After a restless night I catch an early train directly from the airport to the city of Dortmund, approximately two hours from Frankfurt. The train is electric all the way and of course perfectly on time as you would expect of Germanic efficiency. The countryside is how I imagine Europe to be in the autumn. The trees are a pallette of colours, painting the landscape beautifully like I have only seen in pictures or those jigsaw puzzles. It looks much better in real life. This is visually so different to anything I have seen on my travels.
Andreas meets me ouside the Dortmund train station. This is the first time we have met face-to-face after communicating over the internet for years. He lives in Castrop-Rauxel, a township about half hour from Dortmund. Over time the many villages here have grown and ammalgumated. Andreas’s village was two, Castrop and Rauxel.
The rest of the day is spent looking around the village. It has a rich mining history. This village is very much working class and coal mining was its thing. Now there are only remanants of that past around town, memorialised for the new generations of life here. A walk up a hill gives spectacular views of coloured trees, power stations, wind turbines, auto barns and village life everywhere. The weather is cold! I compare it to a wintery Toowoomba. Maximum temperatures are low.
angusmccoll 