Auf Wiedersehen Essen und Gluck Auf

Auf Wiedersehen Essen und Gluck Auf, or goodbye and Luck Up… and Essen and the Ruhr Region are certainly lucking up.

I have spent the past week in Essen in the west of what was once called by the West ‘West Germany’.

But is now just Germany.

And I have been looking up with admiration at the striking structures that fuelled the Ruhr Region.

But have now been transformed into tourist attractions.

Solid coal

There has been the UNESCO Zollverein Museum, dedicated to King Coal.

There are more than 6,000 exhibits in what was once a Coal Washery.

And this dramatic space presents the exciting natural and cultural history of the Ruhr region.

On three levels, the permanent exhibition illustrates the Ruhr Metropolis as it is now.

And the pre-industrial memory as well as the dramatic history of industrialisation and structural change to renewables in the Ruhr area.

And what’s more this post-industrial landscape is perfect for street art, dancing, hiking and biking.

It really is the business.

Which is why it is a convention favourite.

And why the international German Travel Fair welcomed us there to eat, drink and be merry.

The old reality

Essen and the Ruhr region have reinvented themselves these past 20 or 30 years.

And while for a century and a half Ruhr people went down to the bowels of the earth for coal, they have always looked up.

And would wish each other Gluck Auf, or luck up, in the hope they would all return to the surface in one piece.

Now the only reason to look down would be if you were on an Essen virtual reality tour through the pedestrianised city centre.

Where you can walk in the footsteps of the characters of 1887 around the funeral of industrialist Alfred Krupp.

And the Grillo Theatre project.

The trick is to focus your eyes and headset in front of you.

Then look down, wait for the green circle to revolve and then look back.

And be transported back to 1887.

A smell of Koln

There is something of that time too about the Koln Cathedral on the banks of the Rhine, a must-do day trip, completed as it was in 1880.

But, of course, a Gothic Medieval wonder, and home to the bones of The Three Wise Men.

The temple of modern religion is, of course, the Westfalion Stadium, home to Borussia Dortmund.

And where the 20,000 terracing end soars impressively like the noise from the home support, a veritable Yellow Wall.

Clock this in Essen

On our last day in Essen I found myself looking up again as the clock struck the hour.

And the Pletzch Jeweller Shop, which had been here on the Kettwiger Strasse since the 1890s.

And which has a clockwork show for people going about their daily business.

My business is catching a plane, back for Scotland.

I look up at the timetable and notice my train to Frankurt is boarding soon.

Auf Wiedersehen Essen und Gluck Auf