(part 3).
When I moved here, I was fascinating by city’s transport infrastructure. Anyone can just jump on train on the closest metro station and go to another city. Or to one more another one. Or change to regional train and in half an hour be in Cologne. In short, I still feel a need to go on each station, explore each possible connection and make sure to try all types of trams, metro, suburban rail trains, etc. The best day to do it in Germany is, of course, Sunday.
This time I chose maybe not the most fascinating direction. It was a metro line that goes to the city of Neuss. It almost merged with Düsseldorf, I didn’t really noticed the border between them. Only smelly industrial zone with houses being a bit more distant still reminds that the border is exists somewhere.
I saw this red train arriving on the station. This is the train from Düsseldorf airport. Since I was a bit disappointed by smell and industrial nothing around, I thought, it might be a good idea to go to the airport. Somehow it happens that I like to visit a place to meet it. Then some time should pass and only then I will want to go back to that place and explore it more.
So, the decision was made. Airport, here we go. Suburban train slides through industrial zone I was just walking through. Here I saw the possible source of that smell. I think this is a cardboard recycling factory or something like that, maybe just packing station. Fortunately, that part of the journey went fast and then there was a nice time to look on the city floating below railway overpass bringing Airport station closer and closer.
Airport
I decided to not go directly to airport terminal as it wasn’t one of the rare happy days of flying. The airport has 2 stations: main airport station and airport terminal station. Strangely enough no train goes through both of them. But the most fascinating part of airport’s arrival is actually between airport station and the terminal building. Another suspended monorail system called Skytrain. Unlike the one in Wuppertal, this is fully driverless and has only 4 stops.
Always glad to see that I’m not the only insane one who goes to airport to watch planes and trains. And I have to admit, someone who left this stool, prepared better than I ever did.
Spring slowly starts to waking up pieces of nature around huge areas of concrete and kerosine. There is actually a whole park between parking garage and terminal. Nothing special at first sight, probably next time something interesting will catch eye.
Actually, it was the first time went through airport territory from this side. From Skytrain everything looks smaller and directed towards the terminal building, but it actually isn’t. There are many ways to go.
But this day my direction was of course bounded to the terminal. Another industrial smell but this time my favorite. Kerosine. And noise of engines hive. The whole airport is in grey colors itself so every other color actually is mixing with others here making walls and pathways look like gasoline stains.
Terminal is the heart of passenger-facing infrastructure. Taxis, buses, Skytrain, suburban rail, pathways to the tower and parking lots and even construction site of future metro line – everything is concentrated and intertwined around this arc. And this is only so-called “land side”. Maybe one day I will have a chance to take a closer look on the “airside”.
As it always happens unexpectedly every day, time passed by and it was already dark. I watched and failed to take photos of the A-380 landing (as it was very far and very dark so I would be ashamed to post such soft and grainy not in a good way photo) and decided to call it a day. Because the day had already ended on its own.
A short ride on suburb rail, one metro stop. Home.
Echo 