Cora Buhlert

This year’s Marché Noir Retro Fair took place on Sunday, March 1, in Dorsten on the northern edge of the Ruhrgebiet. I attended for first time last year (see my three part con report here) and enjoyed the experience, so I wanted to go again. Besides, Marché Noir has one of the coolest venues imaginable, the washing hall of a former coal mine.

What is more, I’ve also been experiencing a sort of cabin fever, because nigh constant snow and frost kept mostly kept me inside (with a few exceptions, two of which are chronicled here and here) until mid February. When the temperatures finally rose above freezing, we got a lot of rain, which was even more unpleasant than the snow.

In the last week of February, the temperatures rose rapidly by twenty degrees or so from frozen winter to early spring, which was rather annoying, because the rise was way too fast. Plus, I’m having a heat pump installed – the heat pump my Dad wanted to have installed before he died – and while it is supposed to save me money, it’s also a massive hassle, because the contractors have torn my basement apart, my washing machine and half the pantry are inaccessible and I have to use my parents’ old shower which is so narrow it’s hard to turn around. What is more, there’s an open chasm in the middle of my terrace where the pipes for the heat pump will go. The construction work is also taking longer than expected, because one guy fell ill and apparently there is no replacement for him. And while the contractors are working, I’m also tied to the house, since I have to let the contractors in and don’t want to leave them alone for too long. So I was glad for a distraction from all that nonsense. And a con and a roadtrip can be an excellent distraction.

Autobahn A1

I set out at roughly twenty past six in the morning. The trip to Dorsten takes about two and a half hours and the con was set to open at ten AM. However, I wanted to have breakfast on route, so I needed some additional time. And should I arrive too early, there was plenty to explore on the premises of the decommisioned Fürst Leopold Mine.

It was still dark, when I set out – the sun currently rises at approx. thirteen past seven AM. However, the sky was already turning light in the East. I made my way to Groß Mackenstedt and drove onto Autobahn A1 in southbound direction. Because it was so early in the morning and a Sunday besides, the Autobahn was mostly empty. I made good time, though there was a speed limit of first 100 kilometers per hour and later 120 kilometers per hour because of the bad condition of the tarmac. But once I passed junction Alhorner Heide, the speed limit was lifted and I could drive as fast as I wanted.  And since there was so little traffic, I drove up to 150 or even 160 kilometers per hour, which is faster than I normally go. But then the conditions were perfect for going very fast.

Outside, it was gradually getting lighter. By the time the sun rose at thirteen past seven, I had just passed service station Dammer Berge with its iconic bridge restaurant. I made a brief pitstop to drink some water and eat a piece of chocolate and drove onwards. By the time I had been driving for an hour, I had already passed Osnabrück and was crossing the Teutoburg Forest, one of the more scenic parts of the route.

Autobahn A43 and the Problem with the Münsterland

I continued to make good time. At shortly before eight, I passed Münster and changed onto Autobahn A43 at the intersection Münster South. By now, it was just about time for breakfast.

Now the problem with the Münsterland is that it’s thinly populated and that there’s a lot of it. From Bremen until you hit the Ruhrgebiet, you’re basically driving through a whole lot of nothing. Of course, there are several exits on the A1 and A43, but many of the towns listed on the exit signs are actually quite a bit away from the Autobahn. And sometimes, they’re not towns at all, but small villages. There are Autohöfe, of course, but Autohöfe are usually not great for breakfast.

Along the A43 or at least the part of it that I drove, there are only two towns of reasonable size close by the Autobahn, Dülmen and Haltern by the Lake. Last year, when heading to Marché Noir, I stopped for breakfast in Dülmen and since I already knew there was a good bakery café in Dülmen, which was open on a Sunday (bakeries are allowed to open on Sundays in Germany, but not all of them do), I decided that I might as well stop there for breakfast again.

Breakfast in Dülmen 

So I left the A43 at the exit Dülmen and headed to a local branch of Bakery Geiping, a bakery chain that is active all over the Münsterland and the northern Ruhrgebiet.

Germany is a country of bakeries and it used to be that every village and every town had their own bakery, often more than one. Eventually, some bakeries started opening branches in grocery stores and neighbouring villages, while other remained small. Then one by one, the small independent bakeries started dying off, while the chain bakeries steadily expanded. Nowadays, the situation with bakeries is as it was with grocery chains into the 1990s. There are lots of regional chains that are ubiquitous in one region and completely unknown elsewhere. In my region, the local champions are Hansemann and Brüne-Meyer, but we also have Haferkamp from Bremen, Tönjes from Ganderkese, Weymann from Twistringen, Behrens-Meyer from Garrel and Müller & Egerer from Oldenburg. Further north, we have Sam’s Urban Bakery from decidedly non-urban Fischerhude (the owner is not called Sam either, but Samann), while further south, there’s Bertermann from Minden.

In the Ruhrgebiet, you have Kamp, originally from Hagen, but by now you can find their shops all over Germany, particularly in train stations, Grobe from Dortmund and in the northern part Geiping, originally from Lüdinghausen in the Münsterland. Dülmen is a neighbouring town of Lüdinghausen, so they have Geiping as well as a local chain called Bakery Grote. However, the Dülmen branch of Geiping was closer to the Autobahn than any branch of Grote, so Geiping it was. And judging by the line of customers that stretched out onto the parking lot, even though it was barely past eight AM on a Sunday morning, it was the right decision, because the locals clearly like Geiping.

Since I was eating in, I could bypass the line of people buying fresh rolls for their Sunday breakfast and go straight inside. I had scrambled eggs with vegetables, a slice of bread and a roll, orange juice and latte macchiato. And looking at my post from last year, I had the exact same breakfast – after all, it was tasty.

Breakfast of Champions of Grayskull: He-Man and Skeletor are about to battle it out over my scrambled eggs with vegetables.

And yes, I brought some action figures along for impromptu toy photography. But more on that later.

Service Station Hohe Mark

After breakfast, I set off again and drove back onto Autobahn A43. I had used the toilet at the bakery café, but I was feeling a bit of pressure on my bladder, so I stopped once more at service station Hohe Mark to use their toilets.

Hohe Mark is fairly small, as service stations go, but I came across this statue on the playground next to the restaurant.

The so-called Töddenläufer statue by Münster based sculptor Werner-Jakob Korsmeier at service station Hohe Mark on the A43. The poor fellow looks a bit pained by his heavy load.

The statue depicts a so-called Töddenläufer, a wandering cloth merchant. These wandering merchants were active in the 17th, 18th and early 19th century, taking linen woven in Westfalia to the neighbouring Netherlands to sell it there. There were entire dynasties of wandering merchants and they had their own secret language.  The Napoleonic wars and later the rise of railroads put an end to the Tödden trade, though some of the merchant dynasties went on to found clothing store chains that can still be found on high streets in Germany and the Netherlands and beyond to this day. C&A, Peek & Cloppenburg, Vroom & Dreesmann or the now defunct Boecker clothing chain all had their roots in the Tödden trade.

Fun fact: As a teen, I dismissed Peek & Cloppenburg and Boecker as “boring clothes for old people”, though I liked C&A and Vroom & Dreesmann. These days, I rare go to C&A, because the quality is terrible. Peek & Cloppenburg actually has decent quality, though it’s still not my preferred store, because the clothes are still a little too boring for me. Boecker and Vroom & Dreesmann are both gone, fallen victim to changing buying habits.

Most Autobahn service stations are quite plain and utilitarian. Interesting architecture or public art at service stations is rare, which is why I was surprised to come across this statue at the relatively small service station Hohe Mark. I couldn’t find out when this particular statue was erected, though I suspect it was around 1981, when this leg of the A43 was completed.

Until now, Autobahn A43 was still firmly in the rural Münsterland. However, at the next exit Haltern on the Lake, I passed the “Metropolitan Region Ruhr” sign, which marks the beginning of the Ruhrgebiet. Now personally, I always assumed that the rather rural town Haltern on the Lake was still part of the Münsterland. However, Haltern on the Lake is part of Recklinghausen county and Recklinghausen is Ruhrgebiet, so Haltern is considered part of the Ruhrgebiet as well.

That said, even Dorsten, where I was headed still feels more like Münsterland than Ruhrgebiet, except that Dorsten has or rather used to have a mine. Coincidentally, Haltern on the Lake has a mine as well – Mine Auguste Victoria, which was one of the last coalmines in Germany to shut down in 2015.  Most of Mine August Victoria is in the city of Marl, but some of the mineshafts also extended into neighbouring Haltern.

Autobahn A52 and Marl

Talking of Marl, at the intersection Marl North, I changed onto Autobahn A52 for the last leg of the trip.  Now Marl is very clearly Ruhrgebiet and a center of the chemical industry. In fact, the A52 directly passes Marl Chemical Park.

Interestingly, there is another town called Marl in Germany, though this one is located further north on the shores of the Dümmer Lake. When my Mom was at a physical therapy clinic in the spa town of Bad Iburg in the Teutoburg Forest and Dad and I drove to visit her, we drove past the other Marl. There even was a sign pointing to some kind of chemical plant. At the time, I had no idea that there were two towns called Marl and said, “Wait a minute, Marl? But that’s in the Ruhrgebiet. Surely, we’re not that far south.”

As for how I knew that Marl was in the Ruhrgebiet, well, it turns out that even though I assumed last year that I had never been in Dorsten and on the Autobahn A43 before, it turns out that I have been there after all.

Because when my Dad worked in Rotterdam in the Netherlands in the 1980s, he also often had to go to Antwerp in Belgium, because that’s where the two ships for which he was the technical supervisors were actually moored, whenever they were in port. My Mom and I visited Dad during the school holidays. And when he had to go to Antwerp, he always took us along, especially since I loved Antwerp dearly. Sometimes, we’d drive straight home from Antwerp – or straight to Antwerp. The route to Antwerp led through the Ruhrgebiet. I don’t remember all the Ruhrgebiet cities we passed – and as I said before, in Ruhrgebiet all the cities blend into each other – though I remember that we crossed the Rhine at Duisburg, because Duisburg was the homebase of Horst Schimanski, the two-fisted working class cop who shook up the sale world of the Tatort crime series. Even today, Schimanski is still the first thing I associate with Duisburg.

Last October, I traveled to Belgium to attend the “Vintage Toys of the Universe” toy con in Geel, though I booked a hotel in Antwerp, because it’s still my favourite city in the whole wide world (I initially wrote universe, but I suspect Trantor, Coruscant and Lankhmar might be even cooler). And yes, I crossed the Rhine at Duisburg and while I was driving along Autobahn A40 headed for the Rhine bridge, “Faust auf Faust” (Fist on Fist) by Klaus Lage, which was the title song of the Schimanski Tatort “Zahn um Zahn” (A Tooth for a Tooth), came on on the radio, just as I passed the exit Duisburg-Ruhrort, title of the first ever Schimanski Tatort, and it was just fucking magical.

I didn’t write a report about that trip, because I came down with the flu immediately after the con and sick for two weeks. On the way to Belgium, I also did not take what my GPS Else thinks is the fastest route, but instead opted to travel straight through the heart of the Ruhrgebiet. But on the way back, I got delayed by two massive traffic jams, one in the Netherlands and one just after Duisburg, so it was late and I just wanted to go home, so I followed Else’s instructions and took the fastest route. And Else directed me onto the A52 and A43 past Dorsten and Marl. Dorsten still doesn’t ring a bell from back then, but then it’s just a town name on an exit sign. Nor does the rest of the A43, probably because teen Cora dismissed it as rural and boring. But I definitely remembered Marl and its Chemical Park with the various plants lit up by night, which is when I realised that yes, I have been here before.

Autobahn A52 doesn’t just pass Marl Chemical Park, but it also passes directly by the Fatih Mosque, which was built in 1992 as one of the first pupose-built mosques in all of Germany, catering to Turkish immigrants, of which there are many in the Ruhrgebiet. As for why the mosque is located directly next to the Autobahn – in 1992 that was the only plot of land that the Turkish community was able to buy, because no one else would sell to them. Even today, it’s often difficult for Muslim or other non-Judeo-Christian religions to get permission to build a mosque or a temple, which is why mosques, Hindu temples, Buddhist temples, Sikh temples, etc.. are often located on industrial estates and often look unremarkable. I don’t get this mindset at all, since I feel a architecturally interesting house of worship is a boon to any city, regardless of faith. I also inherited my Mom’s fascination for places of worship. She’d never pass a church she didn’t want to visit, but she also never passed a synagogue, mosque, Buddhist or Hindu temple she didn’t want to visit either, and I’m the same.  But “Church pretty, Mosque or Hindu Temple ugly” is sadly a common sentiment in Germany.

I drove past the Faith Mosque on my way to Dorsten, but on the way back I left the A52 in Marl, looking for something, and chanced to drive directly past the mosque, so I took this picture:

The Fatih Mosque in Marl, built in 1992. Note the Turkish and German flags outside the mosque and the Christmas lights repurposed as Ramadan lights strung along the fence.

Come on, how can you dislike this building? It’s pretty and it serves a genuine need for Turkish immigrant population of Marl. I’m not religious at all, but beautiful buildings are one of the best things religion has done for humanity.

Dorsten is the next exit after Marl, though the A52 doesn’t go directly past/through Dorsten, but swings south towards Gelsenkirchen and fucking Gladbeck. So you have to drive along Bundestraße B225 past fields and industrial estates along the Datteln Hamm canal and the river Lippe.  It always surprises me that the river Lippe flows along the northern edge of the Ruhrgebiet, since I mainly associate the river Lippe with the former principality of Schaumburg-Lippe, which is further east.

Last year, I ran into the problem that my GPS Else, which can’t be updated anymore, didn’t recognise the actual street adress of the Fürst Leopold Mine in Dorsten, because the mine hadn’t yet been fully decommissioned and converted when Else was programmed, so the street didn’t exist. And the street I used instead was very long, so Else led me to the wrong place.

This year, I was prepared and entered a street much closer to the former mine – literally called “Zechenstraße” (mine street) – that already existed when Else was programmed. So Else led me to the mine and I found a parking space on one of the parking lots next to the premises of the mine rather than in the adjacent business park, which meant less walking. By now, it was ten to ten and the con was about to open. But that’s a story for part 2.