Horse Racing: Henkel - Race Day 2010 Düsseldorf Grafenberg

Last weekend the Henkel Race Day 2010 took place here in Düsseldorf Grafenberg. I've never been at a horse race before and I always expected the atmosphere to be a little bit posh or boring at most. Eventually it turned out that the crowd was very mixed from young families to the super rich.

In my opinion the races were a little bit short - basically all races were only one lap and that only every half an hour. Almost anyone there seemed to be betting (I didn't dare) and I quite liked the relaxed atmosphere at the race. The speed of the horses and the skills of the jockeys were amazing (full-screen here).

Düsseldorf Aaperwald

My new hometown Düsseldorf has some really nice advantages one of them being that it is particularly green and has many recreation areas within short reach.

Aaperwald is a nice small forest ideal for jogging or picking strawberries at a small farm inside. And yes you can see the difference between Romania and Germany here with paved rural roads ;)

Flat hunting in Düsseldorf (no commercial ;)

I recently moved to Düsseldorf, Germany and it was a major challenge to find an apartment from Romania without having the chance to actually see the apartment. Of course hunting for a flat nowadays happens on the Internet with again some sites being more helpful than others. There are portals for the whole of Germany such as Immobilienscout 24 or regional ones such as Kalaydo (in cooperation with local newspapers) with a very wide offer for Düsseldorf. The problem with these is that the majority of the flats are being offered by agents .

They usually charge the rent of two months as commission (!) on behalf of the landlord. Oddly enought, Immobilienscout 24 doesn't allow you to exclude commercial offers relsulting in a time consuming manual search for the word "provisionsfrei" (without commission). Another problem is that many private offers on Kalaydo lack pictures which is essential if you search from the distance.

In the end I found two pages which were useful: wg-gesucht.de and duesseldorf.studenten-wohnung.de. Both are targeted to students (flat shares, small apartments) but they are equally good offers if you look for a budget offer or an interim solution ("Zwischenmiete" in German). Ads often have pictures or if not landlords are willing to help out.
If you have some extra cash to spend I'd recommend the Zweitwohnagentur agency with a wide amount of offers and very good descriptions.