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to travel
Ruhr area
Ruhr area
Layer in the pot
The area is in a state of upheaval. Steel mills are being transformed into adventure parks, mines into industrial museums, waste heaps into wild biker trials. High time to start a journey of discovery by motorcycle.
Eva-Maria Lessinger, Thomas Quast
06/17/1999
Ruhr area. For many, it’s just the “pot”. Above ground covered by blast furnaces for steel processing, underground by mines for hard coal mining. A megalopolis with almost five and a half million inhabitants, of which it is said: “The Ruhr area is New York, but doesn’t know it yet.” So defoliate the green, other Ruhr area? In fact, there are more old village centers, half-timbered houses and green landscapes than people from outside would assume – such as the Bochum Lotten or Witten Muttental or the course of the Ruhr itself, which is firmly in the hands of skaters, cyclists and water sports enthusiasts. when I steer my CX 500 over the Ruhr Bridge at Hengsteysee. The parking lot on the Hagen side of the river and the serpentines up to the Hohensyburg and the casino are a popular meeting place for bikers, especially on Sundays – despite traffic regulations that are hostile to motorcycles. In Dortmund I pick up my two friends and we cruise to a former mining and steel workers’ settlement. It is called “Negerdorf” in a wonderfully politically incorrect way, to which the “Negerdorf Little Girl” bears witness. “Negerdorf” because the characteristic little houses were once full of “Schwatte” – coal-blackened buddies. The A 42, one of the many motorways that cover the Pott like a network of roots, is supposed to bring us from the Westphalian to the Rhenish Ruhr area. But in the Gelsenkirchen district of Hessler there is still a miners’ settlement that attracts a stopover. We stroll leisurely along the tranquil row of houses until we suddenly feel like intruders who are simply strolling through strange living rooms: In front of the first house, a young woman hangs casually in two garden chairs, completely absorbed in a thick book. Right next door, a couple of parents are desperately trying to call their offspring to reason, who are just besieging the table of the neighboring pensioner couple. But the observed do not seem to feel disturbed by us, greet them in a friendly manner. We had a barbecue yesterday. ”A man grins at us in amusement, leaning on a shovel. No doubt, he has watched our covetous glances at his delicious Knifte – sandwiches -. The neighborhood is really good, says Leonhard Lorscheider, who is currently helping his friend Bernhard Schmid with renovation work. Both worked underground in the Wilhelmine Victoria colliery for over 30 years. The climate there was rough, but warm, and the work, of course, was rock-hard. Bernhard Schmid almost cost her life. Buried under a three-ton charcoal coffin lid, he was saved by six buddies who heaved the monstrous thing away. But despite all the hardships, both agree: “The air in the Pott is better than in Bavaria.” Finally, you actually go on the A 42, past Essen, Bottrop and Oberhausen, always following the course of the Emscher, between spoil heaps, Power plants, marshalling yards, industrial plants, canal ports, sewage treatment plants, allotments and residential areas in the Rhenish Ruhr area. From the Emscherschnellweg we steer the bikes in front of the main gate of the former Meiderich ironworks to the beer garden there. The Landscape Park Duisburg-Nord is one of the parks in the district in which the old industrial buildings are being preserved as a cultural landscape. Years ago, the deserted area was – half tolerated – used by free climbers, motocrossers or divers who had discovered flooded pools and kettles as adventure diving grounds, as well as for independent theater productions, concerts, raves and parties. In the meantime it is officially taking place. An evening visit is particularly impressive when the heavy industrial steel and concrete structures are illuminated in neon colors and this play of light and color is finally slowly reduced until only a few illuminated points remain? pure industrial romance: the slurry pump is hauling from the Meiderich ironworks to Duisburg-Bruckhausen. Black blast furnace giants from Thyssen Stahl AG, cooling towers and chimneys with billowing smoke and steam dominate the horizon as soon as you approach. Here even black-brown clouds of dirt move through the urban canyons. Streets lined with walls and thick supply pipes lead to the Rhine and across Deichstrabe right into the middle of Ruhrort. The part of Duisburg that has meanwhile achieved fame as a TV backdrop in numerous crime novels, above all the “Schimanski-Tatort” episodes or the “Hafendetektiv” series from the eighties. In the world’s largest inland port, the free port has even been a duty-free zone since 1991 – 250 kilometers from the North Sea. And like the North Sea, Duisburg also has its islands: the scrap, coal or steel islands, these are the names of individual quays. The CX 500, which has mutated into an industrial bike, feels really good between cranes, excavators, warehouses, mountains of coal or scrap, the freighters and push units. At the Ruhrort Museum Quay, we explore the historic side-wheel tugboat “Oscar Huber”. The gigantic connecting rods of the old tractor would make every single cylinder and big bang fan kneel with envy. Nearby is the new Museum of the German Inland Shipping. The next morning we leave “Dirty Old Town” Duisburg, with the unpretentiously rough charm of an old English industrial town. But the problems of the city, which are typical for the entire region, cannot be overlooked: the downsizing in the steel industry and elsewhere the permanent disappearance of coal mining. Cheap shops and empty shops in the city center are eloquent witnesses to the expectation of purchasing power. There is a motorcycle meeting at the Kaiserberg motorway junction on the border with Mulheim. We push around here for a while, look at the flea market-like range of accessories and moped parts. We make our way through Mulheim to the north of Oberhausen. Past the new, not undisputed mega-shopping paradise “CentrO”, which stands for structural change in the pot, and the huge gasometer, from whose roof you have a breathtaking panoramic view. But we are looking for a far-reaching view from the green waste dump of the Prosper-Haniel colliery in the border area of Oberhausen, Bottrop and Gladbeck. We meet three mountain bikers at the summit cross. “Over there on the horizon near Hattingen in the Muttental, where the mining circuit is, that’s where coal mining went underground,” the miners explain. “Coal is still in abundance, all the way under the North Sea, but it’s already too deep in the Munsterland.” A fitting “Gluck Auf” and a few farewell laps through the “spoil desert” below the summit, from which conical hills rise like termite structures in the Kalahari, then it goes down the dump. In Herne-Crange the pot is boiling? and so do we! It’s blazing hot, we only make slow progress in traffic jams. The din of the huge Cranger Kirmes, to which all the pleasure-seekers flock, mixes with the traffic noise. We are very thirsty. A few kilometers further on, Lothar Eichenauer really makes us happy with his “Happy Shop”. The mineral water runs down your throat as cold as ice, while the bright yellow bricks on the facade of the kiosk cool your back. A regular customer sticks his head into the sales hatch: “How are you?” – “Good. Un selbs? “-” Must. “-” Un sons? “-” Och. “Ritualized kiosk communication, as you experience it every morning when you fetch the newspaper in the pot. Gaby welcomes us in the evening at the entrance to the “Zeche Carl”. For a few years now, the powerful Taekwondo black belt wearer has been working as a steward in the Essen cultural center. But tonight promises to stay calm. More and more dark figures in long black frocks, hung with heavy chains with skulls dangling from them, step into the former chew, where Gothic sounds are pounding loudly. Although the “Pop im Putt” evenings were once legendary, the “Zeche Carl” is by no means just for concert and party-goers. Because when the cultural center was founded 20 years ago, there was a lack of meeting places for children, young people, senior citizens, interest groups and self-help groups in the north of Essen. It is not least thanks to the commitment of the pastor from Altenessen, Willi Overbeck, that to this day all strata of the population, from punks to retirees, have found an attractive meeting place here – but usually not at the same time, of course. In the »Malakow«, the small restaurant the “Zeche Carl”, we strengthen ourselves for our expedition to Bochum’s Bermuda Triangle – so called because you can fall from one bar to the next in a tightly packed space. When we parked the mopeds in Bochum city center, the first combat drinkers armed with beer poured out of the »Intershop« because you can no longer stand inside. “Always those Sauerlanders who invade here at the weekend,” I hear someone growling next to me. We’ll move on to the »Sachs«. But here, too, it is so crowded and loud that it is better to wear a helmet on your head than on your hand. Without further ado, we roll a few streets further and find what we’re looking for in the “quicksand” between the planetarium and the Ruhr stadium: three empty chairs between bare walls and the longed-for “nightcap.” “Eighteen – twenty – two – zero – four … «The next morning we peek over Klaus Hofmann’s shoulder during his Skat round, a little worried. But what more could you want: a cozy corner in front of your own arbor in the middle of the Bochum allotment gardeners’ association, “a bottle of Fiege on” the table and “a cigarillo on” your tooth – you can also risk a contra. A few parcels further we met Wilfried Arens, a passionate pigeon father. In the past, every second house in the cape colonies around the mines had a dovecote under the roof. Today it’s an expensive hobby. “The little man’s racehorses – that was once upon a time,” states Wilfried Arens, visibly saddened. Unlike the determined competition pigeons, we treat ourselves to a detour west to the south of Essen, in order, like many bikers, to head east on the winding roads of the Ruhr Valley on this sunny day consequences. In Hattingen, in the disused steelworks Henrichshutte with its museum in the old blower hall, we promptly get into a coffee event. Benches on former works tracks serve as a coffee table in the shade of rusting blast furnace giants. Hattingen is as contradictory as the Ruhr area: the old Blankenstein Castle towers over the Ruhr, visible from afar, the old town is a unique half-timbered idyll, here the last witnesses of heavy industry are rotting and all around down to the Ruhr the new, clean and anonymous buildings for service and small industries. The steel, dust, brick and rust landscape around us seems more attractive to us – nostalgia? The origins of the coal and steel industry here in the cradle of the Ruhr area, between Sprockhovel and Witten, looked quite different: more artisanal, as the Muttental mining trail and the Westphalian open-air museum in Hagen show. Oh yes, another nice answer to the New In a York-Ruhr area comparison, we get coffee and cake from a somewhat heavyweight, cowl-wearing biker: “What is New York? Here’s the pot!”
Info – Ruhr area
The Ruhr area is an agglomeration of eleven independent cities and four districts. Five and a half million people live in the Pott, up to three and a half thousand people are concentrated in one square kilometer in the cities of the district. Coal mining and steel processing have shaped an incomparable industrial landscape. Many of the closed blast furnaces, collieries and coking plants have meanwhile developed into unique cultural landscapes. But the classic Ruhr area also still exists.
Sights: Aspects of the history of technology, but also of work and life on a barge, are presented in the “Museum of German Inland Shipping”, Apostelstr. 84, 47119 Duisburg, phone 0203 / 80889-0. Information about the various industrial monuments such as mines or brickworks is available from the “Westfalisches Industriemuseum”, headquarters: Zeche Zollern II / IV, Grubenweg 5, 44388 Dortmund, phone 0231/69610, and the “Rheinisches Industriemuseum”, Hansastrabe 18, 46049 Oberhausen, phone 0208 / 8579- 0. The “German Mining Museum”, Am Bergbaumuseum 28, 44791 Bochum, phone 0234/58770, offers a truly deep insight into the world of tunnels. The almost artistically filigree steel construction of the “Old Henrichenburg Ship Lift” was astonished by Kaiser Wilhelm II at the inauguration in 1899 as a “technical marvel”, Am Hebewerk 2, 45731 Waltrop, Phone 02363 / 9707-0 Technical, economic, social and ecological paths can be followed in the Henrichshutte Industrial Museum, Werkstrasse 25, 45527 Hattingen, phone 02324/92470. The “Gasometer Oberhausen”, with a height of 117.5 meters, is the highest exhibition hall in Europe, offering a fantastic view over the Pott combined with an extraordinary spatial experience. Essener Strasse 3, 46047 Oberhausen, phone 0208 / 85037-33. Almost forgotten old craft traditions are demonstrated in the half-timbered houses of the “Westphalian Open-Air Museum Hagen”, Mackingerbach, 58091 Hagen, phone 02331/780744. Accommodation: There are of course plenty of hotels and guest houses in the Ruhr area, the prices are urban, but not excessive. Almost every major city also has a youth hostel, and there are campsites – some right on the Ruhr. We have had good experiences in the following hotels (the prices apply to double rooms with breakfast): Hotel-Restaurant “Taverne im Deutsches Haus”, Fabrikstrasse 27, 47119 Duisburg-Ruhrort, Telephone / Fax 0203/85703, 120 Marks. Hotel “Kolbinghaus”, Maximilian-Kolbe-Strasse 14, 44793 Bochum, phone 0234/13089, from 76 marks (with shower / toilet: 105 marks). Hotel “Westfalischer Hof”, Bahnhofstrasse 7, 45525 Hattingen, phone 02324/23560, 120 marks. Organized tours : Under the motto “Come in pots!”, The caravan, telephone and fax 0203/787300, has recently started a two-day guided motorcycle tour through the “old” and “new” Ruhr area. Price: 320 marks including accommodation and entrance fees. Information: Municipal Association of the Ruhr Area, Public Relations Department, P.O. Box 10 32 64, 45032 Essen, Telephone 0201 / 2069-0. Among other things, the free and very readable brochure »1000 Feuer«, a culture and travel magazine, can be ordered there. Literature: The special “Reisen Ruhrgebiet”, Falk-Verlag, 16.80 Marks, is concise, informative and richly illustrated. Merian also provides information in the tried and tested manner, “Ruhrgebiet”, 14.80 marks. Joachim Schumacher, Margarethe Lavier and Wolfgang Schulze provide great photos and descriptive texts in “The Ruhr Area – A Strong Piece of Germany in Pictures”, Verlag Peter Pomp, 69.80 marks. Map: The »Aral Street Map of the Ruhr Area«, scale 1: 80,000, 9.80 Marks, offers enough overview. In addition, city maps help, which are collected as “Rhein Ruhr City Atlas” at Falk Verlag for 29, 80 Marks.
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