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In NRW, in the ruhr-pott area (highly industrialized region between the rivers Rhine and Ruhr) especially, a few things went wrong with rebuilding the cities there. 1. No Time. No one really took the time to think how the city will look in 50 years. Things had build fast because they where needed. No time for big overarching plans or visions that didn't change every 5 years. 2. Misunderstood Bauhaus. "Style derived from functionality" turned into "function over style" Bauhaus isn't putting up big concrete blocks with half a mile of identical windows. it's looking at needs, function, available tools to optimize the the living for us humans. The result are building that don't feel being build to live in, but feel to be stored in. The "organic" aspect gone missing. 3. To much concrete slaps. You will find large rectangle pieces of concrete everywhere, like giant stacked up Lego pieces. On the ground, as buildings, as sculptures, to sit on, to walk on, to live in, to look at. It makes the cities feel artificial and lifeless. 4. Neglect. Beside the larger cities cities are poor or have been poor since the heavy industry left in the 1980. This region struggled a lot, and many cities are showing this struggle in 20-40 years of neglect. Repairs and care are minimal, new money won over environmental concerns. By example large warehouses popped up, large boxes of corrugated steel, directly beside housing areas, cemeteries, parks. Large cheap office building where build to attract new businesses and so on. But it got better in the last 15-20 years. All this makes the cities not really ugly, but "inhuman". They give the feeling not being build for humans to live in, but for humans being stored in until the "real city" is being build. It will take 50-100 years until all the "Bausünden" (building sins) are corrected.
The Ruhr area has a bad reputation in Germany. It used to be the most industrial (heavy industry) region in Germany with the most pollution but with the downfall of heavy industry in Germany it had to reinvent itself. Might be comparable to Detroit in the US. The people there are not fancy but down to earh and have a kind of disregard for fancyness. Your statement "has potential" hits the nail on its head.
The ruhr area is like a humble and down to earth berlin without tourists and hipsters. It is very multicultural, and there are so many theatres, concert halls, opera houses, museums, parks, galeries and much more in a small region. Many of them located in old industrial buildings. I don't think there are many regions, that are not capital cities, with more access to art and culture.
lol the Trainstation from Hamm 2nd picture my hometown The maximillianpark is cool , but Hamm was destroyed to zero. Because back in the day it had the biggest railchange station in europe
About the winged rhinos: They are the heraldic animal of the Dortmund Concert Hall. The reason given for choosing it is that the rhinoceros is down to earth (like the Dortmunders themselves) and is known for its very sensitive hearing. The Dortmund rhino has wings because it is intended to inspire ever new creative flights of fancy. I don‘t think there‘s another story or meme behind it.
3:30 Or as the Misfits (a German cabaret duo) once sung: Stehse aufm Gasometer im Sturmessausen, und allet watte siehs, is Oberhausen! (You are standing on the Gasometer during a storm, and all you can see is Oberhausen).
Personally never felt that Essen was particularly depressing but Duisburg and Mühlheim are absolutely places that are known to be shitholes. I also noticed a difference in attitude (and have coworkers from there who think the same) between Dortmund (close to which I grew up) and Münster (where I live now, North of the Ruhr area). The first time I went back after moving away for uni (maybe a year or two into studying), I just walked through town to do some shopping and I couldn't help but notice people's annoyed and angry faces. Some even looked openly hostile. I had never noticed before, maybe because I hadn't experienced anything else regularly before, but man did I feel unwelcome there. Can't even tell you why exactly that is. Maybe it's just a poorer city (definitely poorer than idyllic little Münster) and with people doing worse, they're grumpier. Talked to some friends about this and they've had similar experiences.
I live in Duisburg. The western End of Ruhrgebiet. I really can't imagine to live in an other area of Germany. For vaccation, ok, but im glad to be back home after a week. The Ruhrgebiet is like a lot of small, mid and big cities packed together to the metropolis Ruhrgebiet. Starting from my home, i can go/ drive to the countryside, woods, city center in just a few minutes. 20 mins to get to the netherlands, 2hrs to the Belgian coast. I m often in the Oberhausen CentrO Shopping Center. Free parking and sometimes free charging (im an ev driver).
I was born in Dortmund and I will love my City forever. Don't care what other people say. For me it's beautiful and that's not because of the Building's it's because of the People. All People who Shows Respect and Love for this City.
To be honest: don’t visit the outskirts of any big city. There will always be ugly corners. But the culture in this most western and most densely populated area (Rhein-Ruhr-Metropole) in Germany is much more diverse and honest. From Cologne to Dortmund you will find town after town with no space in between and around 10 million habitants. Within 2 hours drive you find everything you need and want. Shopping from cheap to Chanel. Big companies. Biggest concert halls, biggest football clubs (Borussia Dortmund, 1. FC Köln, B. Leverkusen etc) and stadiums, airports, museums, parks, zoos. And from here its faster to be in Brussels, Amsterdam or the coast than to Munich or Berlin. Greetings from NRW
Since Hagen often is stated as Germany's poorest city you should not compare it with Munich or Cologne but to the poorest cities of the US. All the other cities mentioned are also very poor with a lot of unemployment and low wages. Compare them with ugly parts of L.A. or Detroit and they start looking like Dubai.
Yeah, the Ruhr area has it's own charme but is not really considered to be beautiful. But you get the best Currywurst in all of germany there. ^^ And the people are nice there. It's a melting pot of many industrial cities close together, with a total population of 5 million people. If you are driving around this area, you don't even recognize when leaving one city, and entering another. The area reminds me a bit of Pittsburgh or Detroit.There was an initiative once, to make this area one big city, under a single one city council. It would have been germanies biggest city then, bigger than Berlin, but nobody really wanted that in the end.
I’ve been living in this area most of my lifetime.(Essen, Bochum, Hagen, Wuppertal) and she was quite accurate. But there is a big difference between living here or visiting. Because of coal and steel industry it always has been an area of industry. In my childhood it was a grim and dirty place and it changed a lot since they built all the museums and parks. But if you step out of the train and expect a beautiful old town center, then you will be disappointed. As she said it was badly destroyed in WWII and built up quickly and it is more practical than beautiful. But if you crack that ugly oyster, you surely find many beautiful pearls. The Ruhrgebiet (Wuppertal is near but not part of it btw and the upside-down train is called Schwebebahn) is also an interesting cultural hotspot (often compared to Berlin) with lots of art, music, museums, theatres, universities. Living here means, you are only 10 minutes away from a park, the next shopping mall, great restaurants and the next museum and from your work. If you don’t like living in the city, you are surrounded by beautiful rural areas and villages. It mostly is quite affordable to rent an appartement. If you live here and find out where the best spots are, it can be really beautiful. On the other hand you find poverty, homeless people, high rate of unemployment, probably more than average. But I never had bad experiences with people here.
Depressing is the right word of choice here to describe the Ruhrpott area. I have a similar feeling about my Rhineland city which is in the same state. The problem is the state itself. First of all its very crowded, 16 million out of 83 millon germans live here, more than anywhere else. And since the industry went down many places are similar with West Virginia.
For practicing your german, I recommend to go more to middle and north Germany then Bavaria or Cologne, cause in this area they don't have such a strong dialect like in the south. I'm from the area around Berlin and even I wouldn't be able to understand someone who speaks the bavarian dialect (same with austria). The cologne dialect is easier for a german but for foreigners, I guess, it's also a bit hard. Around Hannover is basically the hotspot of Hochdeutsch, which is the standard german you probably learn 😉 And not to forget to mentioning, that the german coast area is one of the most beautiful landscapes in Germany at all, in my opinion. You should check that out 😎
I live in Duisburg and the video actually shows the "better" spots of our city. 😅 Especially the "Landschaftspark", which is often used as a filming location. The new "Hunger Games" movie for example. But there are also some districts you don't wanna walk through without a bulletproof west. 🤕
I grew up in Duisburg and my great grandfather even worked in the Landschaftspark in 1930. But unfortunately you’re right. She showed the better spots of the city. Although she forgot the zoo, the 6 Seenplatte and the Duisburg city forest which is okay, too, I guess. 😁 But all in all there isn’t much in Duisburg that’s worth visiting. The only good thing about living in the North of Duisburg is that you’re at the Niederrhein and all the beautiful lakes etc. in half an hour with the car, which is really nice. 😄 Apart from that I think that Essen has more to offer. Not the city center of course, but Essen has many beautiful quarters like Kettwig, Werden, Bredeney or Rüttenscheid. Especially the Grugapark is worth visiting. 😄
5:05 While there is a verb called essen that means to eat and a noun called Essen that means forges, neither is where the city got its name from. It is believed to come from a name that equated to sth like "place in the East". The name is ancient though, so it's not something that we'd recognise as having that meaning today. 10:35 The meaning is that the city needed money, some more or less 20 years ago ^^ I remember when these things were made, it was a whole thing in the area. I heard about it from local TV (not a local channel, we don't have that, but some localised news programming exists). Around the time we were kids, they announced they'd be putting up these rhinos (don't remember how many in total, maybe a couple dozen?) and selling the rights to decorate them. So you could be some local company wanting to use them for advertising or maybe you're an artist wanting to be immortalised that way. Whatever it was, the rights to paint the rhinos were sold (and I guess rhino ownership, too, 120 rhinos in total, just looked it up) and some of them are still there today. Edit: don't you love misclicking and having to write your comment twice? I'll make it short then: rhinos bc of their good hearing, wings bc the music will "give you wings" (German expression, sth like "making sth really take off"). That's why they were chosen as the local music hall's mascot. These figures were created some 5-ish years after the concert hall chose their mascot animal. One thing I would have mentioned is that the Ruhr area is kinda one city or at least one continuous urban area, even though it is officially made up of over 50 towns and cities, it kinda works like one in many ways. Thing is that efforts to unite the area never went anywhere and given its policentricity, people always forget about it when talking about urban areas and metropolitan areas. I always find it curious when I see things concerning metro areas and no one mentions the biggest in Germany, which might even be one of the biggest in Europe (depending on definitions). One major advantage of NRW (the state including this area) is that there are so many cities (literally next to one another) that no matter what kind of music you like, if a band tours Germany they kinda *have to* play at least one of the venues in the Rhine-Ruhr area. For my taste, it almost always ends up being in Cologne, Oberhausen, Bochum or Essen. No idea why I've never seen a concert in the state capital (Düsseldorf), the former national capital (Bonn) or most of the other cities in the area, I guess that's down to label deals. But anyways, bands will almost be guaranteed to make a stop here and with out wonderfully overcrowded train system, you should get there before the concert if you leave an hour (or two) early. 14:20 Yeah, bland kinda captures it. And by the way, us locals would agree. The architecture in my home town is mostly just simple buildings with these rough stone walls (I don't quite know what to call the exact material but it feels cheap) that are painted in boring, muted colours with no adornments of any kind anywhere... it just feels like cheap housing built probably 50-70 years ago that was cheaply produced to house the masses. Once you're inside, it's just like any house but from the outside, it just looks bad. Maybe it's a post war thing? Who knows, Münster could look just as bad today if the local merchants hadn't decided to fun the city's reconstruction efforts. I do have to say though, my hometown of Fröndenberg/Ruhr has cleaned up nicely. There's still nothing to be done there at all and it is mainly populated by families and the elderly, so there is literally nothing to do there (that's a lie, we do have a few sites but it is very few of them indeed) but it looks nice and clean today. When I was growing up, everything was super run down (although the town had more people, funnily enough) and there was rubbish on the streets everywhere. I guess it's a nice place to retire now. 16:50 The mascot, for lack of a better word, of the region is the image of the coal miner. Like Erika explained, the Ruhr area only really became an important region due to industrialisation. Our local dialect (it's technically not really a dialect but whatever) is heavily influenced by the way coal miners and industry workers used to speak. Usually rather loud and direct and with rather emphasised plosive sounds (strong Ts, strong Ks and some Ss become Ts, e.g. "das" -> "dat"). It's also full of contractions. It can sound rather unwelcoming if you're not used to it (and sometimes even if you are). I guess you could compare it to Cockney English, at least in terms of its similar origin.
I think it would help your channel to upload new videos when it‘s daytime in Germany, because it‘s better for the algorithm if many people watch the videos right after the upload.
The Ruhr Area has a quite morbid charme. It breathes the 1950ies and 1960ies, now in a slightly dilapted state. And it is huge, with about 6 million inhabitants in the Ruhr Area proper, and double that in the Rhein-Ruhr metropolitan area, which includes Cologne and Düsseldorf (and Wuppertal, which is not counted into the Ruhr Area).
Yeah, railways usually don't earn tons of money. For the most part, very popular connections do though. In Spain, five different companies run high speed trains on the same line because demand is there. That leads to those companies fighting for customers by lowering prices. It also leads to a better service quality. Studies have shown that adding more companies to the same train line did not lower the ridership number of the existing train companies, but moreso the ridership number of airlines covering the same route. Replacing planes by trains on journey of less than 600 kilometers actually works. Germany is just far behind when it comes to the infrastructure because our past governments did not wanna invest into railways. By the way, highways also loose tons of money. Though in both the US and Germany, highway budgets are more than generous. These things are public services and should not be required to make money at all, in my opinion.
hmhm, at 15:20 i am getting hungry. Best "Currywurst Pommes Mayo" in Dortmund. Even better than the 5-Guys Fries. Some days ago there was a Deutsche Bahn job offer for a Windows 3.11 Administrator. But did not get the job, because i was to yong.
nope eine Esse ist (ein kleines Kohlenfeuer in dem der Schmied Eisen oder Stahl glüht um es zu schmieden. Der Name hat sich über mehr als ein Jahrtausend häufig geändert. Erstmals erwähnt wurde die Stadt im 9. Jahrhundert - als Asnidhi. Über Astnidum, Astanidum, Asbidi, Asnid, Assinde, Asnida, Assindia, Essendia, Esnede, Essende und Essend wurde schließlich Essen daraus.
I live in Duisburg, there are certainly ugly corners here but also very beautiful ones. There's a lot of industry here so it can't just be beautiful. By the way, Duisburg has the largest inland port in the worldI live in Duisburg, there are certainly ugly corners here but also very beautiful ones. There's a lot of industry here so it can't just be beautiful. By the way, Duisburg has the largest inland port in the world
Because of the rapid redevelopment after the war... Not only that the country's cities were in ruins because of the Allied air war over Germany. No... The Stalinist criminals drove out huge numbers of ethnic Germans from Eastern Europe, whose families had often lived in their new home countries for 200 or more years. More than 12 million people were displaced who needed some kind of roof over their heads. These more than 12 million were joined by millions more who had fled from the eastern parts of the empire to the west before the advancing Red Army and of course could not return. Now you certainly understand why we couldn't waste any time rebuilding the country and why aesthetics wasn't a consideration... And because of the city of Essen... The singular of this word explains the meaning of the word much better and has absolutely nothing to do with food. A "Esse"- (forge) is an old word for a smelter. For example, the blacksmith's forge, where the blacksmith heats the metal for further processing. And “Essen” is simply the plural of this word. One Esse, many Essen...
How did she manage to forget to mention the City weich has "Ruhr" in its Name? Mülheim an der Ruhr which has over 100.000 residence and is right between Oberhausen, Duisburg and Essen
Mülheim is only the 9th biggest city in the Ruhr area. There are 13 cities with over 100k inhabitants in total and 40 other townships. I mean, you have to leave some place out and it's not like Mülheim is a major centre inside the Ruhr area.
@@waltergro9102 Yes, but only because they never got to Step 3 of the privatisation. Step 1 make it (legally) a State owned Private Company at the stock exchange (Private Companies have other rules than official State owned ones). Step 2 (the step that ruined the quality) - Make profit aka do not invest (every invested money isn't profit anymore), get rid of the "less profitable" parts, outsource everything - all this to get high value on the stock exchange to start step 3. Step 3 when Value on the stock exchang is high - sell. Problem: Because of step 2 Closing the little lines and decreasing the service level (one train every x hours instead of every 20 Minutes) drastical reduces the usage from the Customers on this little lines but this missing Customers then even didn't reach the destination to the big lines (and don't use them also). No investment in tracks, locomotives, carriages increased the technical problems, because the repair shops where outsourced it took longer to repair the old machinery that broke down in faster intervalls. And all this happend faster than the stock exchange value raised. With less and less customers they got less and less money, profit failed, structure damaged to a "now we cannot repair cheap anymore we have to complete replace everything" level. Without investment for Cargo trains (in Germany passenger Trains have priorety and Cargo has to wait (they use the same tracks) but with less and less tracks more and more passenger trains are on the remaining ones and the cargo trains have to wait longer and longer and got unattractive (when sending something by semi truck from north to south Germany needs 18h but with Train one week (because they have to stop and wait an hour every 50miles - you lose Amazon and other Customers). But hey the book "Capitalismn for Dummies" says privatisation is always better - therefore it must be better.
Schade wenn jemand eine Region erkundet ohne Hintergrundinformationen zu haben oder mit Menschen vor Ort in Kontakt zu treten. Man verpasst definitiv das meiste. Komme selbst aus der Ecke Deutschlands und abgesehen von den üblichen schäbigen Ecken, die es überall gibt, weiß ich wie toll die Gegend und die Menschen hier sind und wieviel es hier zu entdecken gibt. Kann nur jedem raten, sich von diesem Beitrag nicht abschrecken zu lassen
how naive/ignorant must someone be to call THAT the " ugliest part of Germany"? No rats, no mountains of stinking garbage, even no washing machine on the street. That can´t be Duisburg/Gelsenkirchen/Essen......
I love the Ruhrpott. Besides Hamburg its the most energetic place in Germany. Nowhere else you can experience so much culture, subculture, events, museums, festivals and beautiful urban parks, castles and historical sides. Of coure many places are totals misplaned and misbuild, but thats part of the charm.
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In NRW, in the ruhr-pott area (highly industrialized region between the rivers Rhine and Ruhr) especially, a few things went wrong with rebuilding the cities there.
1. No Time. No one really took the time to think how the city will look in 50 years. Things had build fast because they where needed. No time for big overarching plans or visions that didn't change every 5 years.
2. Misunderstood Bauhaus. "Style derived from functionality" turned into "function over style" Bauhaus isn't putting up big concrete blocks with half a mile of identical windows. it's looking at needs, function, available tools to optimize the the living for us humans. The result are building that don't feel being build to live in, but feel to be stored in. The "organic" aspect gone missing.
3. To much concrete slaps. You will find large rectangle pieces of concrete everywhere, like giant stacked up Lego pieces. On the ground, as buildings, as sculptures, to sit on, to walk on, to live in, to look at. It makes the cities feel artificial and lifeless.
4. Neglect. Beside the larger cities cities are poor or have been poor since the heavy industry left in the 1980. This region struggled a lot, and many cities are showing this struggle in 20-40 years of neglect. Repairs and care are minimal, new money won over environmental concerns. By example large warehouses popped up, large boxes of corrugated steel, directly beside housing areas, cemeteries, parks. Large cheap office building where build to attract new businesses and so on. But it got better in the last 15-20 years.
All this makes the cities not really ugly, but "inhuman". They give the feeling not being build for humans to live in, but for humans being stored in until the "real city" is being build.
It will take 50-100 years until all the "Bausünden" (building sins) are corrected.
The Ruhr area has a bad reputation in Germany. It used to be the most industrial (heavy industry) region in Germany with the most pollution but with the downfall of heavy industry in Germany it had to reinvent itself. Might be comparable to Detroit in the US. The people there are not fancy but down to earh and have a kind of disregard for fancyness. Your statement "has potential" hits the nail on its head.
"Schwebebahn" is the word you're looking for.. ;)
The ruhr area is like a humble and down to earth berlin without tourists and hipsters. It is very multicultural, and there are so many theatres, concert halls, opera houses, museums, parks, galeries and much more in a small region. Many of them located in old industrial buildings. I don't think there are many regions, that are not capital cities, with more access to art and culture.
lol the Trainstation from Hamm 2nd picture my hometown
The maximillianpark is cool , but Hamm was destroyed to zero. Because back in the day it had the biggest railchange station in europe
About the winged rhinos: They are the heraldic animal of the Dortmund Concert Hall. The reason given for choosing it is that the rhinoceros is down to earth (like the Dortmunders themselves) and is known for its very sensitive hearing. The Dortmund rhino has wings because it is intended to inspire ever new creative flights of fancy.
I don‘t think there‘s another story or meme behind it.
Somehow, the more down to earth unicorn. A good symbol for the people in this area. Not fancy, but hard working and down to earth.
3:30 Or as the Misfits (a German cabaret duo) once sung: Stehse aufm Gasometer im Sturmessausen, und allet watte siehs, is Oberhausen! (You are standing on the Gasometer during a storm, and all you can see is Oberhausen).
Personally never felt that Essen was particularly depressing but Duisburg and Mühlheim are absolutely places that are known to be shitholes. I also noticed a difference in attitude (and have coworkers from there who think the same) between Dortmund (close to which I grew up) and Münster (where I live now, North of the Ruhr area). The first time I went back after moving away for uni (maybe a year or two into studying), I just walked through town to do some shopping and I couldn't help but notice people's annoyed and angry faces. Some even looked openly hostile. I had never noticed before, maybe because I hadn't experienced anything else regularly before, but man did I feel unwelcome there. Can't even tell you why exactly that is. Maybe it's just a poorer city (definitely poorer than idyllic little Münster) and with people doing worse, they're grumpier. Talked to some friends about this and they've had similar experiences.
I live in Duisburg. The western End of Ruhrgebiet. I really can't imagine to live in an other area of Germany. For vaccation, ok, but im glad to be back home after a week. The Ruhrgebiet is like a lot of small, mid and big cities packed together to the metropolis Ruhrgebiet. Starting from my home, i can go/ drive to the countryside, woods, city center in just a few minutes. 20 mins to get to the netherlands, 2hrs to the Belgian coast.
I m often in the Oberhausen CentrO Shopping Center. Free parking and sometimes free charging (im an ev driver).
Hagen have to look like Hagen! Because: so many "German new Wave Band's" came from Hagen. If a city is so boring you start to play music 😉
Dortmund is actually bigger than Essen, it used to be the other way around.
True
I was born in Dortmund and I will love my City forever. Don't care what other people say. For me it's beautiful and that's not because of the Building's it's because of the People. All People who Shows Respect and Love for this City.
To be honest: don’t visit the outskirts of any big city. There will always be ugly corners. But the culture in this most western and most densely populated area (Rhein-Ruhr-Metropole) in Germany is much more diverse and honest. From Cologne to Dortmund you will find town after town with no space in between and around 10 million habitants. Within 2 hours drive you find everything you need and want. Shopping from cheap to Chanel. Big companies. Biggest concert halls, biggest football clubs (Borussia Dortmund, 1. FC Köln, B. Leverkusen etc) and stadiums, airports, museums, parks, zoos. And from here its faster to be in Brussels, Amsterdam or the coast than to Munich or Berlin. Greetings from NRW
Terrible Places to live
Ah yes "culture" aka consumerism to cope with living in a post-industrial, soulless, overpopulated filthy wasteland.
Since Hagen often is stated as Germany's poorest city you should not compare it with Munich or Cologne but to the poorest cities of the US. All the other cities mentioned are also very poor with a lot of unemployment and low wages. Compare them with ugly parts of L.A. or Detroit and they start looking like Dubai.
Right. It's still paradise compared to Flint, Michigan or Gary, Indiana to name two smaller cities about the same size as Hagen.
Yeah, the Ruhr area has it's own charme but is not really considered to be beautiful. But you get the best Currywurst in all of germany there. ^^ And the people are nice there. It's a melting pot of many industrial cities close together, with a total population of 5 million people. If you are driving around this area, you don't even recognize when leaving one city, and entering another. The area reminds me a bit of Pittsburgh or Detroit.There was an initiative once, to make this area one big city, under a single one city council. It would have been germanies biggest city then, bigger than Berlin, but nobody really wanted that in the end.
Ha, James Bray also started in Cologne! ☺
I’ve been living in this area most of my lifetime.(Essen, Bochum, Hagen, Wuppertal) and she was quite accurate. But there is a big difference between living here or visiting. Because of coal and steel industry it always has been an area of industry. In my childhood it was a grim and dirty place and it changed a lot since they built all the museums and parks. But if you step out of the train and expect a beautiful old town center, then you will be disappointed. As she said it was badly destroyed in WWII and built up quickly and it is more practical than beautiful. But if you crack that ugly oyster, you surely find many beautiful pearls. The Ruhrgebiet (Wuppertal is near but not part of it btw and the upside-down train is called Schwebebahn) is also an interesting cultural hotspot (often compared to Berlin) with lots of art, music, museums, theatres, universities. Living here means, you are only 10 minutes away from a park, the next shopping mall, great restaurants and the next museum and from your work. If you don’t like living in the city, you are surrounded by beautiful rural areas and villages. It mostly is quite affordable to rent an appartement. If you live here and find out where the best spots are, it can be really beautiful. On the other hand you find poverty, homeless people, high rate of unemployment, probably more than average. But I never had bad experiences with people here.
Depressing is the right word of choice here to describe the Ruhrpott area. I have a similar feeling about my Rhineland city which is in the same state. The problem is the state itself. First of all its very crowded, 16 million out of 83 millon germans live here, more than anywhere else. And since the industry went down many places are similar with West Virginia.
For practicing your german, I recommend to go more to middle and north Germany then Bavaria or Cologne, cause in this area they don't have such a strong dialect like in the south. I'm from the area around Berlin and even I wouldn't be able to understand someone who speaks the bavarian dialect (same with austria). The cologne dialect is easier for a german but for foreigners, I guess, it's also a bit hard.
Around Hannover is basically the hotspot of Hochdeutsch, which is the standard german you probably learn 😉
And not to forget to mentioning, that the german coast area is one of the most beautiful landscapes in Germany at all, in my opinion. You should check that out 😎
I live in Duisburg and the video actually shows the "better" spots of our city. 😅 Especially the "Landschaftspark", which is often used as a filming location. The new "Hunger Games" movie for example. But there are also some districts you don't wanna walk through without a bulletproof west. 🤕
I grew up in Duisburg and my great grandfather even worked in the Landschaftspark in 1930.
But unfortunately you’re right. She showed the better spots of the city. Although she forgot the zoo, the 6 Seenplatte and the Duisburg city forest which is okay, too, I guess. 😁
But all in all there isn’t much in Duisburg that’s worth visiting. The only good thing about living in the North of Duisburg is that you’re at the Niederrhein and all the beautiful lakes etc. in half an hour with the car, which is really nice. 😄
Apart from that I think that Essen has more to offer. Not the city center of course, but Essen has many beautiful quarters like Kettwig, Werden, Bredeney or Rüttenscheid. Especially the Grugapark is worth visiting. 😄
Ja du muss schon hier jeboren sein, um dat zu ertragen
allen anderen schlägt duisburch aufn Magen 🎶🎶
5:05 While there is a verb called essen that means to eat and a noun called Essen that means forges, neither is where the city got its name from. It is believed to come from a name that equated to sth like "place in the East". The name is ancient though, so it's not something that we'd recognise as having that meaning today.
10:35 The meaning is that the city needed money, some more or less 20 years ago ^^
I remember when these things were made, it was a whole thing in the area. I heard about it from local TV (not a local channel, we don't have that, but some localised news programming exists). Around the time we were kids, they announced they'd be putting up these rhinos (don't remember how many in total, maybe a couple dozen?) and selling the rights to decorate them. So you could be some local company wanting to use them for advertising or maybe you're an artist wanting to be immortalised that way. Whatever it was, the rights to paint the rhinos were sold (and I guess rhino ownership, too, 120 rhinos in total, just looked it up) and some of them are still there today.
Edit: don't you love misclicking and having to write your comment twice? I'll make it short then: rhinos bc of their good hearing, wings bc the music will "give you wings" (German expression, sth like "making sth really take off"). That's why they were chosen as the local music hall's mascot. These figures were created some 5-ish years after the concert hall chose their mascot animal.
One thing I would have mentioned is that the Ruhr area is kinda one city or at least one continuous urban area, even though it is officially made up of over 50 towns and cities, it kinda works like one in many ways. Thing is that efforts to unite the area never went anywhere and given its policentricity, people always forget about it when talking about urban areas and metropolitan areas. I always find it curious when I see things concerning metro areas and no one mentions the biggest in Germany, which might even be one of the biggest in Europe (depending on definitions).
One major advantage of NRW (the state including this area) is that there are so many cities (literally next to one another) that no matter what kind of music you like, if a band tours Germany they kinda *have to* play at least one of the venues in the Rhine-Ruhr area. For my taste, it almost always ends up being in Cologne, Oberhausen, Bochum or Essen. No idea why I've never seen a concert in the state capital (Düsseldorf), the former national capital (Bonn) or most of the other cities in the area, I guess that's down to label deals. But anyways, bands will almost be guaranteed to make a stop here and with out wonderfully overcrowded train system, you should get there before the concert if you leave an hour (or two) early.
14:20 Yeah, bland kinda captures it. And by the way, us locals would agree. The architecture in my home town is mostly just simple buildings with these rough stone walls (I don't quite know what to call the exact material but it feels cheap) that are painted in boring, muted colours with no adornments of any kind anywhere... it just feels like cheap housing built probably 50-70 years ago that was cheaply produced to house the masses. Once you're inside, it's just like any house but from the outside, it just looks bad. Maybe it's a post war thing? Who knows, Münster could look just as bad today if the local merchants hadn't decided to fun the city's reconstruction efforts.
I do have to say though, my hometown of Fröndenberg/Ruhr has cleaned up nicely. There's still nothing to be done there at all and it is mainly populated by families and the elderly, so there is literally nothing to do there (that's a lie, we do have a few sites but it is very few of them indeed) but it looks nice and clean today. When I was growing up, everything was super run down (although the town had more people, funnily enough) and there was rubbish on the streets everywhere. I guess it's a nice place to retire now.
16:50 The mascot, for lack of a better word, of the region is the image of the coal miner. Like Erika explained, the Ruhr area only really became an important region due to industrialisation. Our local dialect (it's technically not really a dialect but whatever) is heavily influenced by the way coal miners and industry workers used to speak. Usually rather loud and direct and with rather emphasised plosive sounds (strong Ts, strong Ks and some Ss become Ts, e.g. "das" -> "dat"). It's also full of contractions. It can sound rather unwelcoming if you're not used to it (and sometimes even if you are). I guess you could compare it to Cockney English, at least in terms of its similar origin.
I think it would help your channel to upload new videos when it‘s daytime in Germany, because it‘s better for the algorithm if many people watch the videos right after the upload.
The Ruhr Area has a quite morbid charme. It breathes the 1950ies and 1960ies, now in a slightly dilapted state. And it is huge, with about 6 million inhabitants in the Ruhr Area proper, and double that in the Rhein-Ruhr metropolitan area, which includes Cologne and Düsseldorf (and Wuppertal, which is not counted into the Ruhr Area).
Yeah, railways usually don't earn tons of money. For the most part, very popular connections do though. In Spain, five different companies run high speed trains on the same line because demand is there. That leads to those companies fighting for customers by lowering prices. It also leads to a better service quality. Studies have shown that adding more companies to the same train line did not lower the ridership number of the existing train companies, but moreso the ridership number of airlines covering the same route. Replacing planes by trains on journey of less than 600 kilometers actually works. Germany is just far behind when it comes to the infrastructure because our past governments did not wanna invest into railways.
By the way, highways also loose tons of money. Though in both the US and Germany, highway budgets are more than generous. These things are public services and should not be required to make money at all, in my opinion.
hmhm, at 15:20 i am getting hungry. Best "Currywurst Pommes Mayo" in Dortmund.
Even better than the 5-Guys Fries.
Some days ago there was a Deutsche Bahn job offer for a Windows 3.11 Administrator.
But did not get the job, because i was to yong.
Essen derives from "Esse" = tall, industrial chimney, which makes perfectly sense
nope eine Esse ist (ein kleines Kohlenfeuer in dem der Schmied Eisen oder Stahl glüht um es zu schmieden. Der Name hat sich über mehr als ein Jahrtausend häufig geändert. Erstmals erwähnt wurde die Stadt im 9. Jahrhundert - als Asnidhi. Über Astnidum, Astanidum, Asbidi, Asnid, Assinde, Asnida, Assindia, Essendia, Esnede, Essende und Essend wurde schließlich Essen daraus.
@@sindbad8411 auch nicht ganz richtig, eine Esse ist auch genau das was ich erklärt hatte. Stimmt aber beides.
That area is like the Rust Belt in the U.S. i´d say.
I live in Duisburg, there are certainly ugly corners here but also very beautiful ones. There's a lot of industry here so it can't just be beautiful. By the way, Duisburg has the largest inland port in the worldI live in Duisburg, there are certainly ugly corners here but also very beautiful ones. There's a lot of industry here so it can't just be beautiful. By the way, Duisburg has the largest inland port in the world
Because of the rapid redevelopment after the war... Not only that the country's cities were in ruins because of the Allied air war over Germany. No... The Stalinist criminals drove out huge numbers of ethnic Germans from Eastern Europe, whose families had often lived in their new home countries for 200 or more years. More than 12 million people were displaced who needed some kind of roof over their heads. These more than 12 million were joined by millions more who had fled from the eastern parts of the empire to the west before the advancing Red Army and of course could not return. Now you certainly understand why we couldn't waste any time rebuilding the country and why aesthetics wasn't a consideration...
And because of the city of Essen... The singular of this word explains the meaning of the word much better and has absolutely nothing to do with food. A "Esse"- (forge) is an old word for a smelter. For example, the blacksmith's forge, where the blacksmith heats the metal for further processing. And “Essen” is simply the plural of this word. One Esse, many Essen...
How did she manage to forget to mention the City weich has "Ruhr" in its Name?
Mülheim an der Ruhr which has over 100.000 residence and is right between Oberhausen, Duisburg and Essen
Mülheim is only the 9th biggest city in the Ruhr area. There are 13 cities with over 100k inhabitants in total and 40 other townships. I mean, you have to leave some place out and it's not like Mülheim is a major centre inside the Ruhr area.
@@MellonVegan
Wir haben Ruhr im Namen...
Oberhausen hat nen Kanal
Über Duisburg rede ich nicht
Und Oberhausen ist die Reinkanation der Hölle
Compared to former british industrial heartlands,Germany does exeptionally well.
We had a state owned train system .. old ,ugly, but on time and rarely without conection. Than it was privatised. Many tracks were closed.
The privatised railway company is owned by the state.
@@waltergro9102 Yes, but only because they never got to Step 3 of the privatisation.
Step 1 make it (legally) a State owned Private Company at the stock exchange (Private Companies have other rules than official State owned ones).
Step 2 (the step that ruined the quality) - Make profit aka do not invest (every invested money isn't profit anymore), get rid of the "less profitable" parts, outsource everything - all this to get high value on the stock exchange to start step 3.
Step 3 when Value on the stock exchang is high - sell.
Problem: Because of step 2
Closing the little lines and decreasing the service level (one train every x hours instead of every 20 Minutes) drastical reduces the usage from the Customers on this little lines but this missing Customers then even didn't reach the destination to the big lines (and don't use them also).
No investment in tracks, locomotives, carriages increased the technical problems, because the repair shops where outsourced it took longer to repair the old machinery that broke down in faster intervalls.
And all this happend faster than the stock exchange value raised.
With less and less customers they got less and less money, profit failed, structure damaged to a "now we cannot repair cheap anymore we have to complete replace everything" level.
Without investment for Cargo trains (in Germany passenger Trains have priorety and Cargo has to wait (they use the same tracks) but with less and less tracks more and more passenger trains are on the remaining ones and the cargo trains have to wait longer and longer and got unattractive (when sending something by semi truck from north to south Germany needs 18h but with Train one week (because they have to stop and wait an hour every 50miles - you lose Amazon and other Customers).
But hey the book "Capitalismn for Dummies" says privatisation is always better - therefore it must be better.
Might have something to do with american bombing.and english bombing which was concentrated on civilian City centers.
Sorry i missed Gelsenkirchen
You didn't miss anything.
@@BunjiKugashira42 😂
Schade wenn jemand eine Region erkundet ohne Hintergrundinformationen zu haben oder mit Menschen vor Ort in Kontakt zu treten. Man verpasst definitiv das meiste. Komme selbst aus der Ecke Deutschlands und abgesehen von den üblichen schäbigen Ecken, die es überall gibt, weiß ich wie toll die Gegend und die Menschen hier sind und wieviel es hier zu entdecken gibt. Kann nur jedem raten, sich von diesem Beitrag nicht abschrecken zu lassen
Good evening
hi!
how naive/ignorant must someone be to call THAT the " ugliest part of Germany"?
No rats, no mountains of stinking garbage, even no washing machine on the street. That can´t be Duisburg/Gelsenkirchen/Essen......
Ugly = the place has potential 😂
I love the Ruhrpott. Besides Hamburg its the most energetic place in Germany. Nowhere else you can experience so much culture, subculture, events, museums, festivals and beautiful urban parks, castles and historical sides. Of coure many places are totals misplaned and misbuild, but thats part of the charm.
I know ,you're very proud of socialized bathrooms...I refuse to pay for other peoples pee!