The vuvuzelas are not just a collective drone in a literal sense or an audio sense. As phenomena, they become a metaphor underlying my whole trip. Everything else I experience while traveling in Düsseldorf—the sites, the history, the people, and the way in which childhood memories come spiraling back to the current moment—begins to feel like a grand set of resonances harmonizing the vuvuzelas.

Žižkov was an old working class neighborhood, riddled with at least a century of arts, literature and political resistance. At the time of my visit it still seemed grungy and grainy and gorgeous and murky and sentimental.