Week 37: Dortmund

Last Friday I had a work trip that took me near Dortmund. Since the train ride wasn't very far, Jason took it up and met me on Friday evening. Since Jason didn't arrive until about 9pm, we only went out for a drink and a Salzkuchen. A Salzkuchen is like a very salty bagel, with a cured pork filling (so, like a cold sausage filling). We each got one, but neither of us were able to make it through ours. My, it was so salty. I would haven needed much more beer to make any further than I did. It was worth a try, but I am not sure if I would seek it out again.

On Saturday, we spent some time walk around the shopping district, which was rather full of people. We came across a small open air market, where Jason found some Syrian bread, something we would often get back in the States, but is not quite as easy to find here in Germany. We munched on that as we continued our walk around.

We spent some time looking through a used CD/DVD store. I've been looking for some more German language stuff to listen to and watch and made two purchases. The first was the movie Goodbye Lenin, which we had seen many years ago. It is about the fall of the Berlin Wall back in 1989 and how it impacted the life of one family. It is a comedy, in a sense, and very much worth seeing. The other was a kid's cartoon movie about Till Eulenspiegel, a German folk hero. Sort of like a Johnny Appleseed or Paul Bunyan. Neither of these have English subtitles, so we'll see how we do.

While we were looking through the store, we ran across the section shown in the picture below of "Black" music. If you take a close look at the album covers, you'll notice that it includes everything from hard-core rap to the Temptations and Ella Fitzgerald. Oh, and the Village People are in there too.

Way to illogically group musical stylings

It had been a while since we had walked around a shopping district while the stores were actually open and when so many people were out in the street, so we just spent a lot of time walking and checking out the various sights on the street. We saw a number of rhinos with wings, as shown in the picture below, which reminded me of the Mr Potatoheads you can find throughout Rhode Island. These rhinos (link in German) were painted by local artists and youth groups and are scattered about the city. They make for good photo ops.

Hier bleib ich! == Here I stay!

Another great find was the kid in the video below, who had wheeled a piano out into the street. He was pretty great, able to play so well in the cold with gloved hands. Don't worry, I gave him a good tip. He must have been asked to move along, though, as when we came back about an hour later, he was no where to be found. I hope he was able to keep his tip hat.