September 13, 2025 - Dortmund, Germany. - Updated

 It has been a great day. I am now in position to start my ride.  I am in Dortmund, Germany.  A large former industrial city turned technological center after collapse of its steel and manufacturing industries.

Today started early (6:15 am) at the Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof (main train station) with a surprise. My train had been cancelled. I had to make different connections. The cancelled train involved no transfers and few stops. The new connections involved both. This a picture of the station at Frankfurt with its impressive sign. As a note for readers, if you click on the pictures they will open in a separate tab and you can see more of the details. Click again and will come back to the blog. The sign rather than announcing you are in Frankfurt is an advertisement for the “Frankfurter Allgemeine” a newspaper (zeitung). The name implies that it is a newspaper for everybody. 

The picture to the left and the above picture show how bikes ride on an ICE and an IC train. It was not a busy day for bikes on trains.

Street food. It was a very good one. I try to get about one every other day on my rides.

A few pictures from downtown Dortmund. One of the better fountain on your left. There have been fountains in almost every German town. More in the cities. This is one I like.

A church picture. I do think Dortmund had not many church left standing after the constant heavy bombing on its industries during WW2.

A picture from the weekend market on the square. It was very crowed and it is where I got the street food above. I came back by a few hours later and the only thing in the square was cobblestones. 

There were a lot of people downtown shopping, sight seeing, and dinning out for both lunch and dinner. Dortmund is a very big football (read soccer) town. Their team wins big a lot of years. This how they tailgate. Drinks and food at an outdoor restaurant. However, I did go inside and inside it was wall to wall local fans. Notice the big screen tv. 

  

Above is my evening meal of pork schnitzel with mushrooms in a cream sauce and fries and a salad. All for under 25 euros. Just for comparison I went by Five Guys and a bacon cheese burger with fries and a milk would have been 27 Euros. My restaurant for the evening is on the right.

Tomorrow without any unexpected issues to solve, I will begin the bicycle part of this trip away from big cities. I hope tomorrow to post some pictures of county scenes and waterway scenes. Until then, I hope your team wins this Saturday.