# Rhine-Ruhr - Easter 2010



## mlm (Sep 11, 2002)

*About:* The *Rhine-Ruhr metropolitan region* is the largest metropolitan region in Germany with about 10 million+ inhabitants. If that doesn't ring a bell to you, then it's the region consisting of several large cities including such as Cologne, Düsseldorf, Essen and Dortmund. The region is located in the German state of North-Rhine-Westfalia, which is also the most populus in Germany with it's roughly 18 million inhabitants. More on Wikipedia

*Me in Rhine-Ruhr:* I've visited the area a few times before, but last time dates back to 2003. I though it would be interesting to go again, so that's what I decided to do this easter. Specielly two things made me very interested: Football (or soccer), since there's a bunch of German top clubs in the area and: The Industrial heritage which also interests me. Specielly the northern part, the Ruhrgebiet, is very well known for being a huge industrial area with for example coal and steel production and big chemical plants. Many of the big production complexes has been closed in recent years, and a big part of these are today converted to museums, cultural houses etc. The Ruhr area is also European Culture Capital 2010.

The weather wasn't really too friendly to me, but still get some decent photos, although not as many as for my latests photothreads. I did have a great trip though.  Lets get started:

01: I think this sums up what a lot of people think about when they hear "Ruhr", there's a lot more to it though:









02: In the heart of Rurh, more precise in Essen, you find the huge Zollverein coal mining complex. Since 2001 it has been listet on UNESCOs list of World Heritage Sites. Amazing lighting in the evening:









03: The main entrance area:









04: Another look, probably from the old entrance gate:









05: And again:









06: Another part of it, it's really an amazing feeling seeing this at night:









07: Part of the inside now functions as the "Ruhr Museum":









08: A big orange lit/colored escalor takes you to the entrance:









09: Inside the museum was also pretty cool, but specially this staircase caught my eyes:









10: Another view:









11: And now to something completely different: Football! I've always wanted to go and see a game in Dortmund so here was my chance. The game was against Werder Bremen and Dortmund won 2-1 in front of a sell out crow of 80.552 - amazing. Specially the southend is fantastic with it's ~25.000 standing fans. Couldn't bring my camera, so only some small mobile shots:









12: I'm also very interested in icehockey, so also decided to go and see a game. I went to a playoff game between DEG Metro Stars (Düsseldorf) and Wolfsburg Grizzly Adams in the ISS Dome which houses some 13.400. There was only a little less than 6000, but the atmosphere was pretty good though. Wolfsburg won the game 6-3. Again, no camera allowed, so only these mobile shots:









13: Change of scene once again, now we're in central Düsseldorf. Looking up the 240,5 meter tall Rheinturm...









14: ...and looking down from it:









15: Some Frank Gehry designed buildings in the Mediehafen:









16: Some new highrise building in the same area:









17: Loooking straight down into the harbour:









18: Another rather new highrise:









19: Here the opposite direction, this is central Düsseldorf:









20: Same area, notice the cool glass roof. Don't know the building, but looks like an operahouse or something:









21: From my short stays in the different cities, Düsseldorf seems to be the prettiest, of the larger cities atleast. Here the waterfront towards the Rhine:









22: Bridge and ship:









23: Another bridge with a restaurent in the middle, here spanning the previously mentioned Mediehafen:









24: Part of Mediehafen again, now back down on the ground:









25: One of Gehrys buildingfacades:









26: "Men" climbing a wall in the Mediehafen:









27: Change of location once again, now where at the Bergbaumuseum in Bochum (Ruhr again):









28: Entrance to a "fake" mine, which gives some great insight in how these things worked:









29: From the mine itself:









30:...and again:









31:...and yet another:









32: After the trip in the mine you can go to the top of that crane thing, it's some ~70 meters tall if I remember correctly:









33: It was raining and strong winds, but got a few shots of Bochum, here a residential hood close by:









34: And a shot towards downtown Bochum:









35: And now a big change of scene again, we're now in Cologne, the largest city in the area and the 4th largest in Germany. My main goal was the 157,31 meter tall Kölner Dom:









36: Decided to go up, of course the had no lift. Some 500+ stairs though, most like these:









37: On your way up you pass by the bells:









38: A few views from the top, first the 148,5 m tall KölnTurm. It's hard to see here, but on the facade there's a motive of the Cathedral:









39: Soem new cool buildings along the Rhine:









40: The TV Tower, I don't think this one is open to the public:









41: Central Cologne, part of the altstadt I belive (old town)









42: On the other side of the Rhine you can see the big LANXESS Arena (cap. 20.000) and the new KölnTriangle tower. I had no idea there was a viewing platform up there....









43:...so of course I had to go there too:









44: From this 100 tall building you get a great view of Cologne:









45:...and the Cathedral:









46: ^^ Whoops, wrong focus, lets try again:









47:View of the Hohenzollnerbrücke which spans the Rhine:









48: Back down again and finally another view of central Cologne:









That's it. It's really impossible to do the entire area justice with photos from just 4 full days because there's really a lot of see. As always, I surely enjoyed yet another trip to Germany.


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## Chadoh25 (Dec 28, 2007)

Ausgezeichnet!


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## edubejar (Mar 16, 2003)

Great quality pics for a quality thread!

Rhine-Ruhr or Rhein-Ruhr metropolitan area is unknown to many people as an entity(unlike the city Cologne which is known to many) yet it's very important not just for Germany but all of Europe in terms of production, population and economy in general. Even if considered separate by some, the Ruhr alone is very important and large.

It definitely has some weird and interesting architecture and things to see.


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## JPBrazil (Mar 12, 2007)

Fantastic! I just love German cities, they look very organized but at the same time, very edgy and elegant.


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## dutchmaster (May 23, 2007)

Wow, watch a game in the middle of that crowd should be cool!! Fantastic architecture!!

Nice pics mate :cheers:


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## erbse (Nov 8, 2006)

I really enjoyed your tour, mlm. Did you also do some culture, in connection to the RUHR2010 European capital of culture?

This area is pretty strange to me, beauty and ugliness being close together everywhere.
Not my cup of tea, but of course there are loads of interesting things to see.
I better like the aera to the southwest, Rhine and Moselle valley with pearls like Trier, Cochem, Rüdesheim, Bernkastel or even Bonn, the former capital of our beloved Wessis.


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## Bristol Mike (Aug 5, 2007)

Very nice mix of urban and industrial shots there! I do like the Soem Frank Gehry designed buildings in the Mediehafen.


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## mlm (Sep 11, 2002)

^^ Whoops, typo there, should have been "some Frank Gehry deisgned buildings". But yes they are rather cool, although they need some cleaning. Looks like the closeness to the water is hard on their facades.

@ erbse: It's a strange area indeed. Anything between cool historical downtowns and the biggest dirty (or so it seems) industry you can imagine. At work now, but I'll give my opinion when back home later today.

And thanks for the comments guys.


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## Patrick (Sep 11, 2002)

Fantastic, I enjoyed every single of your photos!


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## mlm (Sep 11, 2002)

erbse said:


> I really enjoyed your tour, mlm. Did you also do some culture, in connection to the RUHR2010 European capital of culture?
> 
> This area is pretty strange to me, beauty and ugliness being close together everywhere.
> Not my cup of tea, but of course there are loads of interesting things to see.
> I better like the aera to the southwest, Rhine and Moselle valley with pearls like Trier, Cochem, Rüdesheim, Bernkastel or even Bonn, the former capital of our beloved Wessis.





erbse said:


> Awesome photos, despite the weather! Great work mlm.
> 
> Looks like you had some sunny day in Köln.
> http://www.mikaellykmadsen.dk/skyscrapercity/rhine-ruhr/035.jpg
> ...


I'll merge your questions from this and my thread in teh German section, hope that's okay.

Yeah quite sunny when I was in Köln and the Zollverein evening photos are from the same day. On saturday when I was at the Dortmund game it was also sunny some of the time so it wasn't all bad. 

Didn't really do anything cultural in addition to the RUHR.2010. These are the things I saw/visited: Football game, Dortmund - Icehockey game, Düsseldorf - Zollverein, Essen - Bergbaumuseum, Essen - Tetrahedron, Bottrop - RheinTurm/Mediehafen, Düsseldorf - Citycentre/Kölner Dom, Köln. Beside that I drove around on the many motorways just looking for interesting places, came by Gelsenkirchen (Veltins Arena), Oberhausen (Gasometer), Ratingen (my Hotel). Köln (LANXESS Arena), Düsseldorf (Esprit Arena) and a few other places. 

What I like the best? Really hard question, but if you're looking for interesting cities Düsseldorf and Köln seems to be a lot more interesting than their Ruhr counterparts. Now I didn't spend a lot of time there, so my knowledge is very limited, but from the short visits in Essen and Bochum they seems quite boring and a quite ugly to tell the truth. They can of course still be good places to live though. On the other side, part of the reason I went to this region was to see some of these industrial complexes, both old ones and still existing ones. A place like the Zollverein in Essen is really amazing and there's surely other highlights too. For the cool football experiece I would chose Rurh too, either at Signal Iduna Park or Veltins Arena (where I saw a game back in 2002). So to sum up my answer: I don't know, it really depends on what you want to see or do.  

But as written, I is indded a strange collection of cities. Despite the millions of people living there, most of it doesn't feel very urban, expect for the endless number of highways of course. Imagine the possible skyline if they had all agreed on one financial center in the middle many years ago.  Maybe my memory fails, but wasn't there always a lot of "fighting" between the many cities and problems doing things together for the region as a whole instead of your own "little town"? I could be wrong, but think I read soemthing about that somewhere.


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## El_Greco (Apr 1, 2005)

Did I ever tell you that I absolutely love your photography, Mlm? These are fantastic shots. 

Ive been in Rhine-Ruhr last summer and loved it, perhaps not surprisingly given that Im into industrial stuff. Btw did you make it to Oberhausen and Wuppertal?


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## snowman159 (May 16, 2008)

Truly amazing! :applause:

I just had to browse through all your other photo threads and I love every one of it. I'm absolutely awed by the sheer number of outstanding photos you get out of every one of your trips. I bet a lot of careful planning is involved?


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## christos-greece (Feb 19, 2008)

The town/city looks really amazing, very nice... thank you very much for those photos :applause:


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## mlm (Sep 11, 2002)

snowman159 said:


> Truly amazing!
> 
> I just had to browse through all your other photo threads and I love every one of it. I'm absolutely awed by the sheer number of outstanding photos you get out of every one of your trips. I bet a lot of careful planning is involved?


Thanks.  Yeah, I always do some planning, although it wasn't too much this time. Got (once again) some great tips from some of the German forumers.  I haven't been "hunting" the good shots as much on my latest trips as I used to though. For a US trip in back in late 09 I didn't even have enough photos for a thread. Kind of decided on this because I sometimes felt I forgot to really see and enjoy some of the places with the constant photo hunting.



El_Greco said:


> Did I ever tell you that I absolutely love your photography, Mlm? These are fantastic shots.
> 
> Ive been in Rhine-Ruhr last summer and loved it, perhaps not surprisingly given that Im into industrial stuff. Btw did you make it to Oberhausen and Wuppertal?


Right back at ya.  Didn't make it to Oberhausen and Wuppertal although I though about visiting the Gasometer. My time was a bit limited though, so decided on leaving that out. It surely is an interesting area - strange, but interesting.


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## Terpentin07 (Oct 3, 2009)

Thank you for your photos.It's really interesting to see the many faces of the Ruhr Area.


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## erbse (Nov 8, 2006)

Thanks a lot for the interesting response, mlm.


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## geoff189d (Jun 4, 2005)

Duesseldorf looks an exciting city! Thanks for pics.


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## Justme (Sep 11, 2002)

Absolutely brilliant photos. You really have a talent for composition! No.9 blew me away.

By the way, just for future reference if when I get back to Köln, does the KölnTriangle tower deck have breaks in the window to take photos to avoid the glass? Some architects think of these little things, but many others don't. I hate shooting through glass.


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## mlm (Sep 11, 2002)

^^ Thanks. 

About the KölnTriangle, nope, there's no breaks in the glass. The windows were quite clean though which of course helps a lot.


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## Filandon (Jun 24, 2009)

High quality pictures and wonderful points of view when taking them, I enjoyed them a lot. Thank you very much


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