Night of Museums

Last night, Düsseldorf had an event called "Night of Museums", where 37 museums and galleries all over the town were open for viewing with just one ticket a person for 12 euros.  They also had free shuttle busses between the stops.  The museums didn't open until 7PM, but the food opened earlier, so we ventured out around 4:45.  Walking toward the river, it seemed pretty quiet...cut through the park with the tall trees, down the cobblestone streets, in front of an old church...

...but once we got by the river, it was PACKED!!  A live band was playing, which we figured out quickly was a Christian group by their banner, which I translated to mean "open the doors for Christ."  Then they were singing a song with "Hallelujah" in it over and over...so that was pretty cool! 

Food stands were set up by the river, just like you would have at a fair...so of course we had to try something from every stand!  The lines were really long, especially the "Reibe-kuchen" line we got in (as you can see from the crowd in line in front of us).  They had this potato batter (potatoes shredded with a machine then some sort of batter with it) that they would just drop into hot oil and fry up like a hashbrown.  That was all they sold at that stand, and it came with applesauce...but it was delicious!

And the eating continued...Krakauer (like a giant hotdog) fresh off the grill...

...a soft pretzel (yummmm)...

...and of course dessert, a chocolate crepe, and who knows what the thing on the right was...some sort of spongy cake with banana pudding and chocolate and sugar goodness all over it...we just pointed and they made us one. 

They had a huge booth of candy for sell, gummy worms and sweet tarts and everything sugary you can imagine except for chocolate...but don't worry Carl, we passed on it all...now if there had been chocolate, who knows what I would have come home with!

So after we were officially stuffed, we headed to the first museum we came across- an art musuem with really modern photography, mostly of famous people, and also a lot of nudity.  At most of these museums we did not see anyone taking pictures, so we just followed the crowd and didn't take pictures either since we couldn't read the signs to see if it was allowed.  However, when we went to the next stop, the Aquazoo, we took several pictures.  This one is out front of the building...not sure why they have horse statues and not giant sharks or something...but whatever.

There was a live band inside, and as soon as we walked in they started playing Johnny B Good, so it felt like home.  Here's a picture of me and some penguins, if you can see them...

...they had other little animals too, like these blue-breasted quails...

...and fish of course...

...we found Nemo (and Dory!)...

...and bugs!!!  Eeewww!!!  The guy in the cowboy hat was doing cockroach races, and all these people were letting the bugs crawl on their hands....ick!!!  Not me!!!!

Outside was a small fire show, with people fire breathing and twirling batons with the ends lit...the pictures are blurred, but neat I thought.  It was fun to watch, but I think they were really amateur because they kept dropping the batons and once even sort of threw one by accident toward the crowd...can't believe they didn't catch something on fire or burn themselves!

Ellie and Noah, we thought of you all when we saw a couple buildings with "Atelier" written on them (for those who don't know, that is the name of their custom-written wedding music company).

We ended the night with some more art museums, a paper museum, glass museum, and the town hall.  I think altogether we saw about 6 or 7 museums.  I would like to have seen a lot more, but it was midnight and after 7 hours of walking around we were drained!  Too bad they didn't open earlier in the day.