Sunday afternoon walk in March Dusseldorf

The spring is almost here and with it arrived thousands of blue crocuses decorating the banks of the river Rhine. It is a phenomena every Düsseldorfer is very proud of and rightly so.

So much so that this sight even has an official name ‘Das blaue Band am Rhein’, which for those who don’t speak much (or any) German is ‘The blue band at Rhine’.

Not a bad going considering that this tradition only started in 2008, inspired by the famous castle park of Husum in the very north of Germany. Husum is each spring adorned with 4 million blue crocuses, providing for a spectacular sight.

Now you are probably wondering how many crocuses does Düsseldorf sport? Not ones to be easily outdone, Düsseldorf really pushed the boat out when they planted not 4, but 5 million of these fragile flowers.

As if the volume was not enough, to complicate things even further, the ancient trees with extensive roots in the Rhine park demanded for around half a million crocuses to be planted by hand. The result is absolutely worth it though.

Annually, this spectacle is not only admired by locals but many travel from afar to take a stroll amongst the blue fields, frequently busking in the first rays of the spring sunshine.

This year that was not the case, but it did not take away from the purple wow factor.

It is not only the people who flog to Düssel-dorf in a quest to be crocused. After a spell of extreme sub-zero temperatures in the Europe this year, spring is calling and the honey bees are only happy to comply.

Despite the seemly fragility of these delicate flowers, not even naughty dogs and curious children manage to dent the flowing belt of blueness by the Rhine.

After a couple of hours of soaking up the atmosphere and the impressive sight, it was time to head on. Although we have been living in Düsseldorf for a couple of years now, our central location has not exactly been motivating us to explore far away neighbourhoods in foot. Not as often as we could, anyway. To make up for this, every now and then the Duke and I put our walking shoes on and go for a stroll through unbeknown to us streets of the town.

This Sunday walk took us to a very old cemetery wedged between modern office blocks called the Alter Golzheimer Friedhof. Here we came across some spectacular examples of the nature selfishly making its way through the patch of greenness, without scruples to avoid the old grave stones, often dating to early 1800s.