Eurovision Song Contest 2011–Duesseldorf

First of all I have to say something about the outing at Blogger for several days. I know my fellow Blogger bloggers have had strange stuff happening to their blogs. For me the odd thing was that I tried to put up a post from the Kappesfest in Rheindahlen, but it took forever before it came up with a message like “no can do”. Then I tried the shorter post I had prepared about the lily, since I thought the many photos in the other post were the problem. No luck there either. So I tried a few times, and all of a sudden the Lily post made it through. So I had to wait a couple of days before the Kappesfest post was finally up.

The oddest of all was that it then was displayed as posted on Tuesday, I guess it must have registered my early attempts somehow. Weird and wonderful world it is, isn’t it, the techie side of things.

Now to a quick proper post about this big European event, (or should that be non-event?,) The European Song Contest, which nobody but Eastern European countries seem to take seriously these days. We just came back from a meal in Duesseldorf where this event kicks off in exactly one minute.

We will be following it from the sofa, commenting on how ludicrous it all really is. Euro pop has earned a very dubious reputation, and there is a certain negative ring to it. However the city was full of life, in particular the old town, where all the revellers were roaming freely, even before it all had started.

As we walked down the central avenue, Koeningsalle, a cacophony of honking horns went slowly past us. German flags were abundant and some young women’s bottoms were precariously balancing on car door frames. I think it was a Ni**an promotion more than anything else.

Then there were thousands of flags everywhere, in people’s hands, on people’s heads, painted on people’s faces, and also in shop windows, like here. Notice how appropriately the Swedish flag sits between the British and the German ones!

No, I had better get downstairs and check it all out. I can hear Graham Norton’s voice on BBC now, which most likely will be the most entertaining aspect of the evening. His sarcasms and witty observations will do nicely for me.

Three Stolpersteine

Almost two years ago I blogged about Stolpersteine (please click and read). Some time ago I came across three more. They are next to each other for obvious reasons.

I tried to avoid writing about them, but then these three people just would not leave my mind. For a long time I have had this picture as a thumbnail on my screen reminding me, prompting me to look into this issue again.

If you read my earlier post you will see that it is a German artist who has devoted himself to this cause.

From the information on these Stolpersteine, metal cobbles, and some internet research (just google “Chelmno” and you will see) I have come to the following conclusion:

Fanny Levison was born Leubsdorf in 1878. At the age of 28 in 1906 she gave birth to Reinhold (my educated guess). In 1941, when she was 63 years old and Reinhold was 35, they were picked up by the Nazis from where they lived in Düsseldorf and deported to the growing ghetto in Lodz, Poland. The Nazis had established this ghetto from which they systematically transported people to the nearby extermination camp in Chelmno.

Using three specially adapted Renault vans the Nazis murdered, gassed, 150,000 to 300,000 Jews, gypsies and others before they tried to get rid of all incriminating evidence of their evil activities.

11,700 Jews were deported from Lodz to Chelmno between 4 and 15 May 1942, among them Fanny Levison. But before her gruesome death in one of those gas vans, she will have experienced having a granddaughter, Chana, for roughly two months.

The little baby succumbed to starvation or some decease (another assumption) about one month after her grandmother had been murdered. Reinhold, the father, lasted another two months and a week in the horrible conditions in Lodz.

What happened to granddad? Who was the mother? What happened to her? These three sad cobblestones cannot tell us, but you do not need much imagination to understand what terrible tragedy they are evidence of.

When will mankind ever learn?

¡Adiós Diego!

First of all I have to say why I have not blogged or visited blogs for so long. It's the usual thing really, work, visitors and then a change-over between telecoms and an unwanted situation of no phone and no internet. Although I do not write about football a lot, I love the game and watch just enough not to upset the equilibrium at home, if you see what I mean. It's a fine balancing act.

But I just had to put up this post today. We were in Duesseldorf yesterday and the city was dressed in the German colours with vuvuzelas to go with it. It was an absolute carnival atmosphere, and this was before the game had ended. If you are at all interested you might know by now that a young German team beat Argentina (managed by Diego Maradona) 4-0. Some of the most skillful and best-known footballers in the world were beaten comprehensively by some youngsters.

As we were walking along to our favourite restaurant we walked past another one, and that's when I spotted this sign. I don't know how many customers it attracted, but we were quite a few who took photos of it. How is this for wonderful German humour?

Via Elections to Düsseldorf Medien Hafen (Media Harbour)

After having missed out on voting in the UK general elections due to the simple fact that we have not had our postal voting documents yet, we ran into other election preparations in Düsseldorf on Saturday. (I could use a never-ending string of foul language to describe how I and my better half feel about the missing documents, but I will abstain since the odd under-age reader might take offence.) As some of my readers know, we live in a British NATO community in Germany, and we are dependant on the military postal services. Efficient they ain't!

We had gone to the lively, pulsating and cosmopolitan Düsseldorf just down the motorway. As always we had strolled along the main shopping street into the old town and had our regular meal in Fischhaus, a very popular fish restaurant. To stretch our legs afterwards this time we continued walking along the river further than we usually do.

We had seen some political banners etcetera and quite some police presence, but we did not think much of it. But when we had just passed under a bridge across the Rhine the place was swarming with media people and we realised what was going on. We were in fact standing next to the North Rhine Westphalia parliament building (Landestag), the seat of power for Germany's most populous state, and on Sunday 9 May elections would be held. Angela Merkel's coalition was under threat from the red-green alliance. (Exit polls indicate her coalition parties have lost it.) So in the end we experienced some, almost, first-hand election excitement.

But it got better! We continued along the river walk towards some buildings we had seen from afar and knew might be interesting. And boy, they were! We had to walk past the Rheinturm, which I wrote about in a post in 2007, to get there. We had at last made our way to the old harbour, now transformed into a modern place to work and live. In Wikipedia you can find some more information.

There were some weird and wonderful buildings. Guided tours were everywhere, there were people with maps and brochures and cameras kept clicking. I had held back so far, but now I had to give in to my instincts and I pulled the camera out, delaying our walk by quite a few minutes. Many features from the old working harbour were kept to give some sort of balance to all the ultra-modern buildings. I know I need to go back there earlier in the day because the light was dying as I took these pictures, and it was also overcast. But it was a truly exciting place. This was the first, but not the last time. I'll be back!

 

 

   

 

      

 

 

Oh Christmas Tree ... Oh Tannenbaum ...

Spotted in a Düsseldorf shop window. I just had to get my little compact camera out. Window dressing to the letter! Mmmm, I wonder, what kind of shop might this be?

Very clever, and it brought a smile to many passers-by.

 

Saturday Browse

One of our favourite pastimes on Saturdays is to go to Düsseldorf and stroll in the modern city centre with all its shops and then head towards the old town for a fish meal at the Fischhaus. We went yesterday, and as always we were sucked into the Kö Galerie with all its posh shops. Just watching people there is entertainment in itself. Germans still love to dress up, put their Sunday best on, and go window shopping. It's just like theatre. In particular the older generation are guilty of this.

Some of them find a stool in the wine bar in the mall and sit there sipping wine, chatting and watching others. Many of the women have several layers of makeup, overdone hair and even fur coats. Yes, proper fur! The gents of a certain age mostly have old-fashion mustaches, jackets and ties. And everybody is watching everybody!

For some reason, which we never found out about, old cars were displayed in some spring-like, flower arrangements.

But what was the hidden meaning of the ornament on this one, a child doing a one-arm handstand? Is that to warn children playing in the street, that they might end up on the bonnet of this car if they don't behave?

Set in Stone

The attraction of window shopping and people watching sometimes works against the intentions of city planners and architects. When I took all the photographs of the floor in this particular shopping mall in Düsseldorf many passers-by looked at me in astonishment wondering what I was up to. In the Kö Galerie in Königsallee the floor has been adorned with brass plaques commemorating famous people with a Düsseldorf connection. I have never ever seen anybody stop and read what it says on the plaques.

They are spread out in a symmetrical pattern throughout the cross-shaped mall. I do not know the exact number, but I have chosen my Famous Four to show you.

 

(From Wikipedia)

Christian Johann Heinrich Heine (13 December 1797 in Düsseldorf – 17 February 1856 in Paris) was a journalist, essayist, and one of the most significant German romantic poets. He is remembered chiefly for selections of his lyric poetry, many of which were set to music in the form of lieder (art songs) by German composers

Paul Klee (IPA: [kleː]) (18 December 1879 – 29 June 1940) was a Swiss painter of German nationality.

...Klee also taught at the Düsseldorf Academy from 1931 to 1933...

Robert Schumann,^[1] sometimes given as Robert Alexander Schumann,^[2] (8 June 1810 – 29 July 1856) was a German composer, aesthete and influential music critic. He is one of the most famous Romantic composers of the 19th century.

In 1850 Schumann succeeded Ferdinand Hiller as musical director at Düsseldorf, but he was a poor conductor and quickly aroused the opposition of the musicians.

Clara Josephine Wieck (September 13, 1819 – May 20, 1896) was a German musician, one of the most distinguished pianists of the Romantic era, as well as a composer. Her prestige — she became known as "the high priestess of music" — exerted over a 61-year concert career, changed the format and repertoire of the piano concert and the tastes of the listening public. Her husband was composer Robert Schumann. After her marriage she was known as Clara Schumann, however she had achieved considerable fame prior to her marriage, as Clara Wieck.

 

 

Stumbling Blocks

Walking along the pavement of the famous Königsallé in Düsseldorf I saw two metal cobbles next to each other. I had to bend down to take a closer look and see if there was any inscription. Yes there was, and it revealed the names of two people who had lived there; they were not famous people, but people who somebody wanted to remind the world about. The message was instantly clear to even a non-German speaker.

The place names on Hulda Hornstein's cobble were all too familiar. When I researched the names on Walter Erle's cobble I found out that Heilanstalt Grafenberg was a mental hospital on the outskirts of Düsseldorf and Hadamar was a similar place a little further away which was part of the Nazi euthanasia program between 1941 and 1944. Out of more than 5000 Jews, only 57 returned after the war to Düsseldorf.

I also found out that these cobbles or blocks are called "Stolpersteine" (stumbling blocks) and that there are more than 100 of them all across the pavements of Düsseldorf, and they are part of an art project by Cologne-based artist Günter Demnig.

These chilling reminders of past history are today at the feet of all the Christmas shoppers in Königsallé with its posh, up-market establishments. With all the brightly-lit shop windows, does anybody look down long enough to discover these shiny "Stumbling Blocks"?

For more information:

www.stolpersteine.com

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stolpersteine

Guck Mal, ein Klassiker!

"Guck mal, ein Klassiker", was what the shop assistant said to his colleagues when I pulled my old running shoe out of my bag. I had come to Runners Point in Düsseldorf to get a new pair of shoes, bringing an old one to show what type of shoe I wanted. I have not done a lot of running over the last few years, I have to confess, so I have not bothered getting a new pair, which any runner knows is a deadly sin. Your poor body normally has to pay for such nonchalance, and my knees reacted to the lack of cushioning from the tarmac last time I tried to use them.

The three shop assistants looked long and hard at the footwear relics of yore. The one who was the most excited kept repeating the word "Klassiker", which is not difficult to understand even if you speak no German. I honestly cannot say how old the shoes are, but we are talking decades here, rather than years, I fear. The situation reminded me of the time when my rather old Omega watch was passed around among admiring watchmakers on a sight-seeing coach. That watch is now 30 years old and is still working perfectly. Not so my running shoes; they are now more like a pair of rubber tyre flip-flops.

Mind you, I did a lot of long-distance running as late as 15 years ago, and I managed to run a half-marathon in 1hr 28 min once, which is quite a respectable time I believe. I would not bet against me wearing those old Nike shoes then! So it was about time I got myself a new pair. I am determined to keep fit (not letting these become "Klassiker"), so I tested the new ones this morning, and they were wonderful. I was running on air, fluffy clouds, anything soft you can think of. Tomorrow will tell if I overdid it the first time in a long time, but so far so good! Here are the treasured beauties.

Child Danger in Düsseldorf

How often do you look down when you are on the tourist trail or just visiting a place for the first time, or indeed in your own neighbourhood? Most of the time we look ahead or possibly slightly up. We look at people, buildings and the sky, and only check occasionally where we put our feet. We don't very often look down unless we are botanists searching for some rare species or have a fear of stepping in dog faeces.

I have started looking at what is in front of my feet as well sometimes, and to my amazement there is quite a lot to discover in various cities. I have come across all sorts of ornamental metal objects like manhole covers, trail markers and remembrance plaques. I thought I would share those with my readers, and so far I have assembled a small collection, which I hope will keep growing with time.

My first piece of street art, if you like, is a manhole cover in Düsseldorf. It informs you that it is the capital city (of the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia) and also displays the coat of arms. What is puzzling is the fact that two children are doing a one-armed handstand on said coat of arms, or are they doing cartwheels? I don't know.

The more drastic interpretation is of course that it is meant to be a warning to children not to play in the street, otherwise they might end up flattened by a car or a bus! On a more serious note though, I think of the length they have gone to to make an entrance to the sewers rather attractive. What do you think?  

German Carnival

Who said that Germans cannot enjoy themselves? Rubbish! They seem to always have a public holiday, a party or some festivity coming up. Now is time for Karneval, or Fasching in southern Germany. Yesterday in Düsseldorf I took these shots and 15-sec video. Click on pictures to enlarge!

Shops and banks were boarded up.

Police were keeping an eye on things.

A new version of the German “Tankstelle”!

Or you could have a beer-mobile.

Or be a BeerBuster!

How’s this for an afro?

Badge Man

Batman and Pippi Langstrumpf

A more natural-looking Longstocking

Superwoman!

Watch that spout!

Weird or what?

This is not a toilet, thank you very much!

Bare necessities.

The aftermath

15 seconds of elephant dance. (Check out the guy on the left when the lady comes up to him!)