Dusseldorf

It might help to use the correct spelling, Düsseldorf, or Duesseldorf.

Düsseldorf is named for the Düssel river. Dussel is a fool, so Dusseldorf is a village of fools.

James, just because Rick doesn't include Northern Germany in his guide books doesn't mean that it is not worth a visit. There are lots of very interesting and scenic places as many here on the board can attest.

However, I do agree that swimming in the Rhine is not the best idea. It is not "verboten" except for a list of exceptions:

"So gilt 100 Meter oberhalb und unterhalb von Rheinhäfen absolutes Badeverbot. Auch an Brücken, Schiffs- und Fährlandestellen, Schleusen, Vorhäfen, Umschlagstellen und Werften darf auf keinen Fall geschwommen werden"
[No swimming within 100 m of Rhine harbours. No swimming close to bridges, ferry and ship landings, locks, offshore terminals, transfer points, and warfts.]

But even where allowed swimming in the Rhine is like trying to jog on the Autobahn: the current can be very strong and river traffic is among the busiest in the world. Btw, there are very few cruise ships but the Rhine is THE river for commercial shipping in Europe.

There have been discussions in Duesseldorf to develop the beach at Bremer Strasse into a safe swimming area. Especially over the past years as the water quality has improved considerably. Pollution from ships was never the main problem, it was mostly the sewage that came from the cities along the Rhine. Today, water treatment plants have cleaned up the Rhine water substantially. But to my knowledge, nothing has happened to deal with the currents (natural and those produced by passing ships) that endanger swimmers. This beach seems to be a nice place to hang out and maybe dip your toes into the water:

http://www.qype.com/place/185453-Rheinstrand-Hafen-Duesseldorf

The drift in the Rhine river is way too strong. You don't swim in the Rhine, you swim in what's called "Alt-Rhein", an old arm of the river that's not part of the main river anymore. There are plenty of those in the Baden-Baden as well as in the Düsseldorf areas. There are beach clubs in Düsseldorf right on the shores of the main river but you only use them for sunbathing or partying, not for actually swimming. Also check with http://www.duesseldorf.de/en/index.shtml

Andreas thank you for your very courteous response. You do your country proud.

Lee as I sent you in a private message but will take it here to, thanks for the German lesson but since my software does not allow for me to add the dots on top of the U ... I do the best I can.

Andreas,

I'm often flying into Duesseldorf and thus was interested in this information as well. Especially about swimming opportunities at the Alt-Rhein. However, I had searched the website you linked a number of times in English and German already and couldn't find much. Do you have a direct link? I gave the link above because at least there is a map to the beach at Bremer Strasse. But that's not a beach I'd be interested personally.

Michelle, Lee's definition of Dusseldorf is interesting, but I would stick with the English spelling if you want to buy a ticket on a U.S. airline. The same goes for Cologne, Munich and so forth. The airline web reservation sites I have tried all recognize the anglicized version but not the literal German (Deutch) name. The English language site for Bahn.com recognizes both.

Michelle: Welcome to the Helpline! It seems you’ve been properly introduced to one of the unwritten but much-policed rules here: Use umlauts and every other proper language rule when referencing all things German or risk being called out. Don’t worry, I’m pretty sure we had a fairly good idea which city you were inquiring about (although it was very hard to discern because of your egregious error).

:)

Michelle,

I don't want to extend this discussion about the German language forever just want to point out that Lee gave us a quite humorous example as to why an Umlaut is so important in the spelling of German words: it creates a completely different word!!! Some websites like bahn.de can handle errors in this but most cannot and will not give you the right results if you don't use correct spelling.

German is my mothertongue but unless I'm doing official translation work I don't go through the extra work required to produce a correct Umlaut on my American keyboard. Instead I use the alternate spelling of ae-oe-ue. That works well with searches of all kind.

I tried to find that fool village on Google, but when I typed in Dusseldorf, it switched me to a page of websites for Düsseldorf.

I tried to fool it, too, but searches on “Frankfurt” and even “Frankfort, Germany” always return just Frankfurt am Main (not even Frankfurt an der Oder). Go figure.

It's cause Frankfurt is so darn popular!