Memories and hints of a travelling IT professional.
Formerly the Turbinenhalle at Oberhausen was used to produce electricity and comprised air for the ironworks of the Gutehoffnungshütte, an important mining and mechanical engineering company. It was built in 1909 and converted into a discotheque in 1993 when the steel industry was gone. Today it is a concert location with a special atmosphere that has attracted many great bands over the years.
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In the south of Duisburg, close to the industrial zone of Angershausen you can find the magic mountain: it is a good example of conversion at the Ruhrgebiet. The 35 meters high hill was once a waste disposal site of a zinc manufacturing company. When the Ruhrgebiet became European Capital of Culture in 2010 it was decided to create an artwork in this location and the design of Heike Mutter and Ulrich Genth won the contest.
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North of the city center of Duisburg you can discover the Innenhafen, an inland port connected to river Rhein which is today surrounded by modern residential homes and office buildings. Part of the harbor is also the Küppersmühle, a former mill that dates back to the year 1860 and which was active until the year 1972. Since 1999 it houses the MKM Museum Küppersmühle für Moderne Kunst, a beautiful museum of modern art that utilizes the former structures of the mill building very well.
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A massive art museum made of the concrete and glass, located in the Immanuel-Kant-Park close to the main railway station of Duisburg – that could be the shortest description of the Lehmbruck-Museum. It is named after and dedicated to the sculptor Wilhelm Lehmbruck born in 1881 at Meiderich near Duisburg. His works were mostly focused on the human body and that is what you get to see most at the Lehmbruck-Museum: faces and bodies.
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One could say the Hintersteiner See is just a lake in the mountains used to generate electric power, but that would really underestimate this natural beauty located at height of 882 meters above the Adriatic Sea (that’s the way how they measure elevation in Austria). Once created by a glacier this lake near Scheffau am Wilden Kaiser offers a nice bathing area and a round course leading you through the mountains with nice views on the lake.
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In the Southeast of Germany you can find the Chiemsee, the largest lake of Bavaria and after the Lake Constance and the Müritz the third-largest one of Germany – therefore it is also called Bayerisches Meer (Bavarian Sea). It is named after the settlement of Chieming close to the lake and was originally created by a glacier 10,000 years ago. Within the lake you can find four islands (Herreninsel, Fraueninsel, Krautinsel, Schalch) of very different sizes.
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The Tour Eiffel is the highest building at Paris, the second highest one – clearly visible on the skyline of the city – is the Tour Montparnasse next to the Gare Montparnasse at the 15eme arrondissement. It was inaugurated in 1973 and is 210 meters high, 120 meters smaller than Eiffels iconic building. But nevertheless it is still today controversial, as only these two buildings stand out in this part of the city. The Tour Montparnasse was designed in the International Style and has 59 floors.
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Northwest of Paris you can find a famous river island within the Seine, the Île de la Grande Jatte. It partially belongs to Levallois-Perret and to Neuilly-sur-Seine and is today a nice residential area reachable via different bridges – but in earlier days it looked completely different. In 1818 the Duke of Orléans bought the island as a new home, created a park and his family was also the sponsor of the Temple de l’amour which you can find today at the southern end of the island. By that time the island was only accessible by boat and different painters went there to create artworks well-known today.
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I’ve been using high-speed trains in Germany very often and always felt secure. Travelling by train is one of the most secure means of transport and there are many technical measures that ensure this, including the European Train Control System (ETCS), dedicated allowances to use a railway track as well as automated braking the train if the train driver is not responding or the train too fast. When travelling by car you have a 164 times higher risk to get injured than in a train. But even a system like this can never be 100 % secure and we all had to learn that on June 3rd, 1998, when the most severe accident of European high-speed trains happened close to a small city in Lower Saxony.
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The horror of Bergen-Belsen evolved over time. First, this place located between Celle and Soltau was a military training ground, then it became a camp for prisoners of war from France, Italy and the Soviet Union. From 1943 on the SS turned parts of the camp site into concentration camp; some of the Jewish inmates were planned to be exchanged against Germans detained outside of Germany, others were transported further on to extinction camps. At the end of the World War II concentration camps close to the battle zones were evacuated and tens of thousands were brought to Bergen-Belsen. Overall 38,000 humans died on this soil while the concentration camp was operating. Unfortunately around 14,000 died after the liberation because of illnesses and bad supply.
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