- published: 29 Feb 2016
- views: 161665
Düsseldorf [ˈdʏsl̩ˌdɔɐ̯f] ( listen) is the capital city of the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia and centre of the Rhine-Ruhr metropolitan region.
Düsseldorf is an international business and financial centre and renowned for its fashion and trade fairs. Located centrally within the European Megalopolis, the city is headquarter to five Fortune Global 500 and several DAX companies. Messe Düsseldorf organizes nearly one fifth of all world‘s premier trade shows.
Culturally, Düsseldorf is known for its academy of fine arts (Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, e.g. Joseph Beuys, Emanuel Leutze, August Macke, Gerhard Richter, Sigmar Polke and Andreas Gursky), its influence on early electronic music (Kraftwerk) and its large Japanese community. As a city by the river Rhine, Düsseldorf is a stronghold for Rhenish Carnival celebrations. Every year in July more than 4.5 million people visit the city's Largest Fair on the Rhine funfair.
As the seventh most populous city in Germany by population within city limits and an urban population of 1.5 million, Düsseldorf is one of the country's five global cities. The Mercer's 2009 Quality of Living survey of cities with the highest quality of life ranked Düsseldorf sixth worldwide and first in Germany.
In Dusseldorf I met a clown
His nose, it was red
In Gelterkinden I forgot to frown
Then remembered again
In Paris I saw a big fish
Swimming slow in the Siene
It made me hopeful that someday our water
Would be breathable again...
In Frankfurt I heard eins zwei drei
Counting cookies and no one was shot
In Berlin stopped by the Polizei
For drunk driving and everyone smiled
In Prague I knew I'd been a witch
Burnt alive, a pyre of Soviet kitsch
It made me miss my Moscow muttdom
It made me miss my New York nothing...
In Montpelier I stayed in a chateau
A boy climbed into my bed and he knew no boundaries
In Amsterdam I got quite crazy
It might have been all the tulips and canals
Or it might have been all that hash, and in
Barcelon, buenos dias, chocolato, le Picasso
And in Brussels, clean-cut hostel
And in London, me and the French existentialists...
In Corsica I floated away, all the way to Marseilles
I should have held an after party for all the thoughts I didn't say
In Dusseldorf I met a dwarf
With bad breath and a really good tan
In Gelterkinden I remembered how to laugh