Dortmund is the sixth largest city in German. In North West Germany it is a city in the province of North Rhine Westphalia. Traditionally famed for its beer coal and steel. A member of the pan-European Hanseatic trading league from the 13th century, the biggest city in the Ruhr area, and the centre of its burgeoning IT industry.
From the mid-19th century the city grew as an industrial centre. In the 1980s the coal and steel industries declined, leading to serious unemployment.
Dortmund airport is home of several low-cost airlines and serves mainly national and European travellers. There is no direct train or tram connection to the airport, however there are shuttle busses between the airport and Dortmund central station or Holzwickede Station
Borussia Dortmund or BVB were founded in 1909 and was the first German side to win a European competition when they lifted the European Cup winners Cup in 1966. They have also won the European Cup in 1997 and have been Bundesliga champions six times, the last occasion in 2002.
Dortmund has a lively and versatile cultural life. The opera, road shows, treasures of the Middle Ages or economic history you name it, Dortmund has got it. One of the symbols of new Dortmund is the new concert house, the Philarmonie fur Westfalen. The excellent quality of its acoustics and architecture provide the basis for a range of concerts of international standing.
The Adlerturm is part of the medieval town wall, and was rebuilt the way it was centuries ago. Except that nobody knows what it did look like originally. The foundations are there in the ground and they are genuine, but all the rest was built from two medieval drawings that are both less than an inch big and do not even agree on details, like number of windows. The whole thing is about as genuine as Cinderella's castle in Disneyworld.
The Mohne dam is beautiful. During WW2 the bouncing bomb ploughed straight through the centre of this dam, almost completely destroying it and flooding the valley. Not too long afterwards work started to rebuild it. There is a restaurant nearby that has some photographs in reception of the dam as it looked just after it was bombed and then during the rebuild which is very interesting. The cafe is called Der Seehaf Mohnesee. You can faintly see where the dam was rebuilt if you look between the tower sections.
