I may have spent ten days in the city. But in pieces. I would come in the early afternoon, spend the night in one of the cheaper hotels, and then the next day, usually at dawn, I would walk down the main street of the pedestrian zone to the train station. That's how I managed to catch an early bus to the airport.
For me, Dortmund was the sound of the wheels of my suitcase rolling at dawn, a sound that returned to me through the empty street like a broken echo.
Dortmund is also the air gate of the Balkans. Thanks to the Hungarian low-budget company, from the airport, which is half an hour away from the city, people travel to places that in Western countries have hardly heard of: Nis, Tuzla, Cluj.
Planetary Borussia

By the way, hardly any travel guide recommends Dortmund. The city doesn't have the Cologne Cathedral or the Brandenburg Gate, it didn't use marketing tricks to create the myth of a make-up capital of beer like Munich. But Dortmund has Borussia.
For the city, it was and remains much more than the yellow and black football club, the only one that was able to successfully oppose the mighty Bayern Munich from time to time.
This symbiosis of the city and the club is visible as soon as you leave the train station towards the center. Next to the wide stairs that lead to the pedestrian area, on the right side, the wall is written in black and yellow: "Welcome to the capital of football". Next to that is a shop for Borussia fans - the jersey costs a paltry eighty euros, but for true love, money means nothing. And some hundred meters behind it is the Football Museum, a modern and representative glass cube packed with many things that make every football fan happy.

Borussia has the biggest stadium in Germany. It used to be called Westphalia Stadium - but according to the new customs in football, the stadium was named after the sponsor "Signal Iduna Park".
And beer is inextricably linked with the city's identity. The privilege to brew beer in the city was acquired in 1293. When the working, mining tradition was added to that, and then football embodied in Borussia, the mixture that makes up Dortmund today was created. An anecdote confirms this alliance. They say that the young men who founded Borussia in 1909 did so because the pope forbade them to play football on Sundays inside the church's sports section. When they met to found a club without pop - in the pub there was an advertisement of the Borussia beer hall on the wall. They didn't have a name, so they borrowed it.
The football museum is not the only interesting cultural institution that is not afraid of contact with other forms of life. For example, the Museum of the History of Art and Culture, located in a representative building where the Šparkase bank once stood, has, in addition to collections related to the cultural and artistic development of humanity, a permanent exhibition whose theme is geodesy. All engineering-oriented vocations, with geometers in the first place, thus have in Germany their temple of culture where they can see how their science of surveying the earth has developed over the centuries.
A classic with the smell of an oriental grill
Although Dortmund also has its Latin name - Tremonia - the foundations of the city are not ancient Roman buildings. The Romans never ruled so far east of the Rhine. The city was founded by the Frankish kings, long after the fall of the Roman Empire. In the previous two centuries, the city was known for steel, coal and beer. Now that Germany has decided to cut back on coal-based energy production, Dortmund is transforming into a city of insurance companies, small businesses and knowledge - out of a population of almost six hundred thousand, more than 50.000 are students, mostly at a well-known technical university.

If I go from the train station to the left of the stairs, next to the city library, after a ten-minute walk I will come across the Koncerthaus - concert house. It was built in the middle of the district that adjoins the railway station in the northern part of the city core. In that area, more than half of the population is of foreign origin. The philharmonic building best demonstrates the city's will to be something more than an industrial metropolis looking for a place in the post-industrial era. On the site of the old cinema Union, which was demolished together with the nearby department store, a representative building was created whose acoustics can withstand world competition. Since September 2002, Dortmund means something on the map of cities with large philharmonic stages.
Brickenfirtel - that's the name of this neighborhood - it remained famous for its fast food restaurants - from the classic hamburger to the Lebanese "shavarma" chicken to the Turkish doner. I spent a pleasant hour there, munching on oriental-flavored food, sipping industrial lemonade and watching the liveliness of Brickenstrasse.
Port on the canal
In its history, Dortmund has become one of the largest port cities in Europe - without a river or sea. After seven years of construction, the Dortmund-Ems canal was opened in 1899, which actually connected the ambitious industrial city with river and sea traffic flows. Thus, Swedish iron ore began to arrive in the city's ironworks by waterway - of which the Canal occupied over 200 kilometers - and German coal, as well as highly valued steel, was shipped abroad.

Since in this century that river traffic is increasingly focused on other products, the old industrial district around the port of Dortmund is becoming a favorite place to live. Although this part of the city was badly damaged in the Second World War, many older buildings remained undamaged or were repaired according to the original plans. In times when everyone wanted to live in the center, the rents here were affordable. This first attracted students, then the so-called "creative industry" - people from the world of art, design, culture - followed by companies from the information technology industry. The gastronomic offer has become more and more colorful. That it would eventually become fancy to live there and go out. All this reminded me of the development of the area around Betonhala in Belgrade.
In the shadow of Saint Reynold
It's time for a coffee in the shade, on the city's main square - Alter Markt - close to the most striking church in the center, which is evangelical, but has a clear Romanesque structure. It is dedicated to the patron saint of the city, whose official name is Reynolds, but he has many names, depending on who is telling the story about him. In the Rhineland he is Reinhold Cologne. However, just as medieval scribes used to write a new one over the scraped original text, so below the figure of the Cologne saint who was the patron saint of masons and sculptors, because he carried the stones for the construction of the first Cologne cathedral, a smaller historical-artistic figure of a nobleman and warrior who in French he was called Reno, and in Italian Rinaldo Montalbanski. Over time, Dortmund turned those two stories into one, its own, which in brief goes like this: according to the French heroic folk song - chanson de geste - a nobleman resented his uncle Charlemagne, defied him for seven years. His mother, Karl's sister Aja, begged her brother to reconcile with her cousin. The strong man agreed, but the punishment he pronounced hit the epic hero in the heart - his horse Bayard had to pay with his life, which, as is known from Šarac Kraljević Marko, knows how to be more than a horse to his knight. They drowned him in the river. Out of grief for his horse, the nobleman leaves for the Holy Land. Here, the Dortmund version of the story continues with Saint Reinold returning from the Holy Land to haul stones for the church in Cologne. He was killed by other wage earners because he took less money for hard work. In today's vocabulary, he applied dumping in the formation of the price of his work. Allegedly, the carriage that took his body to the funeral did not stop in front of the Cologne church cemetery, but voluntarily headed towards Dortmund. After the hundred kilometers separating the two cities, the cart stopped exactly where it should. The Dortmund church named after the city's saint is now on that spot.

Ascension, destruction, resurrection
But that's not all. In the representation of the people from Dormund, the saint became above all - a fighter. While in Cologne he is perceived as a peaceful worker of God, in Dortmund he is credited with some war miracles. When the bishop of Cologne raised an army against the unruly inhabitants of Dortmund in the late 14th century, many in the city swore that their saint stood with the defenders on the walls, catching stone javelins from catapults and hurling them back at the enemy.
That the Dortmund saint is an epic hero became clear even in the First World War. The community of Protestant believers gathered around Reynold's church - and the Protestant version of Christianity was dominant in the city - decided to donate the church bells to the German Imperial Army - to be melted down into cannons.
That excess of patriotism a few decades later will be unimaginable. Everyone can see for themselves on the Peace Square, where the peace monument stands between the old and the new Town Hall. Dortmund knows why it has such a square, why the second square in the center is named after Hiroshima, why it has a peace monument. Dortmund paid for Nazi megalomaniac and criminal ambitions with complete destruction.

In the Second World War, the city, as one of the main industrial centers of the Ruhr region, survived 105 air raids. Over 22.000 tons of bombs fell on the city. In just one day, March 1945, 4.800 tons of bombs fell on the city. The church near which I sit and think about the whims of history, while drinking my coffee, also suffered. The church was rebuilt in 1956.
You'll never walk alone
This Saturday, Borussia is visiting Freiburg. In the heart of the city, all the gardens in front of the pubs are full, people eat strong food, drink strong beer, cheer. There you will see women with black and yellow scarves, flushed with missed chances, a man who looks like a businessman in an expensive suit, except that he is wearing a Borussia jersey under a light, summer jacket. Here you will also see a homeless man sleeping in the middle of the street, while the roar of fans erupts all around, because Borussia scored a goal in Freiburg.

The crowd is calmly watched by the monumental figure of the "Blower" who adorns the fountain. He points to the medieval Dortmund custom of providing entertainment in the market square by traveling musicians. The pandemic has ruined their work this season, but the figure is there to remind that cities without music are deaf and dumb. Music continues communication interrupted by other means. That is why the monument called "Communication?" of the German sculptor Heinrich Brockmeier has been warning us not to keep quiet for almost four decades like his two seated and floating bronze figures in Kampstrasse.

This is a city where they have been moving for hundreds of years. First, from two centuries ago, Polish miners. Then, in the sixties, Yugoslavs, Italians, Greeks and Turks. Finally, refugees from the Arab world. Their children are already wearing the yellow Borussia jersey on their way to school.
Next time I have to choose a day when Borussia plays at home. And get the ticket on time. To hear a chorus of Borussia fans sing live:
Walk on, walk on
With hope in your heart
And you'll never walk alone
It's time to say goodbye to Dortmund for who knows when. To move on, with hope in my heart. In the morning, the sound of my suitcase's wheels will once again fill these empty streets. The city that hasn't woken up, where the day is divided from the night, if only for a moment, is only mine. If I listen, I can hear his big, miner's heart beating softly from the depths. And then again I know that I never walk that street alone.

Bonus video:
