Düsseldorf

January 2023

Near Düsseldrof, is the Neadertal – Neader Valley (tal is the German word for valley) which is also the location of the discovery site for the first Neaderthal named for the valley. We visited the museum for the site which focuses on the Evolution of Humankind. Christian found this to be an interesting clash to the Creation Museum in the US, especially with exhibits explicitly calling out Creationalism and racism in the US. Overall it was a rather cutsey museum looking at prehuman and early human development, survival, tool use, religion, and society.

From there we took the train into Düsseldorf. It was neat to see the diesel trains running instead of the electric ones in the Köln-Bonn area.

After getting a quick lunch we walked along Königallee and looked at the shops. Christian wanted to go into the Swarvski crystal store- which like everything else had more shopping assistants ready to help you than I was up for. We then strolled through the Old City and saw the Basilica of St. Lambert and stumbled across Stadterhebungs Monument which was build to commemorate the 700th anniversary of the city’s founding. (We didn’t manage to get pictures – there was a family with little kids taking pictures and ‘booping’ the lion’s nose.)

We also found the Shipping Museum housed in the only reaming tower of a palace that was built and burned down so many times that they made a law prohibiting reconstruction on the site. It was a fun little museum- defiantly worth the 3€ entry fee.

For dinner we had sushi in one of the restaurants in little Tokyo in Düsseldorf. Which was quite lovely.