A City is where a large community is lonesome together...

Firstly the Lonely Planet Guides are good stuff!
The one I am currently using is dated, it’s a decade old but is still good enough to help me get around.

Went to Dusseldorf last weekend - a town and a city co-existing on the banks of the Rhine.
Eighty percent of Dusseldorf was destroyed during the last World War, so most of the city as it stands today is modern architecture. No town halls and stadiums harking back to the Renaissance, more modern office towers with facades of glass and steel.

The modern architecture though, is rather impressive. The Rhine Tower shoots skywards, crowned by a glass revolving restaurant, the view it affords is exquisite. It was a clear day, I saw the Rhine snaking through the forests and lazily circumventing the city, I could see right up to Koln with the naked eye.

The Frank ‘O Gehry towers inclined almost at 15 degrees are pretty neat, so is the media harbor, an enclave of television, broadcasting and newspaper companies from all over Europe.

The highlights of Dusseldorf though, are Konigsallee (Kings Alley, popularly known as just the Ko) and The Alstadt (The Old Town).

Konigsallee is a kilometer long boulevard, closed to traffic and dotted with open air restaurants and cafes. It’s the high street of high fashion!
It is lined by the flagship stores of most leading global brands. Europe’s most celebrated jewelers, perfumers and designers brush shoulders on the Ko, confirming its status as the single most expensive place to shop in all of Europe. If one manages to keep shopping and all its associated stress at arms length, then Konigsalle is a wonderful experience.
I sat at a Café for an hour, and saw the city pouring in and out of the Ko on a lazy Saturday afternoon. Lifestyles of Europe’s affluent were on show, a page out of a magazine peddling high fashion. And there was me, a guy from a country where the per Capita Income is 350 dollars and where famine still makes news once a year.
The only thing that I could think of was Robin Leach, and the way he every week signed of his TV show ‘The Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous’ with that one famous line, ‘Champagne wishes and Caviar dreams’.

I walked down the Konigsalle and then across Heinrich Heine allee (yes the street is named after the man, because he was born in a little house on its edge). A few minutes walk, brought me to the famous Alstadt.

The Alstadt is the only remaining scrap of old Dusseldorf city, its atmosphere is unmatchable. It has the typical Rhineland charm about it - gregarious, convivial and quaint. The Rhine runs along the Alstadt bound by the Rhine promenade. The kilometer long promenade has over 260 beer breweries and inns, giving it the reputation of being the world’s longest bar! There are quaint little family run beer breweries, which have been in operation for over two hundred years. Dusseldorf is famous for its local Alt Beer, a dark colored bitter sweet beer which flows more freely here than water through a faucet. Rhinelander’s drink their beer in small slim glasses unlike Bavaria where it is guzzled in tankards.

The Alstadt captures the spirit of Rhine Land, small wooden door breweries whose porch doubles as a café, large groups of men and woman animated in conversation, with laughter and good cheer hanging over the promenade as the late evening sun warily shines over the Rhine. 

The Rhine like all major rivers, with its still murky waters, stands witness to the rites of passage of man and that of societies which have grown roots by its banks, almost as if it were marking time.

Labels: Travel