Journey to the Edge of the Ruhrgebiet: Cora’s Adventures at the Marché Noir Retro Fair in Dorsten, Part 1: It’s Roadtrip Time Again

I first heard about Marché Noir, a retro toy/comic/games/cool stuff fair in the Ruhrgebiet region, sometime last year. It sounded like exactly my sort of thing. However, Marché Noir is traditionally in February and last year I couldn’t go for personal reasons and probably wouldn’t have enjoyed myself, even if I had been able to go.

In previous years, Marché Noir took place in a former tram depot in Dortmund, but this year they moved to a new venue on the premises of a former coalmine in a town called Dorsten. The name of the town didn’t ring a bell at all, but when I looked it up on a map, I saw that Dorsten is located on the northern edge of the Ruhrgebiet and is actually closer to Bremen than Dortmund would have been. And of course the fact that the con venue was a former coalmine turned arts and events venue also intrigued me, because anything that combines a con with industrial history has to be cool. Plus, last week was the first anniversary of Mom’s death, so Marché Noir gave me something to distract me and look forward to. So I decided to go.

And you know what this means. It’s roadtrip time again!

Autobahn A1

I got up at quarter past six AM.  As with my trips to Castrop-Rauxel and Hanau, it was still dark when I got up. However, by the time I got into my car shortly before seven AM, the pitch darkness of the night had been replaced by gray twilight gloom. By now, it’s quite notable that the days are getting longer again. However, it was also freezing cold – the entire week has been cold and we even had snow.

I made a brief pitstop to throw my mail-in ballot into a mailbox – Germany is having a general election next Sunday, which is dreaded by pretty much everybody, and since the far right AfD is projected to win approx. twenty percent of the total vote, every vote counts even more than usual. Then, my civic duty done, I set off towards Dorsten.

I drove onto my old friend Autobahn A1 at Groß-Mackenstedt in southbound direction. As I’ve said before, almost every roadtrip starts on the A1. Because it was seven AM on a Sunday morning, even the normally busy A1 was as empty as it ever gets. There were very few cars about, because it was so early. And since trucks are not allowed to drive on German roads on Sundays except for urgent cargo like perishable goods or live animals, there were hardly any trucks either, at least not on the Autobahnen. Because there were plenty of trucks parked on the large parking lots along the route.

Because there was so little traffic, I made good time. Even better, my old nemesis, the monster 33 kilometer construction zone between exits Lohne/Dinklage and Bramsche is also gone with a few leftovers, where there’s still some construction work going on at the edge of the highway or on highway bridges and the like.

On the downside, the stretch of Autobahn from Groß-Mackenstedt to Wildeshausen, which used to be a “go as fast as you like” zone and then acquired a speed limit of 120 kilometers per hour, has now had the speed limit reduced to 100 kilometers per hour because the tarmac is in bad condition. I guess that’s where the next monster construction zone will be. It’s still a bummer, though, because 100 kilometers per hour is pretty slow for an Autobahn that’s straight and even, not to mention almost empty.

After Wildeshausen, however, the speed limit was lifted and I could drive as fast as I like. And because the Autobahn was empty and there are few curves and no hills here, I drove at top speeds up to 150 kilometers per hour or so, which is faster than I normally go. But in such conditions and with good music on the radio, driving is fun. Plus, it wasn’t dark anymore, but gray, though the sun didn’t rise until approx. 7:40 AM, by which time I had reached Service Station Dammer Berge with its iconic bridge restaurant. Though this time around, I didn’t stop there, because I wasn’t in the mood for soapy coffee or gloopy cake.

There was snow in the fields and woods alongside the A1. At first just a little bit and then by the time I reached Cloppenburg, the fields fully covered in snow, though the Autobahn itself was free. Interestingly enough, the snow completely vanished by the time I Osnabrück. Normally, the hillier and more southern parts of Germany get more snow. But this time around, North Germany got all the snow, while the regions further south didn’t get nearly as much.

Country Roads, Take Me Home:

When I’m driving I need music on the radio to stay awake and alert. That makes me the opposite of my Dad, who needed to hear someone talking to stay alert, preferably live, but the radio would do as well. With was a problem during roadtrips, when I was a kid, because Dad would switch on talky radio stations – usually news and political stuff – and also keep the music at a very low volume, whereas I wanted music at higher volume and preferably no talking at all, because it disrupted my thoughts. And since I cannot tolerate headphones, a walkman was no solution either. Eventually, I learned to tune out the talking on the radio to the point that I accidentally gave myself audio processing issues (basically, I tend to drift off after a few minutes of talking on the radio or another medium), which initially made it difficult for me to listen to podcasts, audio books and audio dramas (which is ironic, considering how important audio dramas were in West German youth culture). Come to think of it, I’m not sure if I ever suggested to my Dad popping an audio drama on cassette into the tape deck of the car radio, so we could at least listen to talking that was fun. But then, I don’t think it would have worked, because my parents didn’t like audio dramas very much (some nonsense about audio dramas harming reading abilities), so I never had all that many audio dramas on tape. Oddly enough, they did buy me Kid Stuff readalong records from the US, because anything is educational, when it’s in a foreign language.

My radio station of choice has always been Radio Bremen 1, because I like their mix of older and newer music in a variety of styles. However, around Osnabrück you get out of range and have to choose a different station. In this case, this was WDR 4, which has a similar mix of music to Radio Bremen 1, though they’re more 1980s and generally oldie focussed than Radio Bremen 1, and is enjoyable enough to listen to. Though my trip to Hanau in December was actively painful, because I just couldn’t find a radio station that worked for me at all. At one point, I even asked an employee at an Autohof to which station their radio was tuned, because at least that one had decent music.

A few days ago, there was a discussion on BlueSky, where an American expat in Germany said in response to “Country Roads, Take Me Home” being played at the Super Bowl (allegedly – I didn’t watch that thing and actively dislike it, since Mom died during the night of last year’s Super Bowl, so it brings back bad memories) that in Germany the entire stadium would have sung along. In response, another expat said that they didn’t understand why Germans liked that song as well as “Seasons in the Sun” by Terry Jacks so much, since no one under fifty in the US would know those songs, which led to a discussion about John Denver (whom supposedly no one under fifty remembers either) and the music played on German radio stations, which many expats find irritating. Well, to be fair, I find American and Canadian radio stations with focus on only a single type of music irritating as well.

Anyway, as I was driving down the A1, what song came on on the radio? Exactly, “Country Roads, Take Me Home”. And yes, I did sing along – because that’s another thing I like to do, when I’m driving on my own, singing along with the radio. Later in the day, I actually heard the song a second time, this time courtesy of WDR 4. I also heard “Seasons in the Sun” BTW, which I did not need right now. Not that I don’t like “Seasons in the Sun” – it’s a good song. However, it was played at my Mom’s funeral, because she loved that song, so I really didn’t need to hear it only a few days after the anniversary of her death.

Autobahn A43 and Breakfast in Dülmen

I made excellent time and drove past Osnabrück towards Münster. At the intersection Münster South I changed onto Autobahn A43 – yes, one of the dreaded A-fortysomethings that criss-cross the Ruhrgebiet.  By now, it was 8:30 AM and time to look for a place to have breakfast. But where?

The first exit on the A43 had an Autohof, but it was closed for renovations. I also wasn’t familiar with any of the names of the exits and towns at all, since I don’t think I’ve ever been on the A43 before – at least not in the last forty years. So I had no idea which exit had a town nearby and which would just lead to an industrial estate or disgorge me in the middle of nowhere. So when I spotted a sign for a rest area named Karthaus, I stopped to check Google Maps for a suitable place nearby to have breakfast. I saw that there was a town of reasonable size called Dülmen up ahead, which had several bakeries fairly close to the Autobahn. Dülmen also apparently has some surviving medieval buildings as well as a famous nature park with wild horses, but I didn’t see any of this.

So I left the Autobahn at the exit Dülmen, ignoring the complaints of Else, my GPS. The first bakery turned out to be attached to a grocery store and was closed, but the second one was not only open and busy, but also had a large café. It was a branch of Bakery Geiping, a chain that operates bakery cafés all over the Münsterland and the northern part of the Ruhrgebiet. The name rang a bell and indeed I had coffee at another Geiping branch on my way home from Toyplosion in Castrup-Rauxel last year.

For a Sunday morning, the bakery was busy and there was a line of people waiting to be served. However, most of them were picking up fresh bread rolls to take home – Sunday breakfast is something of a ritual for many German families – and the line to eat in was much shorter. There was a poster advertising an avocado bagel, but the lady behind the counter informed that avocado bagels were only available during the week. So I ended up ordering scrambled eggs with vegetables and a latte macchiato.

Autobahn A52, Marl and fucking Gladbeck:

After breakfast, I got back into my car for the rest of the trip. I drove back onto the A43 and two exits later my GPS Else instructed me to change onto Autobahn A52 – not an A-fortysomething for once – at the intersection Marl-North. Though it’s more of a junction, because the A52 peters out shortly after Marl-North.

Marl was actually a town whose name I did recognise as a Ruhrgebiet city that’s a center of the chemical industry. Indeed, the Autobahn directly passed Marl Chemical Park, a massive industrial complex, and I could see the various chemical plants in the distance. Apparently, parts of Mark Chemical Park are open to visitors and there is also a former coalmine on the premises, which you can visit as well. However, I didn’t know this at the time and besides, I already had an appointment at a different coalmine.

I also saw a mosque, complete with dome and minaret, directly next to the Autobahn. Mosques aren’t rare in Germany – we have approx. 5.5 million Muslims after all. And due to its industrial history, the Ruhrgebiet has a higher percentage of Muslims than many other places, because many Turkish immigrants flocked to the Ruhrgebiet cities in the 1960s and 1970s to work in the mines and factories. However, most mosques in Germany are converted warehouses, shops, restaurants or even single family homes. Purpose-built mosques with minarets and interesting architecture are still fairly uncommon and sadly controversial. Some research reveals that this particular mosque was actually one of the first purpose-built mosques in all of Germany and was built in 1992.

The signs on the Autobahn did not mention Dorsten at all, but instead announced Gelsenkirchen and – somewhat troubling to me – Gladbeck. As for why seeing the name “Gladbeck” on a roadsign upsets me, that’s because of the so-called Gladbeck hostage crisis, most of which did not actually take place in Gladbeck but in Bremen. That hostage crisis led to a massive media circus and cost three lives – police officer Ingo Hagen, 15-year-old Emanuele di Giorgi and 18-year-old Silke Bischoff, who went to my school, though she was a few years ahead of me. As a result, the entire school was traumatised – because the victims were our age, because Silke had been one of us, because everybody knew the bus stop where the bus was hijacked (it was a main stop on the bus route into Bremen and my best friend and I had been at that same bus stop the day before) and because it could have been anyone of us. Rumours were also flying high, making events that already were horrible enough even worse. I don’t know if any of those rumours were ever true and I have certainly never repeated them. And our teachers not only had no idea how to handle a bunch of traumatised teenagers, but probably didn’t even recognise they were dealing with traumatised teenagers and reacted really badly. Indeed, the mere fact that we wanted to talk about the events seemed inconvenience the teachers. Mr. Bösche, who was my class teacher at the time and a terrible person, basically told us that everything that had happened was our fault, because we had watched the news reports and live interviews with the gangsters on TV. Honestly, as an adult the lack of empathy among our teachers is shocking. If something like this happened nowadays, there would probably be psychological support offered for students.

It took me a long time to even understand that the Gladbeck hostage crisis had caused a lingering trauma in me. After all, I wasn’t directly affected. I didn’t even know Silke Bischoff personally and I didn’t know Emanuele di Giorgi at all. But 36 years later, I still cannot look at the iconic photos of the gangsters brandishing their guns inside the bus and of the gun pressed to Silke Bischoff’s head and get upset when I chance to see them without warning. I also still get upset when I pass service station Grundbergsee on the A1, where Emanuele di Giorgi was murdered and Ingo Hagen was killed in a car crash, and I would never ever stop there. When one of the gangsters was released from prison in 2018, I was furious, though I’m normally not in favour of extremely long prison sentences. And when a trailer for a 2018 TV movie about the Gladbeck hostage crisis came on unexpectedly, I literally screamed at the TV how on Earth they could broadcast this without even the courtesy of a trigger warning. That was the point when I realised that it had been thirty years after all, well beyond any statute of limitations, and that my reaction wasn’t exactly normal, but a trauma response.

Just as service station Grundbergsee bothers me, seeing the name “Gladbeck” on every second sign on Autobahn A52 also bothered me a lot. Though of course, I can’t expect Autobahn signage to respect my personal issues with a town which probably isn’t happy to be synonymous with one of the most infamous crimes in postwar Germany either. In fact, I even briefly considered stopping Gladbeck after the con to see if seeing the place would exorcise my demons. However, I didn’t know where the bank was and apparently the building no longer exists anyway, but was demolished. I guess they wanted to exorcise the memory, too.

Besides, I didn’t have to drive as far as Gladbeck or even Gelsenkirchen anyway, because Else directed me to leave the Autobahn at the exit Marl-Frentrop. I ended up in a rural and very flat area (parts of the Ruhrgebiet have hills and mountains, but this one doesn’t), while Else told me not to take the road that led into Dorsten proper. I went along with this, because a coalmine probably wouldn’t be located in the city center, but somewhere on the outskirts. So I crossed the river Lippe and the Wesel-Datteln canal and got a little nervous, when I still saw only rural landscapes and no sign of a town, let alone a coalmine. In other parts of the Ruhrgebiet, towns and cities tend to blend into each other, but this was clearly not the case here.

When I programmed Else before setting off, I couldn’t find the street where the former coalmine was located. According to Else, the street didn’t exist. I later realised that this was because Else’s map is out of date (and can’t be updated anymore, because the manufacturer no longer supports this particular system) and because the street in question wasn’t built until the coalmine was decommissioned and turned into an arts venue and business park, which meant Else had no way of knowing the street. So I programmed Else for a nearby street that she did recognise. There was only one problem. The street in question was long and so Else just led me to an intersection in a rural area and announced that I had reached my destination.

I turned into the destination street into the direction of Dorsten, figuring that since coalmines are big, I should be able to spot it from the car. Never mind that there would probably be signs pointing at the arts venue. And indeed, I eventually came to a roundabout with a sign indicating the arts venue. Even better, I could spot a mineshaft elevator tower in the distance. So I had found the right place.

Finding a place to park was slightly more difficult, because the dedicated parking lot of the arts venue was full as was the parking lot of an adjacent grocery store (which was closed, since it was Sunday). Across the road from the grocery store, there was an office park built on top of the former coalmine. The office buildings had parking lots, so I just parked my car there. After all, the offices were all closed for the weekend, so who would mind?

Then I headed to the mine and con. But that’s a story for part 2.