Völklinger Hütte World Cultural Heritage Site
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The Völklinger Hütte was the first destination of our BeNeLux tour. Even though BeNeLux actually stands for Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg, on our way through Germany we obviously visited one or the other object. And so we start in the province of Saarland.
We reach the Völklinger Hütte shortly after 13:00. The huge car park shows us how it can be if you come at the wrong time. Today, at noon and during the week, only two or three dozen vehicles are standing around. Their passengers should get lost in the area.
We buy our tickets and have to sign that we are not allowed to use photos commercially. Well, at least you can make some. However, not directly at the beginning - there is a special exhibition of Egyptian art which is included in the price.
We walk through the corridors rather unenthusiastic and are quickly out again. Everything has already been seen and that in a setting that fits the pieces better.
Now we walk through one of the old machine halls into the open-air area. Since the sun still burns down from above, we head to the next exhibition hall. Here again are huge machines, but also tapes on which former workers describe how they managed the closure of their ironwork.
We work our way down floor by floor and finally reach an area where an exhibition of Urban Art is shown. Somehow this suits the location much better than the Egyptian gold jewelry. The nice thing is that there are pieces of older exhibitions spread over the whole area. We didn't get a list of them, but it's still a bit like a scavenger hunt 🌝.
From here we finally get to the outer areas. Everything is big here - really big. Partly the towers remind of cathedrals. We grab helmets and climb up a bit. The higher you get, the better the view becomes, but the impression of the size decreases at the same time. So we turn around and walk down again.
Even if this is a world cultural heritage site and they obviously do something for the preservation, the decay is obvious in many places. But this is what makes the steelworks so charming.
After four and a half hours we are exhausted and drive to the hotel. What a great start to the road trip.
