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Applying iPad Apps in the Classroom: Goal? Language Proficiency!

Nicola WorkBy Nicola Work, Ph.D, Assistant Professor of French, Department of Global Languages and Cultures, University of Dayton.

With the growing interest in using iPads for teaching, the inclusion of technology as part of the 21st century skills, and the availability of iPads in classrooms, it becomes more and more important to create language lessons that make effective use of the device. Often teachers and learners alike are overwhelmed by the new technology and the wealth of apps that are available. When searching the Apple Store, for example, several language learning apps focus on grammar, vocabulary drills, and games in a variety of languages. However, it is not the objective of this article to highlight apps for grammar and verb drills. Instead, it is the goal of this article to present a sample of free-of-charge apps that were not necessarily created for language instruction but that can be used in a creative way to encourage critical thinking, enhance language proficiency, and integrate into existing curricula and lessons.

As one of the 21st century skills, the integration of technology into language teaching, curricula, and assessment is imperative. Besides preparing students for the demands of the digital age, there are many other reasons for integrating technology into today’s language classroom. First, using technology is appealing to today’s learner because they are generally comfortable with it. Second, technology can help enhance language learning and differentiate instruction. Since students learn at different rates and have diverse learning styles, technology can help reach all students in various ways. Third, technology can engage students to be active participants in learning and be involved in meaningful, interactive activities. When using mobile technology, for instance, ideally each student has one device, allowing them to actively participate and practice skills targeted in a given activity. Fourth, using technology increases student motivation and creates opportunities to work collaboratively. Collaboration is very easy with iPads thanks to many of today’s apps and readily available Wi-Fi access in most classrooms. Finally, technology can also help relate the curriculum to life outside of the classroom, connect US classrooms to classes abroad, and provide authentic target language and culture examples. In this sense, it makes language study practical and significant because students get a chance to use the foreign language for real purposes.

One technological tool that can help offer students a complete, updated, 21st century education is the iPad. The iPad, first released in 2010 by Apple, Inc, is a very portable, light, easy-to-use, versatile mobile device requiring no desk, giving access to learning anytime and anywhere. It represents THE device for creative options in teaching and learning, encourages individuality, and is very attractive to today’s 21st century students. According to Leonard (2013), there were 10 million iPads in schools across the United States in June 2013, with the number continuously on the rise. The iPad provides a myriad of learning applications and ways to transfer subject matter and promotes a variety of skills. As of June 2013, there are more than 900,000 apps by Apple and third parties available in the App Store (Tomkins, 2013). However, iPads have often been labeled as expensive and distracting consumer devices that are unsuitable for working and in-class use (Murphy, 2014). Because iPads only have a virtual keyboard typing longer passages can be cumbersome. Moreover, many professionals cite workflow issues (i.e. saving, exporting, sharing files) and the lack of multitasking functionalities (i.e. multiple open windows) as

This does not mean, however, that simply handing out iPads to language learners is enough to promote learning; careful planning, practice and sequencing is necessary for technology to have a positive impact on language learning.

disadvantages of the iPad. Nevertheless, for me and many other educators, iPads are the device of choice because they are portable, cordless, versatile, accessible, and have a long battery life. Lessons that include the iPad are designed to be interactive in nature, actively involving students, encouraging their creativity, critical thinking and problem-solving skills. iPad Apps allow students, for instance, to creatively write their own eBooks or cartoons, to solve problems in simulations or by researching a given topic, to practice language in a variety of contexts, and to receive authentic language input. Individual learning styles and speeds can also be addressed when using iPads. Every student can complete a given activity at their own speed and use a variety of apps to reach a given goal. This does not mean, however, that simply handing out iPads to language learners is enough to promote learning; careful planning, practice and sequencing is necessary for technology to have a positive impact on language learning.

Just like technology, foreign language teaching has undergone advancements that have drastically changed the way we teach, evolving from earlier rote drills, memorization and grammar-translation approaches to more communicative and proficiency-oriented models. Thus, it is imperative to align new teaching techniques involving technology with current methodologies.

Bloom’s Taxonomy was created in 1956 under the leadership of educational psychologist Dr. Benjamin Bloom in order to promote higher forms of thinking in education. Its goal was to encourage skills such as analysis and evaluation instead of merely remembering facts (i.e., rote memorization). The revised pyramid reflects a more active form of thinking and consists from top to bottom of creating, evaluating, analyzing, applying, understanding and remembering. (Anderson et al., 2001).

Figure 1. Bloom’s Taxonomy: Original and revised versions.
Figure 1.
Bloom’s Taxonomy: Original and revised versions.

Apple’s App store has a variety of free-of-charge and paid apps that align well with Bloom’s Taxonomy. The diagram below shows a limited selection of possible iPad apps.

Bloom’s Taxonomy for iPad, with options of creating, evaluating, analyzing, applying, understanding, remembering..
Figure 2.
Bloom’s Taxonomy for iPad.Source:

As educators, we ought to encourage higher order thinking skills in our classes. In a language class, this means moving away from merely memorizing vocabulary, grammar and culture towards applying concepts, analyzing and evaluating language and culture and creating with the language.

Concerned about preparing today’s students for tomorrow’s world, the Partnership for 21st Century Skills and the International Society for Technology in Education have drafted frameworks and guidelines outlining what today’s students need to know to meet the challenges of the modern world. In addition to core subjects (such as language arts, math, science and history), these two organizations emphasize the importance of including 21st century interdisciplinary themes (e.g. global awareness, financial, economic, business and entrepreneurial literacy, civic and health literacies) and weaving 21st century skills (e.g. creativity and innovation, communication and collaboration, research and information fluency, critical thinking, problem solving and decision-making) into core subjects. These 21st century skills can be divided into three categories: (1) learning and innovation, (2) digital literacy skills, and (3) career life. The first category encourages (a) the creation of meaningful and authentic assessment and activities that promote higher order thinking skills and (b) the integration of lifelong skills and content into lessons, units, and activities. The second category emphasizes the need to incorporate technology into the classroom. Finally, the third category underlines the need to work effectively and creatively with team members (Partnership). In the graphic below, student outcomes are represented by the arches of the rainbow, and 21st century learning support systems are represented by the pools at the bottom (Partnership). P21 also collaborated with ACTFL to create a custom version of the partnership especially designed for language teachers.

Infographic of 21st century student outcomes and support systems in language learning and assessment.
Figure 3.
21st century framework.

Many of the apps available in the Appstore are suitable for language learning and help develop these 21st century skills.

21st Century Skills & Literacies for iPads and connecting apps.
Figure 4. 21st Century Skills and Literacies for iPads. Source:

It is easy to include several of the 21st century skills in language classes in addition to communication, which lies at the heart of language learning. Using iPads (or any other technology) teaches learners how to access, evaluate, and use information (Information Literacy), how to analyze and create media (Media Literacy), and how to apply technology (ICT Literacy). Many apps available in the App Store allow collaboration among learners and encourage critical thinking and creativity. Finally, networking with other learners and native speakers allows for cultural language exchanges in the target language and is facilitated by the myriad of social media apps available (Global Literacy and Network Literacy).

In 1996, a task force representing a variety of languages, levels of instruction, program models, and geographic regions created the “Standards for Foreign Language Learning: Preparing for the 21st Century,” in an attempt to define content standards, namely what students should know and be able to do in the target language. This document “represents an unprecedented consensus among educators, business leaders, government and community on the definition and role of foreign language instruction in American education.” (ACTFL, 2014). The Standards are comprised of the following categories, often called The Five C’s: Communication, Cultures, Connections, Comparisons and Communities. First, students should be able to communicate in languages other than English and use language for communication in real-life situations (Communications). Second, students should gain knowledge and understanding of other cultures and, hence, be able to understand other people’s points of view, ways of life, and contributions to the world (Cultures). Third, language instruction should be connected with other disciplines (Connections). Fourth, students should be able to discover patterns, make predictions, and analyze similarities and differences across languages and cultures and, in turn, come to understand their native culture better (Comparisons). Finally, students should participate in multilingual communities at home and around the world, thus extending the language class beyond the classroom (Communities) (ACTFL).

ACTFL logo. Values of communication, cultures, connections, comparisons, and communities.

And since, according to the task force that created this document, language and communication are at the heart of the human experience, the Communications category is divided into three distinct modes of communication: (1) interpretive mode, (2) interpersonal mode, and (3) presentational mode.

The five C's and modes of communication.
Figure 6. The Five C’s and modes of communication. Source:

In the interpersonal mode, students engage in conversation, provide and obtain information, express feelings and emotions and exchange information. This mode encompasses either the skills reading/writing or the skills speaking/listening. As part of the interpretive mode, students understand and interpret written or spoken language on a variety of topics. For the presentational mode, students present information, concepts and ideas to listeners and readers on a variety of topics. This involves speaking and writing in the foreign language (ACTFL, 2014). These modes should be incorporated into all foreign language classes in order to assure that learners are linguistically and culturally equipped to communicate successfully. A variety of iPad apps can help target the different modes of communication.

Proficiency-oriented language teaching, a product of educators and linguists who had grown dissatisfied with audio-lingual and grammar-translation methods, represents a general framework for organizing instruction, curriculum, and assessment rather than a method or theory. At the heart of it lies the importance of being able to communicate in the foreign language in real-life situations. Thus, in a proficiency-oriented classroom, students learn a language in context and try to apply their knowledge in real-life situations. New vocabulary and constructions are presented in context and their cultural connotations are highlighted. Authentic language input plays an important role in the proficiency-oriented classroom. From early on, the target language is used and students are encouraged to express meaning in personalized communicative activities. The classroom is student-centered and emphasizes partner and group work. The instructor, in a role of mediator, circulates the room and gives individual feedback and help. Grammar still plays a role in the proficiency-oriented classroom but is often introduced inductively to encourage critical thinking and address different learning styles. Language use in the proficiency-oriented class should be personalized, creative, communicative, for a purpose and mimic real-life situations (Omaggio Hadley, 2001). Many iPad apps fit perfectly into a proficiency-oriented classroom because they encourage target language use for a purpose and in a creative and personalized way.

Based on the teaching frameworks outlined above, a selection of free-of-charge iPad apps which encourage the use of the target language outside of class is presented below. These apps can help develop several skills and literacies addressed by current teaching models such as

Note that the use of iPads and apps should never be simply for the sake of using technology, but to fulfill specific goals for enhancing student learning, to achieve overall class and learning objectives, and to increase student motivation and involvement in the learning process.

higher order thinking skills (Bloom’s Taxonomy), 21st century skills and associated literacies, the Five C’s and different modes of communication (National Standards) and creative, personalized language use for a real purpose (proficiency-oriented teaching). For each app, I present (1) a short description of its capabilities, (2) a table outlining the various skills, suggested proficiency level and suitable topics, and (3) explicit teaching ideas and topics. These teaching ideas are suitable for and adaptable to various proficiency levels, valid for most languages as well as appropriate for learners of different age groups. Note that the use of iPads and apps should never be simply for the sake of using technology, but to fulfill specific goals for enhancing student learning, to achieve overall class and learning objectives, and to increase student motivation and involvement in the learning process.

Comics Head Lite by NextWave Multimedia Inc is a free app that enables students to tell stories and share experiences in a visually compelling format – comics and photo journals. Students pick a panel template, background (indoor or outdoor), character (type, male/female, action), and speech bubbles for each square of their comic strip. The text is typed in each speech bubble. A variety of fonts and text sizes are available and stduents can use the international iPad keyboards to input characters and diacritics from various languages. The possibilities are endless; everything is movable on the screen, customizable in terms of size and color, and students can add as many characters as they like. Students can save their work as an image, or an editable file on their iPad and can share it via email or social media.

Table 1. Comics Head Lite app and its compatibility with teaching frameworks.

Comics Head Lite
Capabilities Cartoons
Bloom’s Taxonomy Creating, Applying
Standards Communication; ext: Comparisons/Culture
21st Century Skills Creativity, Innovation, Information, Media and Technology Skills; Communication, Problem-Solving
Modes of Communication Presentational; ext: Interpretive
Skills Writing; ext: Reading
Proficiency Level All
Topics Dialogues, Question and Answer Sessions, Solving Problems; Stories

Comics Head Lite is suitable for a variety of proficiency levels and can be used with learners from early on. Novice learners can practice greetings in the foreign language (see Figure 7), asking how people are doing and introducing themselves to others by creating comic dialogs. At the intermediate level, students can produce dialogs such as question and answer sessions or interviews about the weather, likes and dislikes, or food. These dialogs could encompass ordering food in a restaurant or solving problems such as giving directions or planning an event. At the intermediate-high level these stories could entail events in the past or in the future, a debate, or a trip. As an extension after the creation of the comic strips, students could be asked to read some of their classmates’ comics and re-enact them in class and the class could pick the winning comic strip.

Comics Head screenshot of French greetings cartoon set in Paris.
Figure 7.
Comics Head screenshot and example of French greetings cartoon.

Our Story by The Open University was originally developed by child specialists at The Open University to enable young children to take part in fun games to help them hone the skills necessary to learn how to read. However, this is an excellent storytelling and book-creating app that can be used in a variety of ways in the language classroom. First, students take a series of pictures with the iPad camera for the story. From within the app, students select all the pictures they would like to use and drag them onto a timeline in whatever order they see fit. Then, by selecting each picture, students can enter text by typing on the keyboard or by recording a narration with the built-in microphone. Finally, they can select a title for their book and save the project. It can be exported as a PDF file in a variety of sizes already including page numbers, so students can fold the print-out version and create a physical book. If students recorded a narration, this project is exported – also via email – as a slide-show.

Logo of Man and child using technology.

Table 2. Our Story app and its compatibility with teaching frameworks.

Our Story
Capabilities Story books, Story slide shows
Bloom’s Taxonomy Creating, Applying
Standards Communication; Culture
21st Century Skills Creativity, Innovation, Communication, ICT Literacies
Modes of Communication Presentational; ext: Interpretive
Skills Writing/Speaking; ext: Reading/Listening
Proficiency Level All
Topics Descriptions, Portraits, Narrations, Short Compositions, Creative Writing Stories

Our Story can be used at any level to creatively write in the foreign language. Beginning learners can write a short description of themselves and/or their university life supported by pictures they take. This app would also be a great asset for writing about a daily routine where students practice the reflexive verbs and illustrate their story with pictures they take. Students could also present their family and write a story about them; each photo of a family member and pet and their hometown can be supported by a caption in the target language to practice physical descriptions, as well as likes and dislikes. A portrait of a person (e.g., a best friend) would also be a great topic to use with Our Story. At the intermediate level, the Our Story app could be used to narrate an event in the past or in the future (e.g. a trip, a party, or any other event) with the help of pictures. Finally, Our Story would be great to present cultural information about a famous person in history, a film, a book, an author or musician, a dish, or a festival. Learners would research some of the information, include pictures (from books, or the web, or their own) and create a short story book describing their cultural topic. As an extension, these books would be excellent for other students to read, thus practicing their reading comprehension skills.

Our Story app screenshot with camera roll.
Figure 8.
Our Story app screenshot.

Figure 9. Picture book “my office”.
Figure 9.
Picture book “my office”.

Photocard by Bill Atkinson by Bill Atkinson Photography is a free postcard app that allows users to create unique custom-designed postcards using one’s own photos or Bill’s expressive nature photos, and send them as eCards. After selecting the image for the card, students can type a message on the back in a variety of fonts and languages, address the card, and add decorative stamps and stickers. There are hundreds of stickers and stamps to choose from themes such as smileys, travel, food, sports, animals, holidays, and many more. The individualized postcard can then be sent as an eCard via email.

Photocard logo.

Table 3. Photocard app and its compatibility with teaching frameworks.

Photocard by Bill Atkinson
Capabilities Write e-cards (even with short recorded message)
Bloom’s Taxonomy Creating, Applying (how to write a postcard) ext: understanding
Standards Communication, Cultures ext: Comparisons
21st Century Skills Creativity, Innovation, Critical Thinking, Problem-Solving, ICT literacies, Communication
Modes of Communication Presentational; ext: Interpretive
Skills Writing; ext: Reading
Proficiency Level All
Topics Write postcards about vacations, past events, activities, for birthdays, holidays

With this postcard writing app, students can learn the target culture’s conventions of formatting while creatively using the target language. At the beginning level, students can write a very short postcard introducing themselves or their family. At the intermediate levels, students can write about a past vacation, a virtual visit of a country, a country, famous person, or about a certain custom. Students could send these postcards to the whole class, to one classmate, to pen pals within the same school, within the US, or abroad, and copy the teacher. Intermediate-level students can have a real exchange with native-speaking students sharing holiday customs and other cultural information. Finally, a nice gesture would be to send every student a short postcard on their birthday.

Photocard app screenshot in French language.
Figure 10.
Photocard app screenshot.
Postcard “my vacation” in French.
Figure 11.
Postcard “my vacation”.

PicView by HOP SA is a free app that allows students to voice annotate pictures. The pictures can be taken or imported from camera roll. Once a picture is selected, students can give a title, select a frame, and apply filters to creatively modify the picture. Then, a voice recording will be added to the picture. After creation, the final product can be published to PicView, Facebook, Twitter, or can be emailed.

PicView app icon.

Table 4. PicView app and its compatibility with teaching frameworks.

Capabilities Voice annotate pictures
Bloom’s Taxonomy Creating
Standards Communication; ext: Comparisons/Culture
21st Century Skills Creativity, Innovation, Critical Thinking, Problem-Solving, ICT literacies, Communication
Modes of Communication Presentational; ext: Interpretive
Skills Speaking; ext: Listening
Proficiency Level All
Topics Auto-portraits, descriptions of people, places, and things; comparisons

PicView is suitable for all levels of proficiency and is adaptable to many topics. At the lower proficiency levels, students can take a picture of themselves and record an auto-portrait stating their name, their age, information about their family, what they study, and what they like to do. With pictures of people (e.g., classmates, family members, or themselves), physical descriptions (e.g., hair color, eye color, height) or clothing and colors can be targeted. Topics for intermediate students could be describing their room, their house, a movie poster, a famous painting, or a menu. The choices are endless. Teachers can also provide students with the same picture (students then take a picture of it to import into the app) and have students describe the given picture. This is a nice way of assessing their level of proficiency and might be done as a means of evaluation. Cultural comparisons could also be done via PicView by providing students with a picture of cultural importance (e.g., food, clothing, streets with cars). Consequently, they can tell what they see in the picture and what cultural differences they notice. Finally, as an extension and to practice their listening skills, students can be asked to listen to two or three other projects and either write a small composition about them or present to the class what they heard (depending on their proficiency level).

PicView app screenshot.
Figure 12.
PicView app screenshot.
PicView Project “my cat” with recording.
Figure 13.
Project “my cat” with recording.

Tellagami by Tellagami Labs Inc. allows users to create and share quick animated messages called gamis. This app is suitable for a variety of topics and is adaptable to various proficiency levels. It is very easy and intuitive to use; students create their avatar and customize it by selecting hair color and style, eye color, skin tone, outfit, shoes, and emotion. An existing background can be chosen or a picture imported. The avatar can be resized, moved freely on the background, and finally be rotated. At the end, students have the option to give the avatar a voice by recording a message. The final product, a so-called gami, can be saved to the camera roll, shared online, or sent via email.

Tellagami app icon

Table 5. Tellagami app and its compatibility with teaching frameworks.

Capabilities Avatar animated voice messages
Bloom’s Taxonomy Creating, Applying
Standards Communication; ext: Comparisons/Culture
21st Century Skills Creativity, Innovation, Problem-Solving, ICT literacies, Communication
Modes of Communication Presentational; ext: Interpretive
Skills Speaking; ext: Listening
Proficiency Level All
Topics Auto-portraits, short presentations of famous people, classmate

Its application in the language classroom is varied. For lower-level proficiencies or at the beginning of a school year or semester, students can introduce themselves talking about their age, personality, physical traits, their likes and dislikes, and the classes they take. They can also describe their family or a family member, or one of their classmates in detail (after an in-class question and answer session, for example). At the intermediate level, learners can pretend they are a famous person or a historical figure and present themselves from their perspectives. This can be done without mentioning their person’s name, and the other students, as an extension, can listen to them and guess. Also, learners can talk about what they did last weekend, last summer, or during holidays to practice narrating in the past, or about their plans for next weekend, summer, or vacation to practice narrating in the future.

Tellagami app screenshot of woman, with voice recording.
Figure 14.
Tellagami app screenshot.
 Tellagami “about me” recording in the app.
Figure 15.
Tellagami “about me” recording.

With Wordsalad by Libero Spagnolini students can create word clouds on the iPad. In order to import text into the app, another application such as Pages, Notes, etc. has to be used. Once the text is typed, students select and copy it, and insert it into the Wordsalad app. Students have the possibility to change the font, layout, and color of the word cloud before saving it either in camera roll directly on the iPad or saving it as a PDF file and exporting it via email.

Wordsalad app icon.

Capabilities Word Clouds
Bloom’s Taxonomy Creating, Analyzing, Remembering
Standards Communication; ext: Cultures
21st Century Skills Creativity, Innovation, ICT literacies, Communication
Modes of Communication Presentational; ext: Interpretive
Skills Writing; ext: Reading
Proficiency Level All
Topics Auto-portraits, descriptions, culture keywords, vocabulary lists, reading summary, composition.

This tool is suitable for all levels but appeals especially to beginning levels. From very early on, learners can use simple nouns and adjectives to describe themselves using word clouds even before they can produce complete sentences. Learners can use and produce words from the very first chapter to introduce themselves to the teacher or each other: student, blond, tall, intelligent, tennis, movies, etc. This app can also be useful when learning and/or working with new vocabulary. Learners can either prepare lexical fields (i.e., words associated with a concept, word or expression) or prepare a personal word list (using only the vocabulary they are likely to use because it applies to them or is of interest to them) linked to the chapter vocabulary. Cultural content can also be presented this way; learners read about a certain cultural topic and put the most important words/concepts into a word cloud. To take this even further, this could be used as the basis for a short in-class presentation with the word cloud serving as the notecards to encourage spontaneous speech. At the intermediate or advanced levels, word clouds can be used to summarize a reading, brainstorm for a project, or outline a narration, argumentation or other type of essay.

Wordsalad app word cloud thread.
Figure 16.
Wordsalad app screenshot.

It is crucial to understand that technology in general, and iPads and apps more specifically, should not merely be used for technology’s sake; rather, they need to support the course or lesson objectives. Any work done with the iPad (or any other technological device) should be carefully integrated into existing lessons and curricula, should fulfill a clear pedagogical objective, and should encourage students to use the foreign language for a real purpose. When using apps in the classroom, goals for their use should be explained to the students. As with all technology, there is a learning curve for both learners and teachers that needs to be taken into consideration. To that end, teachers need to test and evaluate apps for appropriateness in terms of content and student age. Especially some of the free-of-charge apps might be unsuitable for a younger audience due to their content, language, or advertisements. Teachers should also be familiar with how to use the app and its features in order to be able to explain it to their students. A good way of introducing a new app to the class is providing an example of how to use it and what a final product would look like. Students should also receive a document either in printed or e-format with rules for appropriate iPad and app usage and a list of responsibilities. Finally (and this is true for the use of all technology in the classroom) teachers need to be patient as there might always be difficulties with apps, iPads or Wi-Fi connections, and have a plan B ready if everything else fails.

One of the most important goals in foreign language education is to encourage our students to learn to use language for real-life communication. Utilizing apps and iPads in and outside of the classroom can serve a variety of objectives: use language for a real purpose (three modes of communication); practice a variety of skills (listening, speaking, reading, writing); get learners ready for the 21st century; foster creativity and individuality; encourage higher-level problem-solving and critical thinking skills. To this end, a selection of free-of-charge apps that were not specifically designed for language teaching but ones that could be creatively used and adapted to fulfill several of the above-mentioned objectives were showcased in the hope that they will find their way into language classrooms of all different levels.

Anderson, Lorin W., David R. Krathwohl, Peter W. Airasian, Kathleen A. Cruikshank, Richard E. Mayer, Paul R. Pintrich, James Raths, and Merlin C. Wittrock. A Taxonomy for Learning, Teaching, and Assessing: A Revision of Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives. Complete ed. New York: Longman, 2001.

Bloom, Benjamin S. Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, Handbook I: The Cognitive Domain. New York: David McKay Co, 1956.

“Compare IPad Models.” Apple. Accessed June 15, 2014.

Leonard, Devin. “The IPad Goes to School.” Bloomberg Business Week. October 24, 2013. Accessed June 14, 2014.

Murphy, Meghan. 2014. Why Some Schools Are Selling All Their iPads. Accessed October 15, 2014.

“National Standards for Foreign Language Education.” ACTFL. Accessed June 15, 2014.

Omaggio Hadley, Alice. Teaching Language in Context. 3rd ed. Boston: Heinle & Heinle, 2001.

“Partnership for 21st Century Skills.” P21. Accessed June 15, 2014.

Tomkins, B. “WWDC 2013: IOS App Store Now Home to 900,000 Apps, 375,000 IPad Specific.” 1 Place 4 Apple. January 1, 2013. Accessed June 1, 2014.

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92.7 WLIR

92.7 WLIR – Garden City (Long Island), NY – 11/27/97 – Lynda Lopez

92.7 WLIR 107.1 WDRE Lynda Lopez Malibu Sue Garden City New York 98.5

The World Famous” WDRE/WLIR was one suburban New York’s greatest treasures until its sale to the predecessors of Univision in 2003. The station at one time was home base for a syndicated Modern Rock format known as “The Underground Network” and was heard in such cities as Albany, Little Rock, and Philadelphia. By 1997, the station had returned to its heritage WLIR call letters and settled in somewhere between Alternative Rock and Modern AC.

The on-air personality in this aircheck was destined for greater things as well. Lynda Lopez, here as a weekend host, would later go on to become a featured personality at many New York radio and television stations including mornings at the infamous “Blink 102.7” incarnation of WNEW. Media success runs in her bloodline, as her sister Jennifer’s music has been heard on quite a few of the stations featured on this site.

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  1. Apparently WLIR is now an online exclusive station, much like Fresh 106.

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Hope Font

About Hope Font

Hope font here refers to the font used in the Barack Obama “Hope” poster used for the 2008 presidential campaign, featuring a stylized stencil portrait of Obama in solid red, beige and blue, with the word “Hope” beneath.

The font used in the poster is Gotham, a geometric sans-serif typeface designed by Tobias Frere-Jones in 2000. Gotham is a commercial typeface and is available at Typography.

Download Gotham Font

The Gotham font identified above is not available for free, please follow the link above and purchase the font. Meanwhile, you can take a look at our collection of fonts for cars, pop music and apparel as well as round-ups of new & fresh fonts around the web.

Gotham Typeface in Use

In addition to Hope, Gotham typeface is also used in the following logos, movie posters or album covers etc., including: Sully (film), The Giver, HTML 5, H1Z1 (video game), Eichmann, The Real Housewives, The Kissing Booth, Clover Sonoma, Rock The Vote, Discovery Kids, Advanced Warfare, The Purge (film), Moonlight (film), Myx Fusions, The Phantom Pain.

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More Fonts in Use

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The World’s 50 Best : Alinea (Chicago)…and a short review of The Aviary

Alinea (Superb)

In my recent trip to the US, I had the chance to make one of the most interesting gastronomic experiences in my life. My wife and I had a dinner at Alinea Restaurant in Chicago, the only one three Michelin Stars in town and ranked 9th in the 2014 list of The World’s 50 Best Restaurants. To eat at Alinea you need to reserve in advance through the pretty unique “tickets system” in the restaurant’s web site, that means you have to purchase in advance your tasting menu (wines and drinks excluded) and in case you cannot make it you can “exchange or trade” your “ticket” through the same web site. It can seem weird or unusual at best, but I found it smart and convenient.

The atmosphere is minimalist and sophisticated (there is a recommended dress code…no, it’s better not going there wearing jeans and snickers), the personnel is nice, well prepared and able to actively involve you through the entire journey…yes, because this is Alinea: an intriguing and, why not, amusing gastronomic journey made of creative dishes and amazing compositions in a perfect mixture of flavors and olfactory sensations under the magnificent guidance of Chef Grant Achatz.

Our tasting menu consisted of 17 courses, each based on a specific ingredient (Osetra, Corn, Black Truffle, …) , but this was just the start…the experience was to actually eat them…sometimes it required to solve a small trick like to spot the salsify hidden in real bush in a perfect camouflage, or realize that the small coal fire at the centre of the table is in reality smoked parnisp and roasted pork belly. But let’s proceed  in order, ladies and gentlemen, our Alinea Tasting Menù!

1. Osetra – Traditional

2. Salsify – branch camouflage (spot the salsify!)

3. Skate – brown butter, lemon, herb stems (to eat holding the napkin-shaped plate)

4. Corn – Truffle, manchego, sherry (this was amazing)

5. Softshell Crab – Three condiments (Hot Sauce, Remoulade, Honey Mustard) okra and chips (this was really funny: they clean up your table, cover it with the day’s newspaper, then they bring you a fried crab with chips and okra in a skimmer and invite you to eat just using your hands …no forks nor knives…and clean them directly on the newspaper when you are done)

6. Rhubarb – Celery root,
celery branch, licorice
(another super surprising presentation: when we arrived at out table we found a raw rhubarb hanging above us…

…we initially thought it was just for an unusual decoration, but when the waiter brought us this course, he just pulled it down with his right hand and using a truffle cutter (or similar tool) he sliced a little bit on our plates, fantastic!)

7. Lobster – curry, earl grey and grapefruit

8. Sweetbrads – orange, ginko nut, cinnamon chop sticks (another amusing presentation: de facto it was a simulation of a chinese take-away with the exception that the chopsticks were made of cinnamon. Brilliant!)

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9. Lily Bulb – Rambutan, distillation of caviar lime (very delicate dish, when they served this one, they also brought a small coal fire …we all thought it was just a nice table decoration…what a naive we were…)

10. Pork Belly – parsnip, black trumpet, kombu (…in fact the above “coal fire” was simply our next dish”!)

11. Hot Potato – cold potato, black truffle, butter

12. Duck – Foie Gras, morel, dragon’s breath (another superb presentation)

13. Black Truffle – explosion, asparagus, parmesan (yes, it’s just a “raviolo”, but only when you have it in your mouth you understand what “explosion” does mean)

14. Watermelon – strawberry, avocado, sudachi (this starts the part of the dessert…surprises have not finished yet)

15. Blueberry – bubblegum, lilac, sorrel

16. Balloon – Helium, green apple (one of Achatz’s masterpieces, it’s a real balloon made of a sort of green apple candy paste. What you have to do is to pierce it with a needle and eat it…being careful it does not stick all around your face!)

17. Milk Chocolate – pâte sucrée, violet, hazelnut (in my opinion the most spectacular dish of the whole menu: de facto the pastry chef comes directly to your table and prepare the dessert in front of you…in your table! Then you need just to eat it just there)

Do I need to say more? Definitely so far one of the best restaurants I have visited. I thing I am not exaggerating if I say that it is almost worth a trip to Chicago per se.

Alinea's Kitchen

Alinea’s Kitchen

The Aviary (a bit disappointing…at least not thinking to have a dinner)

Given that we learned that Achatz also owned another famous place in Chicago, The Aviary (well, in reality he owns also another restaurant, Next, but i could not visit it) , we decided also to go there and have a look. There are a lot a good reviews of this place in the web. It’s a cocktail bar and the concept is based on creating a true kitchen for the cocktails and caring them like they were a full fledge dishes (“where cocktails and service are given the same attention to detail as a four-star restaurant”).

The idea is indeed original and new, but if Alinea was simply amazing, The Aviary definitely disappointed us. We went there with the idea to drink a good cocktail but also eat something as an alternative to go to another restaurant. Probably we made the wrong decision, probably it’s more suitable for an a aperitif or an after dinner, but as a dinner choice I am not embarrassed to say it was a sort of disaster:

– we waited almost one hour to get in (we had not reserved, but the web site claims that 50-60% of the tables are always taken free for walk-in options)

– then we were informed that probably (after having been put on the waiting list for an hour) there was no chance to get in

– Finally we got in, we were asked to stay on a table  in front of the cocktail kitchen…just standing, no chairs…I thought it was to start ordering whilst waiting for our table, but I realized after a minute that that was our table!

– Having waited so long, decided to stay and ordered a couple of drinks (you will see in a minute below, but i have to say they were very good and innovative) but asked, even if it was quite annoying to eat standing, for some food: they told us the could serve their “famous bites”. We opted for 4 (in total, not each): the egg, the wagyu slices, the BBQ chips and the foie gras snicker. When we saw the size immediately we realized why they are called “bites” (not sure if they are really famous)

– In the end, drinking two very good cocktails and eating a sort of sampling food … all time standing, we had the final jewel on the cake: a ridiculous bill (almost 70 USD each!)…i think this is a bit embarrassing Mr. Achatz.

In conclusion, I think innovative the concept of a cocktail bar with the care typically used in a restaurant (the place does not look a bar at all, there is not “the bar”, it looks more like a lounge/restaurant), but you cannot leave people that eat and drink standing without a bar, and above all, you cannot ask them to pay 70 USD each for a drink and a couple of “bites”.

The Aviary Cocktails Kitchen

The Aviary Cocktails Kitchen

Our cocktails…

Clichè Fraise (allspice, balsamic, strawberry, armagnac)

Clichè Fraise (allspice, balsamic, strawberry, armagnac)

Jungle Bird (layered, pineapple, campari, rums)

Jungle Bird (layered, pineapple, campari, rums)

and the “bites”…

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1 thought on “The World’s 50 Best : Alinea (Chicago)…and a short review of The Aviary

  1. Pingback: Route 66: The Mother Road (with some customization) | foodforphoto

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Lemon Curd Tartelettes! Tangy and Sweet Citrus Creations

I have been planning to create my own take on lemon curd tartelettes ever since I first ate a lemon tarte once during a holiday in the UK, where I absolutely fell in love with those tangy-sweet delights! So long story short: You have to try them – I promise you, you will nto regret it!
Note: You can always replace the homemade tarte shells with storebought shortcrust pastry, it will safe you quite a lot of time.

Ingredients (for 12 tartelettes, muffin mould size):

Tarte Shells:
200g flour
50g sugar
1/4 teaspoon of salt
100g butter (cold and in pieces)
1 whole egg (medium size)
1-2 tablespoons of water
eggwash (1 whisked egg)
or: 1 sheet of storebought shortcrust pastry

2 eggs (whisked, for one of them, use the eggwash from before)
2 egg yolks
140g sugar
Zest of 2 lemons (grated)
Juice of 2-3 lemons (ca. 1.2 dl)
130g of Butter (in pieces)

10g of white chocolate (finely chopped)

Tarte Shells:
For the dough, mix flour, salt and sugar and add the butter pieces. Finely grate the dough with your fingers until it is crumbly.
Pour the beaten egg into the bowl with a tablespoon of water. If the egg is small, add a second tablespoon of water. However, I would tend to recommend adding only one tablespoon of water first, as the dough won’t roll out if it’s too wet.
Put all the ingredients together and form a round dough, kneading as little as possible. Cover and leave to cool for 30 minutes.

Then roll out the dough between two baking papers to a thickness of approx. 2 mm. Cut out 12 circles (they should be slightly larger than the muffin moulds to create a rim of about 1-2 cm high.
Line the muffin moulds with cupcake cups (paper) and press the dough circles in. Pierce the bottom of the moulds with a fork. Cool again for 10-15 minutes. Meanwhile, heat the oven to 200 degrees.

Cover the muffin moulds with a second layer of cupcake cups and weigh them down with dried pulses for blind baking (I use dried chickpeas that I store separately in a jar in order to (re-)use whenever I need to blind bake something). Blind baking helps to keep the dough nice and flat and the cupcake moulds create a nice dough. Bake for about 15-17 minutes.
Take out and remove the pulses and the top layer of cupcake papers. Coat the bottoms of the tarte shells with eggwash and bake again for 2 minutes. This helps to ensure that the filling does not soak the base of the dough. Remove and allow to cool. Note: You will only need a bit of eggwash for this step, so keep the whisked egg for the filling.

Take the eggwash from before and whisk in another 1 egg and 2 eggyolks. If you use storebought pastry, just mix 2 eggs and 2 eggyolks. In a metal bowl, mix the eggs with the grated lemon cest, lemon juice and sugar. Place the mixture over a hot water bath (the bowl should not touch the simmering water) and keep whisking. After 1-2 minutes, start adding the pieces of butter one by one. Whisk over the hot water bath until the mixture thickens and forms a viscous cream.

Pour the cream into the tarte shells and let cool for 5 minutes.
Chop the white chocolate and decorate your shells. Afterwards, let the tartelettes cool for 1-2 hours…

…and enjoy!!

4 Comments Add yours

  1. Hi Mirjam,
    I like very much your blog. Superb recipe and the picture is awesome. This recipe with lemon curd is part of my firsts recipes I made upon my return from my expatriation in the UK. Your recipe is similar to mine. I fully agree that cooking the curd on a water bath is much more convenient and prevents the curd to become a sort of scramble eggs.

    Thank you for participating to our Int’l Food Challenge cooking with citrus. Have a great Sunday.

    1. Thank you Silvie! I see the UK makes for good inspiration 😉 I am looking forward to your recipe as well!

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The Garden Season That Was

So, Last week I promised I would share some pictures of the Food It Yourself garden if it stopped raining before it started snowing. I really should know better than to play chicken with Central Massachusetts weather. However, as I am a stubborn New Englander, I took pictures anyway.

Here is my new, improved and expanded strawberry bed. The majority of the plants survived the dry early summer and the subsequent monsoon-like late summer and fall. Many of them even sprouted runners. I like to think the very strongest have survived. I will transplant them in the spring to give them more space. The ultimate goal is a batch of strawberry jam. I think that is achievable.

The biggest challenge will be preventing the birds from getting the ripe berries before I do. So far, it seems like the least expensive thing to try is hanging shiny things (old CD’s are a popular recommendation) from the nearby trees.  Allegedly, the flashing lights scare off the birds. I suppose it is worth a try. I am also open to suggestions from my fellow DIYeters.

Just to the right of the strawberry bed and the cherry trees I put some cardboard over the grass and weighted it down with rocks.  I am hoping this will knock out the grass and make expanding the front yard garden a little easier in the spring. We get good sunlight in the front yard, it is a shame to waste it on grass.  I might move the bee balm up front and add more varieties of herbs. Front yard gardens are also good for edible flowers.

The chickens have not been laying recently. However, they did spend all summer producing some amazing high-nitrogen fertilizer.  We dumped it directly into our fallow raised bed; In 2019 I think this is where we will grow sweetcorn. Corn loves nitrogen.

Mr. Food It Yourself has been investigating possible reasons why the ladies have stopped laying. Age is one probable factor. Also, they just got through their fall molt. The short days and low temperatures certainly have not helped. While no man alive can change New England weather, we can winterize our coop to take that stress off our little flock.

I will shamelessly brag that all the winterizing equipment Mr. Food It Yourself and I put away last spring was exactly where we thought it was.

Once again, the chickens will spend the coldest months sandwiched between our deck and our garage. We decided to get the coop off the ground this year. Last year the chickens spent a lot of time with wet feet. That is not good for chickens! Mr. Food It Yourself dumpster-dove some large pallets from his workplace. We stapled some indoor/outdoor carpet over the pallets to keep the birds from getting stuck. I think it is important to note that we measured the foot print of the coop and the size of the pallets before we started this process. Good thing, too, because…

We nailed it! After setting up the lights (with a timer), fitting the water trough with a birdbath heater, spreading a layer of bedding and re-installing the doors on the run, we moved the chickens to their winter home. Looks like they are happy!

Yes, this was a challenging year for the Food It Yourself garden. Woodchucks are terrible people. However, we are not going to give up our garden, we are going to keep expanding. Meanwhile, we will keep learning how to work with what we get from the weather and the local fauna. I am glad for a little before I have to start again though. What went well in your garden this year? What do you hope you can improve next season? Share in the comments!


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Global Bicycle Helmet Market Split by Product Types, with Sales, Revenue, Price, Market Share Analysis during the Forecast Year 2024

Incisive evaluation of Global Bicycle Helmet Market 2019, By Type-(Sport (multi-use) helmets, Road bike helmets, Mountain bike helmets), By Application- (Application 1,Application 2), addressing growth prospects, segments, dynamics, and future potential. This Bicycle Helmet market study spotlights a top to bottom analysis of the business models, key strategies, and respective market shares of some of […]


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With match-fixing very much in the news in recent months, MARK GODFREY looks back at English football’s most famous betting scandal 50 years ago.

Alf Ramsey was grateful for the result. Twenty games into the season and his reigning English champions found themselves in the bottom three. The winter of 1962-63 was bleak for Ipswich Town; and not just for the record breaking freeze that would bring the sporting calendar to a three month stand-still and virtually cripple the whole of the United Kingdom.

The 2-0 win over Sheffield Wednesday at Portman Road on December 1st 1962 was unremarkable in most respects. The Owls were mid table and had the kind of away record that adequately demonstrated that. Ramsey’s team, albeit in a precarious position, still had pedigree and would have been fancied to collect the much needed two points for the victory.

However, this routine First Division fixture wasn’t as straightforward as would first appear.

Jimmy Gauld was the archetypal journeyman. His 13 years as a player were ended by a broken leg in 1961 after numerous brief spells with clubs spanning from the Highland League in Scotland to lower league clubs in England; a solitary season with Everton being the pinnacle of an otherwise non-descript footballing career.

After retirement, the Scotsman became the instigator (and eventual snitch) of the first widespread match-fixing scandal to be uncovered in English football.

Corruption was nothing new. By 1964, professionalism had been in existence for nigh on 80 years. Indeed, in 1915, Manchester United and Liverpool players had colluded to manipulate the result of a single game between the two clubs for financial gain. One would have to be incredibly naïve to suppose that the 1960’s affair was the first ever occurrence of larger scale bribery in the British game.

As the austerity of the Fifties melted away and the Sixties began to swing, the maximum wage for footballers in England was abolished in 1961. More money began to sluice into the game and everyone wanted a slice.

To fix the outcome of an English league match, the recently-retired Gauld would need help on the inside. He turned to a former Swindon Town team mate, David Layne.

By late 1962, Layne had moved back to his hometown of Sheffield to play for the Owls, scoring 58 goals in just 81 appearances and was making quite a name for himself alongside England international centre half, Peter Swan, and the up-and-coming star of the First Division, Tony Kay.

Gauld and Layne plotted; the target would be the game at Portman Road – one which Wednesday were ‘likely’ to lose. They duly obliged, going down to two goals by Ipswich’s Ray Crawford. In a 2006 interview with The Times newspaper, Swan claimed, “We lost the game fair and square, but I still don’t know what I’d have done if we’d been winning. It would have been easy for me to give away a penalty or even score an own goal. Who knows?”

He knew. So did Layne and Kay. The money was down and the result was never in doubt.

The three Sheffield Wednesday insiders took the 2/1 for an Ipswich win and invested £50 each; the safest of bets. Lead conspirator, Gauld, stood to win considerably more than the £150 to be won by Layne, Swan and Kay.

With a successful first attempt in the bag, Gauld and his betting syndicate moved on to their next target – a game between Bradford Park Avenue and Bristol Rovers on April 20th 1963. Another contact of Gauld’s, Brian Phillips of Mansfield Town, recruited Rovers players, Esmond Million and Keith Williams, to aid in the illegal money speculation.

But rumours were beginning to circulate that many matches in the lower divisions were being targeted by the fixers. Mike Gabbert and Peter Campling of the Sunday People newspaper chased the story.

In August 1963, Ken Thomson of Hartlepools United was exposed for having helped fix one of his club’s fixtures against Exeter City earlier that year. Just one week later, Gauld was named by the same paper as being the mastermind behind the whole affair.

With the knowledge that the jig was now up, Gauld, with the incentive of a £7000 payout by the People, finally gave up his secrets in a taped conversation with Gabbert and Campling in 1964. More names and more games came to light that demonstrated just how far Gauld had infiltrated dressing rooms up and down the land.

Ten former and current players faced trial in Nottingham in January 1965. Gauld, as ringleader, received the longest sentence – 4 years. The other nine were sentenced to prison terms ranging from 15 months to four. Layne and in particular Swan and Kay were the ‘big’ names to be exposed in the betting scandal and as such, would be made an example of.

Swan had already won 19 caps for England and was considered to be first choice for the national team alongside Bobby Moore at the heart of England’s defence. His time at Her Majesty’s pleasure combined with the lifetime ban he received (later successfully repealed in 1972) robbed Swan of the best years of his footballing life. It’s widely believed that he would have been a key member of Alf Ramsey’s 1966 World Cup squad rather than Leeds United’s Jack Charlton.

Just weeks after his involvement in the fixed game at Ipswich in 1962 (for which he was ironically named Man of the Match), Kay moved from Hillsborough to Goodison Park for a record fee between British clubs of £60,000 and won a league championship medal in 1963 with Everton. Like Swan, most observers considered him to be a shoe-in for England’s squad for the 1966 World Cup. His ban likely also robbed him of more domestic honours with the Toffees as they won the FA Cup and another league title during his period in exile. Despite being allowed to play again after 1972, he never played professional football again.

In the 1960’s players wages were still relatively low. The temptation to make a little extra cash for that brand new ‘E’ Type Jag or television set must have been all too much for the likes of Kay and Swan – especially when the likelihood of being caught was minimal. However, they were caught, and their opportunity to be revered as heroes for all time rather than reviled as crooks went shamefully by the wayside.


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Signal Iduna Park

Football Tripper Green Logo

By Football Tripper

Last Updated: August 24, 2019

Exterior of Signal Iduna Park

Stadium Overview

Team: Borussia Dortmund

Address: Strobelallee 50, Dortmund, 44139

Capacity: 80,720

Opened: 2006

Westfalenstadion is the legendary home stadium of every neutrals’ favourite German side, Borussia Dortmund. Officially the ground is known as Signal Iduna Park for sponsorship purposes in a deal set to last until 2021. The 80,000 capacity makes it the largest stadium in Germany and the third biggest in the top-flight of football (behind Camp Nou and the Bernabéu) .

Stadium Guide

Borussia Dortmund’s Westfalenstadion was originally built as a playing venue for the 1974 Fifa World Cup with enough room for 54,000 supporters. The first match was held on April 2nd against rivals Schalke 04 in a Charity Game as Borussia Dortmund were in a poor financial position at the time. The first “official” match occurred 5 days later on the 7th of April and this time the home side managed to scrape a point against Bayer Uerdingen.

The newly built Westphalia stadium hosted 4 group matches of the World Cup including three games of the Netherlands including an intriguing clash against Brazil. After the world cup, the stadium became pretty much unchanged for the next 18 years until the early 1990s when some of the seating was converted to standing areas in 1992.

Spurred on by a Bundesliga tittle in the 1991-1992 season and a runners up place in the UEFA Cup the following season the club’s revenues began to grow which gave Dortmund the financial platform to redevelop parts of the stadium which would eventually occur in three distinct phases.

Phase 1 (1995-1997) saw establishment of an upper tier brining the capacity up to 55,000, Phase 2 (1998-1999) continued the creation of a uniform upper tier and remodelling of terraced south stand capable of holding 25,000 visitors, and Phase 3 (2002-2003) saw the corners of the stadium filled in resulting in the current 80,000 plus capacity .

For the 2006 World cup finals a modification took place which focused on additional VIP boxes, improved disabled access, electronic ticketing and refitted changing rooms. Fifa World Cup Stadium Dortmund hosted four group matches and a legendary semi final between the home side, Germany and Italy with the Italians winning 2 nil in extra time following a goalless draw at the end of 90 minutes.

Seating Plan

Below is a seating plan of Borussia Dortmund's Signal Iduna Park:

Signal Iduna Park Seating Plan

You can break Signal Iduna down into four unique parts: Nord, Ost, Sud and West.

Click the thumbnails above to enlarge an image of each stand and to read a more detailed description of each part of the stadium.

The Matchday Experience

Away fans

The away section is housed within the central column of the Nord Tribune slightly towards the right hand-side, and whether through a conscious decision or not, away supporters aren’t confined to the corner as they so often are in football stadiums across Europe.

Appearing to be a nice touch by Dortmund at first, one you’ve had a glimpse of the famous Yellow Wall Kop Stand you may be feeling angry your club’s stadium hasn’t got anything like it.

The ticket allocation is usually around 2,000 – 3,000 depending on the opposition, and seating is distributed across both tiers of the north stand between sections: 08, 60, 61, 70, 71 and 75. You can cross referee the seating plan above to see where you will be sitting.

Best Pubs

One of the most popular pre-match hang-outs is the large Strobels Bar located north-east of the stadium which serves beer and has a large outdoor area. Inside the ground you can also purchase pints and take them into the stadium which really does help with the atmosphere!

As for drinking either before or after the match in the city centre the highest rated pub amongst visiting football fans is continually the amusingly named Brauhaus Wenkers. Located centrally it has a decent selection of local pilsners and multiple TV screens showing the football.

Around the business park where Signal Iduna is location there are a few dining options before the game such as Steakhouse Rodizio next to Theodor-Fliedner-Heim tram station and the NRW Cocktails bar near to the Westfalenhallen stop. North of the stadium there is also the likes of Mongos Asian restaurant,  Das Allegro and Restaurant de Luca.

Within the stadium itself Strobels Dortmund restaurant comes highly rated and the numerous fast-food stalls and outlets will ensure you don’t starve. Plus you can drink beer in the stands, so what more could you possibly want?

Club Shop

Borussia Dortmund operate several fanshops throughout the city in addition to their very own International Online Store which allows fans the opportunity to purchase goods 24/7 from the comfort of their own home. The most popular one for most fans is located in the north-east corner of Signal Iduna Park stadium across two floors.

Opening Times:

  • Monday – Saturday 10.00 am – 6:00 pm
  • Sundays: Closed
  • Matchdays: Open before kick-off and for one hour after full time whistle.

In addition to the main club shop at Westfalenstadion (North-east corner) there are numerous kiosks and mobile merchandising units around the ground including this cool looking truck.

Stadium Tours

Die Schwarzgelben (The Black and Yellows) offer fans the chance to undertake a 75 minute guided tour of the iconic Westfalenstadion, now known as Signal Iduna Park.

The tour costs a more than reasonable €10.00 for adults and €7.00 for concessions, with tours running everyday between 10.00 am and 6.00 pm except on matchdays which coincides with the museum opening times. Tickets can either be purchased at official BVB stores across the city, or at the stadium before the tour with a limit of 40 people per group.

For further information and confirmation of tour times, please visit the official website of Signal Iduna Park. Note: There are no online ticket sales!

Matchday Travel

Signal Iduna Park is located next to the Westfalenhallen conference centre which is approximately 3km South Westish of Dortmund’s city centre.

Exterior of Signal Iduna Park

The imposing exterior of Borussia Dortmund’s iconic football ground.

The Stadium has good connections to the nearby Autobahns with the address for satnav is as follows:

  • Westfalenstadion, Strobelallee 50, 44139 Dortmund

Car Parks

The area around Signal Iduna and Westfalenhalle has over 10,000 metered parking spaces available to use. There is also a free parking and shuttle bus service from the Dortmund Megastore located at Dortmund-Horde, Felicitasstraße, B54 exit Rombergpark.

Alternatively you can take the U-Bahn tramline which may be more convenient depending on your starting location as it has lots of Stations/Stops throughout the city.

Lines 45 and 46 drop you off at Westfalenhallen which is the nearest stop at 5 minutes walk away, with a special service on matchdays going slightly further and taking you along to the next stop, “Westfalen Stadion” which is even less of a walk.

Road signs for Westfalenstadion

Various roadsigns for Signal Iduna Park. The fact that Westfalenstadion is highlighted in yellow and black is a really nice touch!

Signal Iduna Park is only a 5 train journey from Dortmund’s main train station (Hauptbahnhof abbreviated to HBF) with the closest station conveniently named “Dortmund Signal Iduna Park”.

Trains typically run anywhere between three to four times an hour, and it will cost you no more than a few euros for a single or return.

Airports and Flying

The nearest Airport is located 10 km east of the city and is known as just Dortmund. As it is the second largest in the North Rhine-Westphalia region (Behind Düsseldorf  Airport), it is served by numerous low cost and budget airlines making it ideal for a cheap football weekend.

In terms of ground transportation once you arrive there is an express bus to Dortmund’s main station as well as shuttles to the metro lines and nearby railway stations.

As Signal Iduna Park is situated within a business park area with conference centres there are a few accommodation options such as the affordable B&B Hotel Dortmund-Messe, Mercure Hotel Dortmund Messe & Kongress (Ex Best Western) and Hotel Pullman Dortmund which is just the other side of the A40.

As the stadium is less than 3 km from the city centre you’re probably much better off looking there with the concentric ring road marking off numerous choices such as Park Inn by Radisson, City Hotel Dortmund and Hotel Carlton near the station.

Football Tripper Image

By Football Tripper

Last Updated: August 24, 2019


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In Giving I Connect with Others by Isabel Allende

I have lived with passion and in a hurry, trying to accomplish too many things. I never had time to think about my beliefs until my 28-year-old daughter Paula fell ill. She was in a coma for a year and I took care of her at home, until she died in my arms in December of 1992.

During that year of agony and the following year of my grieving, everything stopped for me. There was nothing to do — just cry and remember. However, that year also gave an opportunity to reflect upon my journey and the principles that hold me together. I discovered that there is consistency in my beliefs, my writing and the way I lead my life. I have not changed, I am still the same girl I was fifty years ago, and the same young woman I was in the seventies. I still lust for life, I am still ferociously independent, I still crave justice and I fall madly in love easily.
Paralyzed and silent in her bed, my daughter Paula taught me a lesson that is now my mantra: You only have what you give. It’s by spending yourself that you become rich.
Paula led a life of service. She worked as a volunteer helping women and children, eight hours a day, six days a week. She never had any money, but she needed very little. When she died she had nothing and she needed nothing. During her illness I had to let go of everything: her laughter, her voice, her grace, her beauty, her company and finally her spirit. When she died I thought I had lost everything. But then I realized I still had the love I had given her. I don’t even know if she was able to receive that love. She could not respond in any way, her eyes were somber pools that reflected no light. But I was full of love and that love keeps growing and multiplying and giving fruit.
The pain of losing my child was a cleansing experience. I had to throw overboard all excess baggage and keep only what is essential. Because of Paula, I don’t cling to anything anymore. Now I like to give much more than to receive. I am happier when I love than when I am loved. I adore my husband, my son, my grandchildren, my mother, my dog, and frankly I don’t know if they even like me. But who cares? Loving them is my joy.
Give, give, give — what is the point of having experience, knowledge or talent if I don’t give it away? Of having stories if I don’t tell them to others? Of having wealth if I don’t share it? I don’t intend to be cremated with any of it! It is in giving that I connect with others, with the world and with the divine.
It is in giving that I feel the spirit of my daughter inside me, like a soft presence.

An Ideal of Service to Our Fellow Man by Albert Einstein

This essay aired circa 1954.
The most beautiful thing we can experience is the Mysterious — the knowledge of the existence of something unfathomable to us, the manifestation of the most profound reason coupled with the most brilliant beauty. I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, or who has a will of the kind we experience in ourselves. I am satisfied with the mystery of life’s eternity and with the awareness of — and glimpse into — the marvelous construction of the existing world together with the steadfast determination to comprehend a portion, be it ever so tiny, of the reason that manifests itself in nature. This is the basics of cosmic religiosity, and it appears to me that the most important function of art and science is to awaken this feeling among the receptive and keep it alive.
I sense that it is not the State that has intrinsic value in the machinery of humankind, but rather the creative, feeling individual, the personality alone that creates the noble and sublime.
Man’s ethical behavior should be effectively grounded on compassion, nurture and social bonds. What is moral is not the divine, but rather a purely human matter, albeit the most important of all human matters. In the course of history, the ideals pertaining to human beings’ behavior towards each other and pertaining to the preferred organization of their communities have been espoused and taught by enlightened individuals. These ideals and convictions — results of historical experience, empathy and the need for beauty and harmony — have usually been willingly recognized by human beings, at least in theory.
The highest principles for our aspirations and judgments are given to us westerners in the Jewish-Christian religious tradition. It is a very high goal: free and responsible development of the individual, so that he may place his powers freely and gladly in the service of all mankind.
The pursuit of recognition for their own sake, an almost fanatical love of justice and the quest for personal independence form the traditional themes of the Jewish people, of which I am a member.
But if one holds these high principles clearly before one’s eyes and compares them with the life and spirit of our times, then it is glaringly apparent that mankind finds itself at present in grave danger. I see the nature of the current crises in the juxtaposition of the individual to society. The individual feels more than ever dependent on society, but he feels this dependence not in the positive sense — cradled, connected as part of an organic. He sees it as a threat to his natural rights and even his economic existence. His position in society, then, is such that that which drives his ego is encouraged and developed, and that which would drive him toward other men (a weak impulse to begin with) is left to atrophy.
It is my belief that there is only one way to eliminate these evils, namely, the establishment of a planned economy coupled with an education geared towards social goals. Alongside the development of individual abilities, the education of the individual aspires to revive an ideal that is geared towards the service of our fellow man, and that needs to take the place of the glorification of power and outer success.


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Meta: The Regularly Scheduled Program

The Jackal has made some decisions. First off. All future posts shall be in third person, to lend an air of dignity and aristocratic arrogance to what little The Jackal has to offer.

Yes, that is to say The Jackal has a tiny penis and he doesn’t really know how to use it all that well despite having spend entirely too many years familiarizing himself with it’s use. If the mile high club had a solo aviator’s division, he would have a small frowny face next to his profile. 🙁

If you thought that last paragraph was vulgar and in poor taste, you would be correct. Low brow and low standards are the rule. The Jackal does not have time or ability to write something more academic on a regular schedule. His ADHD requires his posts tickle his funny bone.

Secondly, The Jackal plans to post one article per week Wednesdays at 2pm Eastern Time (America/Chicago). He has already scheduled the next 3 posts and plans to write many more.

The Jackal would post more often but he has a day job, two novels, and a blog to work on. But at least he doesn’t have friends or a lady jackal to distract him. Just crippling mental illness.

He hopes you enjoy the show.

Meta: Autocorrect Goofs are Intentional

You might notice some of the titles on this blog are weird. That’s because I let Autocorrect decide. I write everything off the cuff. Not that jackals wear jackets. We aren’t that fancy. Besides the dry cleaners asked me not to bring my bloody shirts to them anymore. Easier to just not wear the damn things.

This blog exists for me to be witty, occasionally useful, and to bitch endless about everything. Autocorrect goofs in the title are part of the charm. I do try to keep the actual articles free of errors but I do keep the editing to a minimum.


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In-Depth Movie Reviews & High Quality Trailers

Posts tagged “vincent

Collateral (2004)

CollateralOn a midnight screening in August, 2004, my entire filmmaking aspirations changed with this film.  While I had seen Thief previously, Collateral struck a brilliant, fascinating chord in my creative mind.  While I consider The Insider to be Michael Mann’s best film to date, and Manhunter to be my favorite, there is a special unique quality to this movie that I love.  I believe it stems from the atmosphere of isolation and nature of introspection that Mann delves into.  Above all else, Tom Cruise puts in one of the best performances of his career under Mann’s direction.

Max (Jamie Foxx) has lived the mundane life of a cab driver for 12 years.  The faces have come and gone from his rearview mirror, people and places he’s long since forgotten – until tonight.  Vincent (Tom Cruise) is a contract killer.  When an offshore narco-trafficking cartel learns they are about to be indicted by a federal grand jury, they mount an operation to identify and kill the key witnesses, and the last stage is tonight.  Tonight, Vincent arrives in L.A., and five bodies are supposed to fall.  Circumstances cause Vincent to hijack Max’s taxicab, and Max becomes collateral – an expendable person in the wrong place at the wrong time.  Through the night, Vincent forces Max to drive him to each destination.  And as the LAPD and FBI race to intercept them, Max and Vincent’s survival becomes dependant on each other in ways neither would have imagined.

I love how the movie is soaked into this dark, isolated feeling of the night.  While the film has those first few minutes of transition from the late afternoon into nightfall, it feels right.  We are getting an easy, gradual introduction to Max along with a very brief and enigmatic one to Vincent.  At this point, the film is relaxed and getting you comfortable, but once night sets in, the mood begins to soak in.  Los Angeles descends into this sparse, disconnected landscape.  There’s a sense of vast emptiness which isolates our characters into a somber atmosphere.  There maybe pedestrians in the background, traffic on the roads, but Max and Vincent are in their own reclusive scenario apart from the awareness of anyone around them.  Michael Mann achieves that deeply penetrating mood throughout the movie with a brilliant use of cinematography, music, and environments.  The nighttime world of Los Angeles is alive with danger and lethal threats on an ever-accelerating ride into darkness.

In the beginning of the film, there’s some lovely, heartfelt chemistry between Jamie Foxx and Jada Pinkett-Smith in a cab ride together.  It’s a beautiful, warm introduction to both characters who we need to greatly empathize with as the film progresses.  This is especially true for Pinkett-Smith’s character of Annie, a prosecutor for the U.S. Attorney, who doesn’t return to the film until the final act, but she makes such a wonderful, adoring impression that we haven’t forgotten a thing about her by then.  Both actors make a rich use of those few minutes of screentime together, and Michael Mann really strikes a different chord than he has before.  In his other films, it’s usually two people that have already had some history together, or are already married with some kind of emotional or ideological strain upon them.  We hardly see the initial spark of a romantic relationship, and never has it been this sweet and charming.  Jada Pinkett-Smith does a spectacular job in this role throughout all the light-hearted, heart-warming, and emotionally and physically intense demands upon her.

Jamie Foxx surely deserved the supporting actor Oscar nomination he got here.  He absorbs himself fully into Max, grasping the details of the character with a lot of care.  Max is surely a flawed person, but that’s what makes him relatable and real.  Max is an entirely unlikely hero.  He’s just a cab driver opposing a trained professional killer, but it’s that intensely real fear and genuine humanity of Max that makes him work.  He’s not designed to battle Vincent on a physical level.  Instead, it’s slowly getting into Vincent’s head, unraveling who he is and how he works that allows Max to gain some measure of courage to fight back against him.  However, it’s that journey from the guy who can’t even muster up the courage to ask Annie for her phone number, let alone out on a date, to someone that does take a stand against this cold, vicious killing machine which makes Foxx’s performance amazing.  It’s Max’s experience with Vincent, especially when he’s forced to impersonate Vincent in a meeting with cartel lord Felix, that begins to bring out that self-confidence.  Vincent repeatedly criticizes Max for taking abuse from his boss, allowing his mother to believe in false truths about his line of work, and being a general pushover that inadvertently mold and motivate Max into being an adversary instead of a frightened hostage.  Your attention might gravitate to the stronger personality of Vincent as the standout, but Jamie Foxx delivers a very textured, emotionally realistic, and genuine performance that does have a lot of substance and standout qualities about it.

Tom Cruise starts out as his usual charming self as Vincent, who warms himself up to Max so to convince him to hang with him through the night, feeding him a story of being a real estate agent.  It’s then a beautiful turn when that cold, calculating sociopath emerges.  That intimidating edge shows through immediately, and I love that you can see the gears turning in Vincent’s head.  He checks his surroundings, seeing who might’ve witnessed the dead body crashing onto Max’s cab, and determines his next move.  This is the detail Michael Mann instills in his actors in order to portray these characters as realistic, intelligent people with a specific way of thinking and reacting with a depth of history that stretches beyond the context of this story.  Vincent is a fascinating character with a complexity and depth that is the brilliant result of Mann and Cruise’s collaboration mixed with Stuart Beattie’s excellent screenplay.  He is a stone cold sociopath that has a justification for everything he does, and he regularly tries to impart that onto Max.  Perceiving a few dead bodies as insignificant on a cosmic scale makes it no wonder that he is so disassociated from any semblance of humanity.  Most of us rarely think of the repercussions of our actions on even a global scale, and the closer, more immediate the consequences are, the greater they have impact on our choices.  Vincent is likely the epitome of Neil McCauley’s “thirty seconds flat” rule from Heat of abandoning everything at a moment’s notice in order to stay ahead of the law.  McCauley dictated that in order to do so, you must not have attachments to anyone or anything, or risk being caught.  However, Vincent is even more than that as there’s clearly a far deeper, more emotionally fractured explanation for being as he is, and it is not just from a matter of staying out of a prison cell.  Tom Cruise conveys that complexity with masterful skill and a dash of natural charisma that makes him compelling.  There is so much depth and nuance to what Tom Cruise delivers in this performance of a sociopathic hitman that finds himself slowing cracking throughout this night that I couldn’t possibly detail all of it without making this into an entire essay about him.  If you want that, I immensely suggest listening to Michael Mann’s commentary on the film.  It provides more detailed insight than I can do justice to here.  In short, Tom Cruise is riveting and brilliant as Vincent, and delivers a relentless performance unlike any you’ve seen from him.  He’s an entirely different, fully absorbed animal in this film, and Vincent is a testament to Mann’s extensive work of building a character from the ground up, from the inside out with a massively talented actor.

The scene that sells the lethal threat of Vincent is the incident with the gangbangers who steal his briefcase.  The razor sharp reflexes he demonstrates in taking both of them down is near unreal, and shows that this is a man of hard earned, professional skills that should not be tested.  If he wants you dead, you’ll be a corpse before you know it.  As I’ve mentioned in past reviews, Tom Cruise is an amazingly dedicated physical actor.  He will put himself through whatever rigorous training is necessary to make his performance everything it needs to be on every level.  These skills are not learned easily or quickly.  Cruise had handled firearms before in the Mission: Impossible films, but this was a whole different level of discipline and dedication.  And indeed, it shows through in how he carries himself, how he cases his surroundings, and operates like an efficient machine in every action sequence.  He creates a full, total package that gravitates energy around him.

Furthermore, I really like Mark Ruffalo as Detective Fanning.  His look is excellent as a narcotics cop who looks like a dealer, but seeing him in the thick of things, you can see this is an LAPD Detective that is intelligent, instinctive, and seasoned.  He’s a consummate professional, but is also very streetwise and perceptive.  Ruffalo strikes that perfect balance which makes both work cohesively.  Fanning follows through on his instincts and intellect despite anyone’s insistence to the contrary, making him a capable secondary protagonist an audience can get behind.  He’s hotly on the trail of what’s going on as more and more bodies go down, and that motivates the law enforcement end of the story forward as they try to secure what witnesses they have left before Vincent can eliminate them.

Collateral is filled with solid supporting actors like Peter Berg’s combative Detective Weidner or Bruce McGill’s hard edged FBI Agent Pedrosa.  However, the two best standouts are Barry Shabaka Henley and Javier Bardem.  Henley portrays Daniel, the owner of a jazz club, and he gives us two brilliant showings in his scene.  The first is Daniel’s passion for jazz music as he relates a story about meeting Miles Davis, and the stunning impression it made in his life.  Then, when the scene turns imminently lethal, we see the purely human fear and subtle tremble that courses through his body.  It’s an inspired performance, and Daniel is someone that has a noticeable resonance upon Vincent.  This is the first moment where we see his sociopathic exterior cracking, and it is a gorgeous moment of dramatic and emotional storytelling.

Javier Bardem is just excellent as the cartel lord Felix.  He’s strongly intimidating and intelligent, but one of conservative emotion.  You can see the fire underneath when he learns that Vincent has lost his hitlist, but he’s a confident man that knows how to deal with problems decisively but has a short tolerance for failure.  Bardem has only one scene, but he makes a strong, intriguing impression that resonates for a quite a while after his screentime has ended.  It’s stellar work by him all around.

I think Collateral is possibly the Michael Mann film that most deeply peers into its lead characters.  While Manhunter gets very deep into their psychology, Collateral is focused more on the emotional level.  It shows what makes Vincent and Max who they are from the heart and soul outwards.  These two starkly different men are inexplicably connected on this violent, dangerous ride, and they each peer deeper into one another’s souls.  Collateral simply broods with this fascinating level of deep, introspective drama making itself just as much about the complex nature of its characters as it is about its adrenalin pumping danger and occasional action.

One of the things that attracted Michael Mann to this project was the idea of a compressed timeline.  All events take place over a single night which creates an inherent energy and urgency to the story and the actions of the characters.  Everything’s going down now, and there’s no tomorrow to deal with it.  There’s also the great feeling like we’re in the third act of another story, that of Felix’s impending indictment.  All of these events have already taken place to move these people into these exact situations on this night, and we’re dropped into a story where everything is already in motion.  Everything’s moving forward at a brisk pace, and there’s no slowing down now.  The whole movie has this feeling of an impending deadline.  The feeling that we’ve long passed the point of no return well before this movie began, and it’s all full speed ahead from here.  It’s not a film of break neck pace, but Mann is able to maintain that sense of urgency very cleverly through the actions and behavior of these characters.  The pacing itself is great, tight, and dead-on.  There’s such a great punctuation of drama and emotion using everything Mann has at his disposal at exactly the right doses at exactly the right times.  It’s an amazingly well edited movie.

Collateral features an awesome collection of score and music from eclectic artists.  The primary score is provided by James Newton Howard who creates the most emotional and stirring cues of the film.  It has the most presence and creates the grim sense of isolation and somber reality.  Howard is also responsible for the long form, tense, suspenseful, and ultimately, driving percussion score in the film’s action climax.  Antonio Pinto also has some excellent pieces of score that really penetrate the soul of select moments.  The addition of Audioslave to the soundtrack was a stroke of genius as “Shadow On The Sun” perfectly fits the vibe and tone of this movie.  It’s only one track, but it is used in a very memorable sequence.  Appropriately, we get some jazz in there, and a few other contemporary music tracks that oddly don’t feel dated in the least.  It’s been nearly nine years since the film’s release, and it still feels fresh, original, and excitingly new to me.  I own this soundtrack, and it is still a wonderful, moody listen to this day.

The vast majority of Collateral was shot on high definition digital video, and for this movie, it works beautifully and brilliantly.  Mann knew he couldn’t get that depth of clarity to see into the nighttime landscape of L.A. if he shot on film.  So, he embraced this new technology to create a signature look for Collateral.  What makes it work for this movie where it didn’t as much for Miami Vice or especially Public Enemies is how well it is shot.  I believe the cinematography work of Paul Cameron and Dion Beebe should have been given far more recognition at the time than it did.  It got some nominations and wins from a few organizations, but it may have been the unique digital video look of the movie that might have deterred some.  I embraced this look, and it inspired me to no end.  It still does.  Collateral is a brilliantly shot movie with an amazing use of color temperatures that evoke certain moods throughout.  It’s much different than Manhunter in that its feels very urban and grounded with the sodium vapor and mercury vapor street lights creating diffused orange, green, and turquoise tones.  It just makes the night come alive in a new way that had never been achieved with such vibrant, dramatic results before.  It’s also remarkable how so much of the film takes place in that cab, and each scene gives us a new camera angle or composition that suits the context of that scene.  It never gets repetitive or dull.  These filmmakers had to get inventive, and they ultimately achieved something with get artistic value.  There is plenty of handheld work, but it’s done immensely well.  Public Enemies was a blatant example of doing it terribly, and Miami Vice simply employed it too much to where it almost became a crutch.  The cinematography of Collateral is very similar to that in The Insider, but progressed further and given more vibrancy than before.  And those overhead aerial shots of Los Angeles are simply striking and inspired.  I’ve since seen this replicated in many other films and television shows, and I immediately make the connection back to Collateral when I do.

We have very few action scenes here, but the large doses we get are riveting and awesome.  The biggest is the Korean night club sequence where Max, Vincent, the FBI, and more converge in a violent exchange of physicality and gunfire.  It’s an excellently done sequence with sharp editing and a pulsating remix of Paul Oakenfold’s “Ready Steady Go.”  Vincent weaves his way through the sea of club-goers, dispatching of bodyguards with merciless efficiency, but it ultimately all breaks down into chaos.  Yet, it is this turning point in the film where all the law enforcement and other elements surrounding Max and Vincent are stripped away, and we’re left with a lean, intense final act.  As Vincent hunts his final target through a dark office of reflective surfaces, we are treated to some taut suspense and edge-of-your-seat tension.  This is another instance where only digital video could’ve been used.  On film, this would’ve been an unintelligible blob of nothing, but the high definition video gives the low light detail that feels so atmospheric and visually amazing.  The climax is just excellently done on so many levels, and ends with poignant drama.  I know there was a time early on that I felt the ending left a little to be desired, but I’ve since gained the understanding of it all with full respect and appreciation.  This is a very introspective film that documents Vincent’s somber emotional deterioration over this one night, and it ends with a weight of purpose and ironic reflection.  The climax might be very adrenalin pumping, ramping up the imminent, lethal danger of Max and Annie, but the final moments resolve the character depth and emotional resonance we’ve seen build up throughout this film.  It is a brilliant work of screenwriting by Stuart Beattie forged and meticulously crafted by the masterful talent of Michael Mann.

This is an amazing film that has a different substance of depth than Mann had given us before, and wraps that up in a very riveting, tense crime thriller.  Cruise and Foxx have excellent chemistry together that even sparks one or two humorous beats.  It’s just a great, happy surprise sparked from two great talents that have that charismatic spark of brilliance.  Overall, it’s a film that still inspires and drives me to this day to be a creative filmmaker in the dark crime genre where characters like Vincent are immensely fascinating, complex, and violent individuals.  I reference Michael Mann’s work often enough in my reviews of crime thrillers that I definitely want to actually get more reviews of his films done.  I’ve already done Miami Vice and Manhunter, but those were a good year apart.  Collateral should be the start of me covering more of his filmography in a shorter span of time with Thief, Heat, and The Insider surely on my slate for this year.  Reviews like this are more than just telling you if the movie is good or bad, but instead, they are delving into the depth of it all to really discover what truly makes it great and why it has enthralled me so much.  However, look for some potentially shorter reviews soon for a few soon-to-be-released movies that I hope will be quite good, but we’ll see.