Doranku in Düsseldorf

I dreamt this morning that the polar researcher left the house, while I kept sleeping. So I was so surprised when the alarm went off and she really left the house, while I kept sleeping. Then I left the house – sneaked down all the stares without meeting any of her housemates. Together they paid about 1400 € for a three story house in the middle of Bremen’s coziest street. I’m not jealous at all.

The early morning was so crisp and nice. I had promised to come back to all the narrow streets and take more pictures in the morning, but I guess I found a quicker way to the hauptbahnhof. I went to Düsseldorf, which is Japan’s capital in Europe, with 11,000 Japanese people living here. I went to a ramen seller for early lunch, and the ramen was EXCELLENT. Best noodles ever. They were from Sapporo, and I keep claiming that imported noodles don’t make a difference but maybe … Anyway, best outside Japan (including China and Taiwan!)

So where’s the picture? Well, I had of course forgot my charger in Bremen, and spent all the battery listening to music on the train, so you’ll have to guess what the noodles looked like. But I found a charger in a store after some scouting. 20 euros. I promised myself to not be angry for losing 20 euros for forgetting yet another charger. I said “Don’t miss the money now. Miss them when you are really poor and would love to actually have 20 euros.” The charger didn’t work btw, so I had to get back and buy an adapter. And then I got one for free! I’ll really thank the guy on that future day when I’d almost need 20 euro.

Now with camera, I really needed to take pictures of noodles, so I went to another Japanese ramen place. Here I asked for noodles in vegetable sauce, and it was outright excellent. Although, the sauce wasn’t enough. I love eating all the noodles and then dip my nose into a fantastic sauce fest, with garlic enough to fill all your bones, but here I hardly got my nose wet. I give it 4/5 stars, while the first was 5/5.

This noodle store was part of a chain, and this was the first shop outside Asia. Maybe I should go to all the stores?

There were Japanese bookstores in the area as well. This one has a “no eating” sign in English, Chinese and Korean. With a small Japanese text as well, at the bottom, to not be racist.

There was no text in German though. Germans would rather start a world war than eat in a book shop (and Swedes would help them rather than drinking 3.5 % “people’s beer” inside).

After all this epic Japaneseness, I took the train to Adrian and Ninja’s house right outside Düsseldorf. Look how beautiful it is with all the solar panels!

I used to meet Adrian and Ninja back in my board game designing days, when I went to Essen with my homemade board games. Now I’ve stopped designing, to save some time and meaning of life, while Adrian and Ninja has moved to the south – maybe or maybe not to be close to the most epic ramen.

We had a lovely three bean-chili with tons of spicy stuff and talked about everything, my trip, Greta, nuclear, drugs, you name it. Adrian works at an electricity company that is currently installing tons of wires across Germany to get all wind power from the North to the formerly nuclear-dependent southern parts. I personally believe that Merkel’s nuclear ban is a mistake. It makes Germany keep blowing CO2, instead of keeping a few buckets of radioactive leftovers in some hole. One person died from nuclear radiation in Fukushima, while hundreds of millions might die from floods, hunger and refugee crises once our CO2 has melted our ice. Just look at this list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_ratio_of_GDP_to_carbon_dioxide_emissions

The top rich countries are all nuclear (or water) while Germany is below the EU average. But, whatever, have a good night 🙂