I’ve mentioned the Kaufhof department store at the west end of the Schloßstrasse many times, but I don’t think I showed a real photo of it yet. This is one from 2009 showing the main entrance of the store on the left and a bit if the nearby city hall with the distinct tower on the right. Those were better days, but here the Friederich-Ebert-Strasse had already been rebuilt with the tramway and bus lines running through it – before they used to go around the Kaufhof with the station between the city hall and the department store. The re-routing was done to promote this part of the city, which had already suffered a lot with many closed stores. The Kaufhof, originally built in 1953, had already been much neglected by its owners and in spring 2010 it finally closed for purely financial reasons, leaving the whole expensive re-development of this area in limbo. The building itself is still empty – there have been half-hearted attempts to get some other stores to move in or alternately tore the whole house down, but for three years nothing but a lot of grand talk has happened and the whole affair has only become a sad joke. We have some classic views of the building from the 1950s and 1960s in our archive which I have to show at a later time, since some photos still need to be rescanned and restored.

I did some of these in October and November, but somehow I forgot to post them – so here they are!

I may be out of flowers, but there’s still some green stuff to look at!

This is another view of Mülheim’s Friedrichstrasse, but this time much further down at the point where it crosses the Wilhelmstrasse, on which the tram track follow in this older photo from September 2003. There are some lovely old houses on this corner and it’s not far from the river – if you go only about 200 meters down the Wilhelmstrasse, you’re right at the riverfront. I’m not entirely sure, but it’s possible that both streets were named after Kaiser Wilhelm II, whose full name was Friedrich Wilhelm Viktor Albert von Preußen.

I really didn’t expect to encounter a seagull on the supermarket parking lot this afternoon, since it’s actually pretty far away from any water. I thought I saw some seagulls flying over shortly before, but then there was this one waddling along. I have no idea what sort of seagull it is exactly, but I’m at least certain that it is one in the broadest sense judging by the webbed feat and beak/head shape.

It’s hard to get a clear shot of a sunset here in the city, but this looks nice too.