Two weekends ago, I attended the the Marché Noir retro toy/comic/games/cool stuff con in Dorsten on the northern edge of the Ruhrgebiet. For the trip to get there, see part 1 and for my impressions of the con itself and the venue, a former coalmine, see part 2.
The Quest for Lunch
By the time I left the con and took my purchases to my car, it was twenty past twelve, i.e. time for lunch. But where to have lunch? There was a Mediterranean restaurant on the premises of the Fürst Leopold mine, but there was no menu posted outside the restaurant and I wasn’t really in the mood for pasta or pizza either.
Now Dorsten actually has got not one but two Michelin starred restaurants, which is highly unusual for a comparatively small town. One of them is the restaurant of Frank Rosin, a chef I mainly associate with a reality show on TV where Rosin tries to help struggling restaurants succeed, which for some reason involves a lot of yelling. Not that I’ve ever watched the show, but I’ve seen trailers. Turns out that Rosin actually hails from Dorsten and that this is the restaurant which put his name on the culinary map and eventually got him the TV gig.
The second Michelin starred restaurant is called Der Goldener Anker (The Golden Anchor) and is run by another TV chef named Björn Freitag. Freitag also hails from Dorsten and The Golden Anchor used to be his parents’ restaurant, which he took over after his father died. Honestly, there must be something in the water in Dorsten – probably something the miners dug up – because how likely is it that a fairly unremarkable mining town birthes not one but two Michelin star winning chefs?
On my way back to the Autobahn, I actually passed The Golden Anchor, because I noticed the historic building and thought, “This looks like a nice place.” Alas, I did not eat at The Golden Anchor nor at Frank Rosin’s Restaurant, because neither of them was open for lunch.
Also on my way back to the Autobahn, I drove past a fairly unremarkable retail park with the sort of stores you normally find in places like that – gorcery store, DIY store, furniture store, that sort of thing. Since it was Sunday, everything should be closed and the retail park should be a ghost town. However, when I drove past, it was super busy, so busy that cars were parking all along the road – a road which is not intended for parking – and I had to slow down to avoid endangering pedestrians walking along the road. There was even a traffic jam in the opposite direction from the Autobahn to the retail park. I was baffled for what on Earth could habe drawn so many people here on a Sunday, when all the shops were closed? Even if there was an open Sunday in one or more of the shops, the huge crowds didn’t make any sense, because the shops mostly seemed to be unremarkable chain stores. Some googling eventually revealed that there was popular flea market happening on the parking lot of a furniture store, which is what seemed to have drawn half all of those people.
Just before the Autobahn, there was another restaurant, a country inn type place called Landküche zum Schwatten Jans (The Black Jan Country Inn). They were open for lunch and I might have stopped and checked the menu, except that the place looked extremely busy with lots of cars in the parking lot. Besides, I’d already made another plan.
For in the end, I did not eat in Dorsten at all. Because once I had made it back to my car and was considering my options, I thought, “Münster isn’t that far away and should have plenty of dining options.” I also recalled that Aro Asian Fusion Bowls, a restaurant I like patronise in Oldenburg, had one or more branches in Münster. That seemed like a great lunch option. So I fired up Google Maps on my phone to look up the address of the Aro restaurant(s) in Münster and found that there also was an Aro branch in Greven, a town just north of Münster that was located much closer to the Autobahn A1 than Münster proper. They were open on Sunday for lunch and – most importantly – they didn’t close down again in the afternoon, which meant that I could have lunch at two PM, if I felt like it. So I decided to stop in Greven for lunch.
Service Station Münsterland
The way back was the same as the trip out. I drove onto Autobahn A52 at Marl-Fentrop, changed onto Autobahn A43 at the intersection Marl-North and then back onto Autobahn A1 at the intersection Münster-South.
By now, I was experiencing some pressure on my bladder and grumbling in my intestines, which meant that I should start looking for a toilet. The toilets at the rest areas and parking lots along the route are often not very clean and only for emergencies. The toilets at service stations are normally clean, but they cost 1 Euro to use.
There was a service station on the A43 named Hohe Mark, but by this point that pressure on my bladder wasn’t that bad yet, so I decided to save the 1 Euro and use the free toilet at the restaurant in Greven.
By the time, I reached the A1, the pressure on my bladder and the grumbling in my intestines was more notable. Greven wasn’t that far away and I could have made it there, but I would probably have to sprint for the toilets as soon as I entered the restaurant.
However, service station Münsterland was right ahead, so I decided to stop there to use the toilet, even if it would cost me 1 Euro. Though that toilet really wasn’t worth a Euro. Several stalls did not have toilet paper, the soap and hand sanitiser dispensers were empty and to top it off, I killed a stink bug in the washing room. There was no toilet attendant in sight, so I found a staff member at the restaurant and told him that the toilets were in bad condition. He replied that the toilets aren’t his responsibility and I should tell the toilet attendant. I said, “Well, I would have, but there was no toilet attendant.” The staff member then promised to pass it on. BTW, service station Münsterland was actually found to be one of the two worst service stations in all of Germany during a recent test. I’d say that service station Goldbach on the A27 is even worse, because Münsterland was at least open, but even by the low standards of German Autobahn service stations, Münsterland is pretty bad.
But even the service station itself is bad, it does have a lovely Autobahn chapel at the edge of the parking lot. I’ve written about Autobahn chapels before. Inspired by the roadside shrines and chapels found in Catholic parts of Germany from the Middle Ages until today, the big Christian churches started setting up chapels and churches at service stations along the Autobahnen from the 1950s on. Some of these were existing village churches which were incorporated into the Autobahn network, others were newly built. For more about Autobahn churches and chapels, see here and here.
I don’t consider myself religious, but I like churches and whenever I find an Autobahn chapel, I pay a visit. And so, once I’d finished my business at the service station proper, I walked along a footpath towards the Autobahn chapel at the far edge of the parking lot.
The Autobahn chapel Roxel at service station Münsterland on Autobahn A1. Built in 1969 and designed by Hubert Teschlade.
The Autobahn chapel is called Roxel after a nearby village and not Münsterland like the service station. It was built in 1969 a few years after this stretch of the A1 was completed. The Münsterland region is very Catholic and the locals felt that the new Autobahn should have a roadside shrine just like the older roads in the region, so they collected money to build this chapel.
The chapel sits a bit apart from the busy service station in a small patch of woodland. As a bonus, there were snowdrops blooming along the footpath leading to the chapel. These were the first snowdrops and indeed spring flowers of any kind that I’ve seen this year.
Snowdrops blooming along the foot path to the Autobahn chapel Roxel.
Autobahn chapels tend to be fairly plain. There’s a small altar, a bench or chair to sit down, some artwork and a place to light candles. The Roxel chapel also held a surpise, because through the large plate glass windows you could see a huge crucifix behind the chapel in front of the woods.
Crucifix behind the Autobahn chapel Roxel. Designed by Hubert Teschlade in 1969
The crucifix is huge, easily two and a half meters tall. It was set up in 1969, when the chapel was built, and designed by architect and artist Hubert Teschlade, who also designed the chapel itself.
Greven
After my little stopover at service station Münsterland, I drove onwards to Greven.
Now Greven isn’t a town I was familiar with at all, but then my knowledge of the exits and towns along the Autobahn A1 gets fuzzy after Osnabrück. In fact, of the three Autobahn exits on the roughly fifty kilometer stretch between Osnabrück and Münster (the Münsterland is sparsely populated), Greven is the least familiar to me. Lengerich takes you to Tecklenburg, Bad Iburg and the Teutoburg Forest, Ladbergen has an Autohof that’s not very good, but Greven? What does Greven have? Well, Airport Münster-Osnabrück is nearby and prominently listed on the Autobahn exit sign, but that’s mainly a freight airport and not one which has a lot of passenger flights. In fact, I’ve never flown from Münster-Osnabrück, though it’s not further away than Hamburg or Hannover, from both of which I have flown.
Turns out Greven is a small town that was mashed together from several villages, which is quite common in many parts of Germany due to community reforms in the 1960s and 1970s eliminating small villages in favour of larger towns. Though the part of Greven I saw seemed more like an actual town than e.g. Stuhr, where I live, which is still eight separate villages of varying size who are forced to share a single townhall and administration.
Greven is located on the banks of the river Ems, which was a bit of a surprise, because I associate the river Ems mainly with northern Germany (see my photos of the Ems barrier at Gandersum here). However, the spring of the river Ems is in the Teutoburg Forest and it flows through the Münsterland before reaching the Emsland region, which is named after it. And indeed the Autobahn A1 crosses the river Ems just before the exit Greven. Though I didn’t see anything of the river Ems, since it flows between two of the formerly independent villages that make up Greven.
I parked my car on the parking lot behind an electronic store, which was closed for Sunday, and walked maybe two hundred meters or so to the Aro Asian Fusion Bowls restaurant. It was already almost two PM, so there weren’t a lot of people around, just a man with his daughter who ordered two bowls to take-out. The Greven Aro branch is also a lot bigger than the Oldenburg branch, which is located in a historic timbered house and thus very small.
I went to the counter, placed my order and sat down to enjoy a chicken yakitori bowl.
Chicken yakitori bowl with two types of pickled cauliflower, sweet potato, chickpeas and roasted edamame, topped with peanuts, roasted onions, sesame seeds and sweet chili sauce.
By the time the bowl was about three quarters empty, I started to notice that my intestines were rumbling again. So I went to the toilet after finishing my bowl and then decided to take a walk to help my stomach calm down and explore the town a bit.
I spotted the tower of a church in the distance, so that’s the direction in which I went.
The St. Martinus Church in Greven.
A closer look at the St. Martinus church in Greven
The church is called St. Martinus and it has a long history. There has been a church on this spot since the eighth century. The oldest part of the current church, the lower part of the tower, dates from the twelfth century. The rest is more recent, dating anywhere from the late Middle Ages to the nineteenth century. St. Martinus is a Catholic church, because the Münsterland is very Catholic.
I found it odd that Greven had such an old church, because the other buildings in the town center were not very old at all. Turns out that much of the town was destroyed in the Thirty Years War and most of what survived fell victim to nineteenth and twentieth century modernisation attempts.
Behind the church, I came across an open square with an interesting fountain.
The rear of the St. Martinus and the market fountain.
The fountain dates from 1993. There was a plaque explaining that the various figures depict the inhabitants of Greven and the surrounding villages on tax day, when they had to deliver goods to the tax man. The scene on top of the fountain, where some poor fellow is dunked into a basin with water, depicts an old custom according to which newly-wed men were baptised in a water basin on tax day.
Another look at the market fountain in Greven. Note the sacks and basket in the foreground, representing the goods to be handed over as taxes.
Another look at the market fountain in Greven
As you can see in the background, most of the houses around this square are not very old and date from the 1970s to 1990s, when parts of the city centre were turned into a pedestrian zone.
A little or rather pretty big free library in the pedestrian zone in the city center of Greven.
A colourful sculpture in the middle of a roundabout. I couldn’t find out anything about this sculpture online, though it looks nice.
In spite of my little walk through the town center of Greven, my stomach was still rumbling. I also had one and a half hours or so of driving ahead of me, so I decided to have a cup of coffee before heading home.
On the square with the fountain, there was a bakery café called Liesenkötter, so that’s where I went. Because it was a Sunday afternoon and coffee time, the café was busy with locals, often elderly people, enjoying coffee and cake. The cake on offer looked very promising, but I had just eaten and besides, my stomach was not just rumbling, but actually aching by now, so I just ordered a latte macchiato and bought some cookies to take home, because I just can’t resist cookies.
Once I’d finished my coffee, I took my cookies back to the car and drove off again, headed homewards. The mild rumbling in my stomach had turned to a full blown ache by now. I wondered whether there had been anything wrong with my lunch. But I’d eaten at Aro before and had never had these problems.
On my way home, I stopped once more at the Bakumer Wiesen rest area on Autobahn A1 just ahead of the exit Vechta (which is nowhere near Vechta). I drank some water and hoped that the ache would subside, but it didn’t.
I stopped one more time to refuel my car, because the diesel price was reasonable, and finally made it home at five forty PM, just around sunset, so I actually made the entire drive by daylight, which is a far cry from my trip to Hanau in December. As for the grumbling stomach, I had been experiencing a bit of constipation the days before, which caused the stomach ache. I felt better after an extended visit to my own toilet at home.
So was Marché Noir worth the trip? I’d say yes. It was a fun con and the venue alone was worth the price of admission. Besides, it’s always nice to get out of the house and visit a place (or several) I’ve never been to before.
sending...