Germany's industrial heartland comes to standstill for the mother of all parties, writes DEREK SCALLYin Duisburg
LET’S HEAR it for German efficiency. The oldest cliche about our Teutonic cousins was welcome indeed when the country’s Ruhr industrial heartland came to a standstill yesterday for the mother of all parties.
Three million revellers, a million litres of beer and a party stretching over 60km (37 miles) – the equivalent of Dublin to Drogheda – for one day only with no queues, no chaos and no fights, just fun.
The ambitious aim of “Still Life” was to change negative attitudes in Germany towards the Ruhr, a region known for the last six decades as the capital of smokestacks, steel mills, and soot.
Some five million people live in this urban sprawl of cities, where Duisburg runs into Essen into Bochum and on to Dortmund. Yesterday more than two million locals – every second resident – flooded the A40 expressway for this highlight of the 2010 European Capital of Culture in Essen and its Ruhr sister cities.
Can the fragmented cities with their different histories be united into one Ruhr metropole? Only time will tell if it had a lasting effect – in reality or in people’s minds. But, for one day at least, the only traffic jams on the A40 were from bicycles; the only exhaust fumes from the generators dotted along the route.
For one day the Ruhr was connected up with 20,000 tables and as many mini-parties from bowling clubs alongside school groups, scout troops and theatre troupes. A friendly festival on the otherwise hostile, anonymous Autobahn.
“I travel along this Autobahn to work and sit in traffic jams every day right here,” said Inge (56) at the table of a theatre group from the town of Kamp-Lintfort. “The last time this Autobahn was empty here was in 1974 during the oil crisis, when they closed all motorways on Sundays.”
For kilometre after kilometre, the party kept on rolling. Strangers salsa danced in the sun near Duisburg and 100 newly wed brides in their gleaming white wedding dresses handed out red roses near Essen. Near Dortmund, Audrey Hepburn fans spent the day recreating scenes from Breakfast at Tiffany's.
Everyone shared everything with everyone else: cool drinks, home-baked cakes and even the toilet paper when it ran scarce in the portable toilets.
Revelling in the moment was Helen Göde who, according to the sign behind her, was celebrating her 27th birthday. The sign concluded: “Celebrate with me!” Göde, a pretty brunette in shades and a straw hat bedecked with carnations, was accepting personally the congratulations from hundreds of complete strangers from all over Germany and as far away as South Korea, Los Angeles and even Ireland.
“I’ve never had a birthday like this and I think I never will again for the rest of my life,” said Göde as she smiled for the camera with another passerby who insisted she “just had to be photographed with Helen”.
The absurdity continued a little further on where the staff of a special needs school had dressed themselves up as the cast of Alice in Wonderland. Alice was perspiring lightly in her plaid dress as the Cheshire cat, also known as Lisa Rother, explained.
“We decided that the world’s longest table needs a Mad Hatter’s tea party,” she said. “We haven’t gotten to the tea and cake yet. We’re just standing here posing because so many people want our picture.”
The good mood spread as Bavarian beer-drinking songs chimed with old worker melodies once sung in the surrounding coal mines.
“What a day to remind people we all belong here together in the Ruhr,” said Anna Wiedemann, wearing a bright red bobbed wig, along with the rest of her bowling club from nearby Moers. “With our coal and steel the Ruhr rebuilt Germany after the war. Others in Germany turn up their nose and call us the dirty corner of the country. But we’ve got it all: forests, lakes, beautiful castles. We just need more pride in ourselves.”
At one table, Klaus Becker from Duisburg had set up a table for the “Kurt Tucholsky Society”, dedicated to celebrating the brilliantly bitter satirist of Third Reich Germany. “It’s quite an event when you manage to separate the car-loving Germans from their cars for one day and close 60km of Autobahn,” he said. “The organisers have provided a free space and, without external steering, people have filled it . . . This is all about people enjoying themselves every way they want to.” On his table, Mr Becker had assembled Tucholsky’s wittiest one-liners on pieces of card. As the crowd glided by instead of cars, one quote jumped out as if written especially for this brilliantly pointless, absurd, wonderful day in Germany.
“Expect nothing,” wrote Kurt Tucholsky. “Today: that is your life.”