good place! I got a sandwich which had the strange combination of turkey and cream cheese.
The turkey was very lightly smoked but it did go very nicely with the cream cheese, and there was a small accompaniment of dried cranberries, walnut halves and a physalis fruit that was a nice touch. And the coffee I had with it was very nice too so it was definitely a good find.
On the way to Flavya, I'd passed a Karstadt, a large department store that we used to go to all the time when we lived in Germany so that had to be my next port of call. I somehow ended up in the stationery department so I spent quite a while in there eyeing up new fountain pens and other fun stuffs. I also discovered that they had a large food hall on the bottom floor which was much bigger and had a greater selection than the supermarket in the shopping centre. That was a bit annoying, especially when some of it was also quite a bit cheaper, so I did wish I'd known about that beforehand. I came out of there to find that it was raining really hard again.
This is the Old Market taken from the shelter of Karstadt, giving some idea of how miserable it was.
It was about 3pm by this time and there wasn't much else I could do so I went back to my hotel room which was very disappointing. It was a shame that the weather had turned out to be so bad and I was annoyed that I'd got soaked spending so long trying to find a place that wasn't there any more. My new trainers were rubbing my feet and I'd been trying to ignore the fact that I'd started having dizzy spells again. On top of all that, I was also rather frustrated by my lack of German; when I'd gone into a couple of shops in the shopping centre, I'd been approached by a sale assistant and had no clue what they were saying to me. Any small bit of German I had just fled my brain so I didn't even know what to say in response. I was not a happy bunny at all and it was really not a good start to the week :(
Still to come: Wednesday and Thursday; Friday and Saturday, Sunday and Monday!