Dusseldorf

It's been a week full of time spent in Dusseldorf it seems.  I always thought that Dusseldorf was only good because it had a Primark, and because it has pubs right next to the Rhine, but this week I discovered some of it's charms.  On Thursday, I went on a school trip with year 6 to the building in the above photo.  It is called the Landtag, and it is the political building for our state, North-Rhine Westphalia.  The circular room is where the laws of the state are made.  I wasn't particularly looking forward to the tour, thinking that it might be a bit dull, but it was fantastic.  The lady doing the tour was brilliant.  We all went into the law-making room and took a seat.  The chairs are split into 5 segments, for each of the 5 political parties.  Each chair is for a specific person, and their name is engraved on the seat.  The kids played the part of whoever's seat they were in, for example the leader of the party got to choose who would go up and debate.  The debate was on whether or not we should change school holidays from 12 weeks to 6.  A child from each political party went up to say their piece, and one of the kids resided over the proceedings.  One was the president of the state, and one was the minister for education.  Some of the kids were for the change, just to be controversial, so the debate was really close!  The kids loved it, and learnt so much without even realising it!  Brilliant.

The Landtag is right underneath the TV tower in Dusseldorf, so while we had a couple of hours for lunch and a run around on the grass, we went up the tower in small groups.  I ended up going twice, because one of the Mum helpers is scared of heights.  On my second trip up, the boys in my group started to get very worked up.  They had seen a footballer go up in the lift before ours, and were literally bouncing with excitement.  The footballer was Christoph Kramer, who played for Germany in the winning World Cup match last year.  He was being filmed for something or other up the tower, in his home town.  He was very nice, and signed lots of autographs for the very over excited children, who had begged me for scraps of paper and a pen!  I now own a pen that has signed about 20 autographs!

The day after the trip, the year 6's were really friendly and chatty with me for the whole day.  Obviously letting them get autographs has done wonders for my street cred at school!

This weekend, we had Matt's Gran and Uncle come to visit.  They arrived on Friday just as school finished, after a traumatic taxi journey from the airport.  It's meant to take half an hour and cost 30-35 Euros.  It took an hour and a half and he tried to charge them 80 euros!  They had to phone Matt to get directions, because the driver had never been to Duisburg before!!!

On Friday night we went to Shaenke, a pub that Matt goes to every week.  They do really nice Schnitzel in there.  Some of our friends were in there too, so they joined us after dinner.  Mary and Kevin were staying at the nice hotel near school, so it was really easy to get anywhere from, since it is right next to the tram stop.

On Saturday, we went into Dusseldorf, and hopped on a ferry for an hour cruise along the Rhine.  I got a different view of the TV tower and the Landtag from Thursday, which was quite nice.  We had a hot chocolate on the ferry, and it was lovely to sit in the sunshine, even though it was quite windy.  We had lunch in a restaurant i've been to before.  I can never remember the name of it, but it serves pork, so it is fondy known as 'the pig place'.

Note the wonky clock tower in the above photo.  They built it wonky on purpose, and legend tells that it will be straight again when a true virgin marries in the church!

On Saturday afternoon we went to the Schloss Benrath, an 18th Century palace on the outskirts of Dusseldorf.  The gardens are lovely, and inside there was a travelling exhibition of American Dessert animals.  Bizarre!

We had some ice cream there, and then had dinner back at the hotel, which is an Italian hotel.  The Italian football team stayed there in 2006, the year they won the world cup.  Each room has a photo of a footballer in it, and that is the footballer who stayed in the room in 2006.  (lot's of football related things this week).

Today, we went to the inland harbour in Duisburg for lunch at an Italian place (again), and then for more ice cream, before taking our guests to the station to catch a train to the airport.  It's been a lovely weekend!  and really tiring.  Luckily it's only a 3 day week at school next week!