Preface:

Germany wasn’t on my bucket list. I don’t even have a list. The only reason I use it to name my travel posts is because I like the way they look on my travel page, all nicely lined up.

The original plan was to stop at Bruges on the way from Amsterdam to Paris, but the prospect of spending a day with my childhood friend, riding on an autobahn, while still adding another country to the itinerary outweighed my desire to see the exact spot where the body of a killer plopped down from the tower in that one movie. A chance to see the famous Cologne Cathedral in person and me having only a vague idea of how to make the trip from Amsterdam to Bruges and still make it to Paris the same night tipped the scale and the next morning we were on the way to Düsseldorf.

Face:

I was underwhelmed by the autobahn. Besides not having a speed limit in some places it wasn’t that much different from the stretch of I-70 between Kansas City and St.Louis. My friend drove fairly fast on some stretches, but just like here we were frequently slowed down by construction and slow drivers in the passing lane. My eye was missing my favorite highway entertainment – the billboards. It took about 2.5 hours to arrive in Düsseldorf.

Düsseldorf turned out to be a lively town with an interesting but fairly generic historic center and a large and expensive shopping district. That one restaurant downtown with a German name serves the best liver I’ve ever had. Make sure to check it out while you there.

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Russian people know hats. When I was growing up® almost every Soviet citizen owned some variation of a fur hat. You could tell a person social status by the hat: the cheapest ones were made out of rabbit fur and more expensive ones were made out of fox, wolf, sable, mink, beaver (yeah, I said beaver), etc. The typical Russian hat style is ushanka, which simply means a hat with ear-flaps.

Many years ago my Father had a muskrat hat custom made which at that time was very expensive, several times his monthly wages. I have to say that we got our money’s worth because I still own this hat and occasionally wear it to work to the delight of my co-workers.

And  no, my cat is still alive:

Of course in my hometown wearing this hat didn’t attract as much attention as it does here.

And in the army it was a part of the winter uniform:

Policemen wore them (this one is from Finland, which was a part of the USSR for some time):

Regular people wore them:

And even Kissinger put one on when it got cold enough:

Whatever you do, if you are a heterosexual male do not ever leave your house wearing any variation of ear-muffs, ear-warmers or other partial hats (visors included). These devices are the crocs of the hat world. If you are in a bind and a small animal is within reach you can easily have a do-it-yourself hat within seconds.

By the way, if you are in search of a small furry dead animal, please contact Happy In Bag, he will set you up.

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Green Borscht is a delicious soup made of spinach, scallions, sour cream, hard-boiled eggs and potatoes. I am not sure why it’s called “borscht” since the only common ingredient with the red borscht is potatoes. Notice home baked (by me) rye bread on the side.
and here is some related SNL when it still was funny
Update: NBC a-holes removed the video from YouTube, it can still be seen here.

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Since I don’t expect that any of you frequent Russian language sites, I expropriated some pictures for your viewing pleasure. If you were invited to a typical soviet apartment in the late 70s – early 80s, chances are it would look something like this. My living room looked pretty similar and so did many other living rooms I visited. The only thing was that many of these only served as living rooms during the day. At night they were converted to bedrooms, where sometimes kids and parents slept and I am not limiting kids to any age here. Some people spent most of their lives sharing a room or two but in the morning you wouldn’t be able to tell. In my own case we had several rooms but we shared the apartment with 4 other families. And by “shared” I mean we had one toilet, one cold water faucet in the bathroom and one corner of the kitchen with a stove and later our own sink. But that’s a different story.
So consider yourself invited:

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Sorry for two billboard posts in a row, but what can I do – they are putting them up faster than I can stop and take a picture.

A thought about making this one into a caption contest but I don’t think you can beat mine (see the title of this post). If you manage to do better than I did, I might come up with a prize – a beer or a magazine subscription – something. Good luck and remember to lock up your jewelry stash or someone will get paid to party!

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