Page 32

Willi is about 20 here

Dusseldorf

More salon colleagues, praise for Dusseldorf and its 1926 GeSoLei exhibition, and Willi's sporty Sundays including a near-drowning in the Rhine.

Diary page 32

Translated from Willi's German.

apprentice girl. And the dear saleswoman Fraulein Seitz, together with the junior, and Fraulein Erne, the limping cashier. I got on fairly well with everyone - of course there are little frictions everywhere. You especially had to watch out for fiddling, since everyone wanted to sell the most. Frau Schulz was another character. Herr Muller himself was single and very highly-strung, but quietly so. Dusseldorf is a magnificent city, called a city of art, gardens and industry. The summer I was there, the great exhibition "GeSoLei" was on - a grand, splendid site lying right on the Rhine. What stays in memory is the Planetarium, the Ehrenhof and so on, where I got myself worked up a few times but never wept over money; the lovely Hofgarten, the Konigsallee, the theatre, the Apollo theatre, cabaret and casinos. I did not join in amusements to excess, yet I spent my Sundays driving, camping, swimming and cycling. Swimming across the Rhine, I nearly drowned on the way back; an air-ring saved me. The current is very strong, and two big steamers made dangerous spots. As for girls, I first had one who did not come back after a walk in the Hofgarten. And then the dear one from the Rhine, whom I met at the holiday reach - an older, sweet sort of girl who understood me very well; towards the end of my time here I went out often with her...

People: Willi Distel, Fraulein Seitz, Fraulein Erne, Frau Schulz, Herr Muller

Places: Dusseldorf, Rhein, GeSoLei, Planetarium, Ehrenhof, Hofgarten, Koenigsallee

Interesting facts