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Wizz Air (Dortmund to London Luton Part II)

Carrying on from my previous post, I had settled into the gate area that was past border control and I had gone through the EES (European entry/exit system) and had my passport stamped. My flight was late and then there was an announcement that the flight was now on time and it would be departing from Gate 3. This was fine, until I realised that this gate was in the Schengen area of the airport and I no longer was. This presented me with a problem. I was now on the wrong side of border control, which is not generally where I want to be when an aircraft is quietly preparing to leave without me.

So, I decided to go back to the border guard staff and mention the situation. They were helpful and told me that this was something of a mess, but they allocated me a police officer who walked me to my gate and around the newly opened border control area for the new gate.

This was the scene until around shortly before boarding, as many other passengers hadn’t realised that they were now at the wrong gate. And, soon after this, there was something of a deluge of stressed looking passengers and numerous police officers who I assume had pro-actively rounded everyone up they had realised were in the wrong place. I think that everyone boarded the flight, but the queue for border control was thirty deep when boarding commenced.

With that, it was time for me to board at least. It’s aircraft 9H-WNV, which is yet another Wizz Air aircraft that I hadn’t been on.

Passengers were trickling on rather than the usual rush. The seating Gods had given me a window seat for the 80 minute flight and this was unusually for Wizz Air an aircraft that hadn’t really been cleaned from the last passengers. I think that this was more to do with Wizz Air trying to cut the delay so that we departed on time even thought the aircraft was late in, so more about efficiency than anything else.

And there’s the aircraft I just disembarked from and I knew that this was my last flight for around a month, something I felt friends gave me insufficient sympathy for. Anyway, this was another £8.99 flight from Wizz Air with Multipass and it was smooth, efficient and the cabin crew were friendly as usual. The boarding process was a little sub-optimal, but I take into account the fare that I’ve paid and I can cope without jazz bands, champagne, silk cushions and whatever else decadent passengers might want. I also had some good news that my train from London King’s Cross to Ely was cancelled which meant I arrived into Norwich 75 minutes late and so got the entire £22 rail fare back.

June 6, 2026
Wizz Air (Dortmund to London Luton Part I)

My journey back home from Dortmund started at Dortmund Stadthaus metro station and all was going well at this point. Until I tried to buy a ticket and the card machine elements of the ticket machines were all down and not working. This I considered sub-optimal as I don’t carry cash partly as this is the 21st century and partly because I have a reckless optimism that ticket machines will work. However, in Lübeck I found 5 euros on the floor by the river and I suspected that, in a similar way to how computer adventure games work, that it would come in useful. And that was very much the case here, I used cash to buy my ticket and that saved me a thirty minute meander to the city’s central railway station.

There’s the ticket validation machine and so I was good to go.

I needed Aplerbeck and there was only a short wait for the U47 to turn up.

A wait of five minutes to be precise.

And here it comes, all as expected.

I’ve posted about this journey before, but the metro stops at Aplerbeck and then passengers get a bus to the airport.

And in what I think is the premium seat for a passenger to look out of the window. Well, in the absence of being the bus driver of course. There aren’t many limits to my ambitions, but becoming a bus driver is one of them.

There’s no lounge at the airport, but there is a McDonald’s just a five minute walk away and I had a free coffee on my app, so I didn’t want to miss the opportunity. They also have power points and, as usual, I wanted to be fully charged given that’s one of my travel priorities.

I had a relaxing ninety minutes at McDonald’s, bringing this blog up-to-date with about 65 ‘riveting’ posts about Lübeck. I use the word riveting advisedly, as some readers may not have known they needed detailed commentary on churches, airports, museums, railway stations and toilet pricing.

Safely at the airport, which is really too small for the number of passengers that it gets.

An interesting place to put a hopscotch game for kids in the middle of the queueing aisle. Nothing says efficient passenger flow quite like inviting small children to begin a structured jumping activity where everyone is already trying to stand.

This is the downstairs area at Dortmund Airport which is short of seating space, poorly signed and only designed for non-Schengen flights in some sort of bid to test passenger resilience. However, I found a seat and prepared myself for the two hour wait for the flight, which at this point was delayed by half an hour. Anyway, my planned comfortable arrangement changed and I needed to find a police officer, but more in part two (who says I can’t build tension on this blog?).

June 3, 2026
Hanover to Dortmund with FlixTrain

I used FlixTrain for the first time a few weeks ago primarily for the experience, but I found myself this time needing to use them as an affordable option to get from Hanover to Dortmund. Hanover railway station is dated and sub-optimal in numerous ways, not least the complete lack of seating for the number of passengers. However, the station is run by Deutsche Bahn, an organisation not always known for arranging its operations around the emotional well-being of passengers, so my expectations were already sensibly low.

Deutsche Bahn wanted around £40 for the train from Hanover to Dortmund, but fortunately the FlixTrain service was more affordable.

The city’s first railway station was built between 1845 and 1847, but a grand new building was constructed in 1879. Unfortunately, this was mostly destroyed by air raids during the Second World War and a less impressive railway station was built in its place, although this was heavily modernised in 2000.

I could see the hotel room where I stayed the previous evening. At this point I used the toilet facilities at the railway station, but that arrangement is getting its own blog post. And you can see the extensive seating facilities for passengers in action.

The FlixTrain sweeps in.

There were carriages that were something like 1, 2, 3, 100, 5 and 6, with my carriage being 100 so it wasn’t entirely clear where along the train it would be. However, the signage on the train is good and I soon found my seat.

The seats are comfortable, the tray table is of a decent size and it was all relatively clean. There are no power points on the train, but it’s all a perfectly reasonably set-up for the money.

It wasn’t a particularly busy service and it all ran to a near enough schedule.

There’s plenty of space for bags and I still quite like their wavy ceiling arrangement.

And safely into Dortmund, for the third time this year.

Overall, I thought that this service represented decent value for money and was a good budget option. Deutsche Bahn was just too expensive, although the German railway network offers unlimited regional travel for around £60 that I’m jealous of, so that makes them better value for money for locals. Deutsche Bahn can certainly benefit from competition and FlixTrain certainly does that, so I’m very glad that they’re there.

June 3, 2026
Wizz Air (Dortmund to Katowice)

Dortmund is one of the older airports which is simply too small to deal with the number of passengers it currently has to handle. There are over three million passengers using the airport every year now and they have been creative about using the space that they have.

Mine was the 13:25 flight and I took this photo just after I went through security, showing how perilously close I was. Well, by my standards. The security process was slightly problematic as some drunk, mostly older, Polish football fans barged by a few of us in the security line. I decided to take the opposite security line to them and managed to get through quite a bit quicker, and certainly had a quieter time.

And the aircraft arrives, albeit a little late. The seating arrangement at the airport wasn’t dreadful, but they do need more seats for passengers as quite a few just opted for the floor. There were no power points and the general facilities at the airport were quite limited, but everything seemed to work efficiently.

I was slightly nervous of a delay as I had a flight from Katowice four hours after this one arrived, but fortunately, there was no impact of note.

This is aircraft HA-LVD, yet another one that I haven’t been on before, with this one in operation since 2019. The seating Gods had given me a window seat near the back, which suited my needs entirely for a flight of a little over one hour.

Somewhere over Dortmund.

What looks like a pretty town, this is Soest in Germany.

And safely into Katowice and we we hardly late at all, giving me more than enough time at the airport to sit in the lounge for hours….

The flight cost £9 with my Multipass and was another competently managed operation, with the aircraft being clean, the crew being friendly and the pilots sounding professional. It’s becoming a bit samey I know with Wizz Air, but routinely good isn’t a bad thing…

April 16, 2026
Dortmund City Centre to Dortmund Airport (with some slight faffing about)

I left the Ibis hotel in Dortmund just four and a half hours before my flight to Katowice left, so that was positively cutting it fine as far as I’m concerned. I had a vague plan of how to get to the airport and since I’ve done this before, albeit in a different way, I didn’t think much about it. Although therein lies the first problem….

Dortmund Stadthaus isn’t perhaps likely to win any design awards for the frontage, despite the efforts made with the mural above it. Anyway, my plan was to get a U-Bahn from here to near the airport and walk the 50 minutes to the airport itself.

I get to the railway station ticket machine and notice that there’s a cheap ticket to the airport as one of the options. I knew that there was a more expensive train to the railway station, but I refused to spend that much and liked the idea of the cheaper ticket that I hadn’t thought about.

So, I leave the station and walk twenty minutes back to the central station. It was a nice walk, but I’m not entirely sure why I did that. What actually happened here is that this cheap ticket is the combined U-Bahn and bus to get to the airport, I hadn’t realised that’s what they meant, I think I thought there was a cheaper train direct to the airport from Dortmund Hauptbahnhof.

I got to Hauptbahnhof and downloaded the app to buy a ticket, having by this time worked out how the ticket worked. I missed the train that I needed as apparently they need an address in Germany to buy the ticket. I have no idea why they have this requirement, so I slightly grumpily walked back to the ticket machine to buy it there instead.

And here’s the U47 to Aplerbeck. This doesn’t actually go the airport, but they’ve sensibly signed it to make clear that it’s the one to get to be able to connect to a bus that does go there directly.

Safely on board the U47 and it was only at this point that I realised the train went through Dortmund Stadthaus, where I had been an hour before. This explained why they sold tickets to the airport from there, namely, because the train to the airport went from there. Logical really.

The U-Bahn stops at Aplerbeck and passengers then get off and walk around 50 metres to the bus stop.

Rather oddly, the buses were only once every hour, although fortunately, I only had a wait of fifteen minutes. I was there on a Sunday, so perhaps the service is less regular then, but it was a busy bus when I got on.

On the bus and I was able to get the front seat, I still get a childlike sense of excitement about that.

I liked that there was a button there which is by the window of the front seat, as often buses don’t have anything nearby (I don’t think many people spend time worrying about things like this). This is a minor design detail, but sometimes the simplest things are the best.

And safely at the airport with just two hours to go before the flight. Perilously close I tell you… Anyway, everything went smoothly despite my faffing about. The moral of this entire, and slightly dull, story is that the direct train costs nearly €10 whereas the combined train/bus costs around €4, so I liked the latter one best.

April 16, 2026
Cologne to Dortmund with FlixTrain

I have a lot more to write about Cologne, as I’m partial to wittering on, but I’d better catch up with the rest of the trip I made last week before I forget the last bit of it. I had spent three nights in Cologne and I was then spending one night in Dortmund before leaving Germany. So, that meant a train journey and I like a train journey.

Mine was the 12:14 train to Leipzig.

This is Cologne’s main railway station and it first opened in 1859, replacing the rather awkward and sub-optimal arrangement of separate railway termini that had grown up as different companies did their own thing in the traditional nineteenth century manner. Putting the station beside the cathedral was, on one level, completely logical, because it placed rail travellers right in the middle of the city. On another level, it was a bold little decision to squeeze one of Germany’s key railway hubs next to one of Europe’s great Gothic buildings and simply hope the whole arrangement would somehow look dignified.

And they’ve failed in my view with the new building, there’s the grand cathedral on the right and the rather dumpy frontage of the railway station. But, it’s rare for a central railway station to be this central, I’m impressed at their forward planning.

It is an odd mix really, but anyway, back inside.

The current railway station is largely the result of rebuilding in the late nineteenth century and then, of course, the rather undesirable outcome on the city from the Second World War. After 1945, the station was rebuilt and it remains one of Germany’s most important railway interchanges, at least being quite grand inside.

I was meant to be getting the train from platform 5, but then the Brussels train was running late, so we were shunted to platform 4. This was not much of an inconvenience, since it’s a walk of around three metres.

And here comes the FlixTrain storming into the platform. I’ve taken many FlixBus journeys, but this is the first version by train. I’d note that the prices were low, this journey cost under £10. Trains in Germany are generally cheap as it’s possible to pay £60 a month and then get unlimited free local travel on trains, something I’d love to be introduced in the UK. This FlixTrain isn’t included in that offer as it’s a private operator, but they made lots of clear announcements about that.

Everyone is given a seat, although passengers can change it on the app, and mine was in the front carriage. Unfortunately, that was quite a way from where I was standing, and there were quite a lot of passengers shuffling along to the appropriate place. I meandered slowly, there were some passengers that seemed entirely panic-stricken by the whole process.

The interior was spacious and everything was clearly signed.

The train wasn’t that busy and there was no-one in the window seat for the journey, so it felt spacious. There were no power points, but the seats were comfortable enough.

I was impressed that there was enough space to use my laptop, it’s often the situation on trains where the tray isn’t wide enough or the seat pitch doesn’t allow it.

A photo of the carriage with its wavy ceiling.

We arrived into Dortmund 35 minutes late, but I’m used to lengthy delays on the German rail network.

And the outside of Dortmund railway station.

I was impressed at the whole arrangement as the booking process was easy and used the same app as the bus service. It was clear where to get the train from, the seating options were easy to understand and the pricing was firmly towards the lower end of the scale. I’d certainly use this again and I hope that FlixTrain continues to expand their operations.

April 16, 2026
Dortmund – German Brewery Museum (Declining Number of Breweries in the City)

More on the brewery museum in other posts, but there was an interesting display at this museum at just how brewing has changed in Dortmund. From tens of brewers at the beginning of the twentieth century, the number had fallen sharply by 1958 and it was down to just one by the beginning of this century.

1901 and there was no shortage of breweries to surprise and delight the locals.

1958 and consolidation and buyouts had begun.

2006 and down to just one brewery in the city, which is Dortmunder Actien Brauerei (DAB) who are owned by Dr. Oetker of pizza fame.

June 25, 2025
Dortmund – German Football Museum (Sole Remaining Ticket from 1903 German Football Championship)

This ticket is the only one surviving from the first major football championship to be held in Germany. This event marked the beginning of organised national football in Germany, albeit in a fashion that can only be described as enthusiastically chaotic. At the time, football in Germany was still in its infancy and regional leagues were the norm. The Deutscher Fußball-Bund (DFB), founded in 1900, had only recently decided it was time to crown a national champion. So, they came up with a straightforward plan which was to take the champions of various regional football associations and have them compete in a knockout tournament. Well, that’s what their decadent plan was and what could possibly go wrong?

Only six teams actually entered: VfB Leipzig (Central Germany), DFC Prag (Bohemia – not in Germany, but they were part of the DFB), Karlsruher FV (Southwest), Britannia Berlin (Berlin-Brandenburg), Altonaer FC 93 (Northwest), and 1. FC Pforzheim (Southern Germany). Several other qualified teams either couldn’t afford to travel or simply forgot to show up, it feels slightly sub-optimal for the organisers. The final match was played on 31 May 1903 in Altona, now a part of Hamburg, between VfB Leipzig and DFC Prag. DFC Prag were based in what is now the Czech Republic, but since Bohemia was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and DFB membership was open to clubs across German-speaking Europe, they were allowed in. The final was played in front of around 2,000 spectators, which wasn’t exactly what they were getting at Wembley. VfB Leipzig won 7–2, becoming the first German football champions. Their player Heinrich Riso scored two goals and earned minor celebrity status, at least within the very niche world of 1900s Saxon football.

Karlsruher FV lodged an official complaint that they hadn’t been told about their semifinal which is highly sub-optimal. They were meant to be playing in Leipzig, but Karlsruhe received a telegram apparently from the German Football Association telling them that their match had been cancelled. The telegram was about as genuine as a politicans’ promises and they got disqualified.

The trophy was a silver championship shield, which Leipzig proudly took home, probably on a very slow train knowing Deutsche Bahn. This slightly farcical but pioneering tournament laid the groundwork for what would become one of Europe’s most prestigious football traditions. The German championship continued in a knockout format until the Bundesliga was created in 1963, bringing league football into a modern, more reliably scheduled age. Anyway, I digress, it’s quite impressive there’s only one ticket surviving and it’s found it forever home here.

June 17, 2025
Dortmund – Mercure Dortmund City

I had a one night stay at the Mercure Dortmund City a few days ago and it’s fair to say that I rather liked the hotel.

I had arrived, without sleep, into Dortmund so I thought that I’d go to the reception desk at 14:00 to see if the room might possibly be ready. It was and the staff member there was friendly, engaging and personable. The welcome gift here is offered in this large glass bowl, so I went for some chocolate to give me energy. Although I was so tired I forgot to eat it and found it in my bag the next day (the usual energy I bring to things evident there….).

The room, which was an upgrade from the cheap and cheerful £40 one that I’d actually reserved. I got a Nespresso machine, a highlight of an upgrade, and all the trappings of someone who pretends they understand crema and intensity levels. There was also a large bath in the bathroom, something sadly being removed from hotels at some pace at the moment.

And a large bottle of water which given the extreme heat of Dortmund was much appreciated.

Some decorative items on the wall of the corridor. I didn’t understand them, but they were trying and I respect that.

The bar area, everything spotlessly clean again.

My welcome drink of the Dortmunder Kronen Pilsener which was light, hoppy and a bit generic, but improved considerably by the supply of snacks.

The breakfast was excellent and it’s a reminder that this is something Germany can do better than most other countries. No distraction of unnecessary hot food, just delicious cold items such as meats and cheeses.

Yoghurt, salad items and bread in the background.

This went well on my yoghurt.

And guacamole! Every hotel should offer this and I apologise that they lost quite a lot of it to me that morning (along with quite a few olives), but guacamole and bread is a delightful thing. There were also little cakes, rich coffee and numerous juices. A delight.

I read through the on-line reviews and most are broadly positive, although a few uncultured heathens complained about the breakfast, but I hope that the hotel ignored them. The extreme heat of Dortmund that weekend, when it was reaching 33°C which is evidently excessive, meant that the room temperature was just marginally above where I’d like it, but the air conditioning was doing its best.

I left my bag behind reception for the day and I’m pleased to say they returned it in the same immaculate state that I gave it to them. Everything about this hotel was clean, organised, functional and worked. Actually, it’s a shame that the hotel doesn’t operate the Dortmund public transportation system, but I may have already written enough about that.

June 17, 2025
Dortmund – German Football Museum (Manuel Neuer’s Football Shirt from 2024 Euros)

This football shirt on display at the German Football Museum was worn by the German goalkeeper Manual Neuer for the Spain vs Germany match which took place in Stuttgart on 5 July 2024 as part of the Euros. This was the quarter-final match which Spain won, with Neuer announcing his retirement from international games shortly after the end of the tournament. But, there’s an element of interest to these exhibits as only a few months ago this shirt was being worn in a game watched by millions and the hopes of a nation rested on the players taking part. There would have been a sense of energy, excitement and nervousness when the goalkeeper put his shirt on, but it’s now all over and it’ll likely be in this museum permanently. I rather like the transience here of an active component of a sporting event now not exactly faded into obscurity as it’s on display, but its time as a functional thing has now passed. I should perhaps get out more….

June 17, 2025