A Weekend in Düsseldorf

While I am working in Cologne I am using the chance to pass some time with friends and family in the region. So I spent a weekend in Düsseldorf. While Cologne and Düsseldorf are neighbor cities and they are just some 40-ish km apart there is a healthy competition between their inhabitants.

We went for a walk by the media harbor:

This area has fancy buildings to marvel:

Prominent among them are the Gehry-Bauten by architect Frank Owen Gehry (wikipedia link)

All these buildings are situated around a river harbor.

Passsing the harbor downstream the Rhein river we reached downtown. Noticed the space age looking tramway.

Apparently Düsseldorf has a more refined (aka “snobby”) image compared to Cologne where they seems to claim a more latitudinarian spirit. But to be honest I like both cities and luckily don’t have to take part in the regional rivalry.

More modern architecture on the way back:

Germany is famous for their sausages and an all time favourite is the Currywurst.
Along the way I stopped by restaurant “Curry” where they specialise in said product. It is not your usual fast food shack but astonishingly refined inside. Also populated by equally refined clients. There has to be a reason for the partiality the people from Cologne display maybe.

Their sausage system is modularised where you can order your sauce/dip/salsa in normal, sweet or spicy flavour.
They also have a “sauce of the day” which they let me try by way of a free french fry:

Decided to do away with the fancy haute cuisine and stuck to the regular build:

The curry pictures were taken with an Olympus PEN E-P1 equipped with the very nice micro four thirds Panasonic Lumix G 1,7/20mm Pancake. I did have some reservations agains the new µFT cameras due to the missing optical viewfinder and the smallish sensor size but the Oly/Pana combo was very nice and lightweight to work with.