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I know this post is much delayed, but here is the long awaited part 3 of my trip to the Los Amigos Masters of the Universe convention in Neuss on the long Pentecost weekend. For the rather eventful trip to get there, see part 1 and for my adventures at the con itself, see part 2.

By the time, I had finished my rounds of the con and finally found a place to have lunch, even if it was only a sandwich, it was approximately a quarter to four in the afternoon, so there was still time to take in some sights before heading to the hotel.

As mentioned above, it was the long Pentecost holiday weekend. Plus, there were several events in addition to the Los Amigos convention going on in Neuss and neighbouring Düsseldorf such as Dokomi, one of Germany’s biggest anime cons in Düsseldorf as well as several fairs and sports events. As a result, all hotels in Neuss and Düsseldorf were very expensive, if they had vacancies at all. So I picked a hotel in the town of Grevenbroich, some twenty-five kilometers to the south west of Neuss. Of course, this would take me further from home, but the price difference was one hundred euros per night, which is significant.

Now I have to admit that I knew nothing whatsoever about Grevenbroich beyond the fact that it exists. Some googling revealed that there were a couple of castles in the area around Grevenbroich. It also revealed something else. Grevenbroich also happens to be located in the middle of the Rhenish lignite coal mining area very close to the Garzweiler and Hambach lignite coal stripmines.

The Cruelty and Utter Evilness of Stripmining 

If you live in Germany, I guarantee you’ve heard of Garzweiler and Hambach, even though both are small villages which don’t even exist anymore. Because Garzweiler and Hambach are the site of lignite coal stripmining operations, which are hugely controversial.

To begin with, lignite coal is bad stuff. When burned, it generates higher carbondioxide emissions than regular coal and it also contains sulphur, mercury and other nasty admixtures up to and including radioactive substances. Burning lignite coal is extremely bad for the environment.

However, mining the stuff is even worse for the environment. Because lignite coal deposits are usually so close to the surface, that regular subterranean mines are not possible. It needs to be stripmined, i.e. the topsoil and everything on it is removed until you get to the layer of lignite coal, which is then extracted. The problem hereby is that lignite coal deposits normally aren’t located under unhabited wastelands. There’s always something on top of it. Forests, fields, towns, villages, roads. All of which have to be destroyed to get to the coal.

Germany has the misfortune of having large deposits of lignite coal.  There is the Central German lignite deposit in Saxony, the Lausitz lignite deposit also in Saxony and Poland and the Rhenish lignite deposit in Northrhine-Westfalia. It’s the latter that I chanced to visit.

Now the Cologne Bay, where the Rhenish lignite deposit is located, has been inhabited since Pre-Roman times and has a long history.  There are towns and villages, often more than a thousand years old, churches, castles, ancient forests. People live here and have lived here for millennia. However, none of that counts when it comes to lignite coal. Because lignite coal and the power it provides is more important than the homes and history of the people who live here. Those people have to go, their homes have to go, the churches and graveyards have to go, the thousand-year-old towns and forests have to go, because we need lignite coal to heat and light our homes and fuel industry. Except that we don’t and most likely never did.

The stripmining of lignite coal and the focus on coal production in West Germany in general are a sort of post-traumatic stress response to the Versailles treaty and the Weimar Republic. Basically, Germany lost many of its coal-mining regions to Poland and also France and Belgium after WWI. And the biggest remaining coal-mining region, the Ruhrgebiet, ended up under allied occupation during the Rhineland occupation. What is more, Germany also had to hand over large parts of the yield of its subterranean coalmines as reparations for a war everybody was equally keen on. And in the 1920s and 1930s, power, light and heat generation was a lot more reliant on coal than in later times. So the Weimar Republic probably really didn’t have enough coal left to supply its industry and population, so they had to resort to mining lignite coal, though they didn’t have the technology for destructive large-scale stripmining. The situation after WWII was different than after WWI, but a lot of the politicians who came into power after WWII were old men who’d been driven out of politics by the Nazis in 1933 and who still remembered the Weimar Republic only too well. The old men who ruled West Germany after WWII made a lot of bad decisions, including initiating the overproduction of coal in the Ruhrgebiet that eventually killed the mining industry and the introduction of large scale lignite stripmining to combat a coal shortage that never materialised. It also took them a lot longer than necessary to realise that they were producing far more coal than needed and correct course. Indeed, most of the lignite coal stripmines were only created after it became clear that the Ruhrgebiet had produced way more regular coal than West Germany required.

Take a look at this list of towns and villages destroyed by stripmining in the Rhenish lignite mining area. And visit this amazing website with photos of the villages displaced by the Garzweiler stripmine. According to this article by Matthias Schwarzer from the Redaktionsnetzwerk Deutschland more than sixty villages have been destroyed for stripmining since the 1950s – in spite of the protests of the inhabitants and mostly ignored by the rest of Germany (not by me). And it’s not just villages either. Several beautiful historical castles have been destroyed for stripmining, the last one in 2015, because coal is more important than history. Lots of historical churches and abbeys, the most famous of which is probably St. Lambertus of Immerath, have been destroyed for stripmining. Thousands of people have lost their homes, including the family of Formula 1 drivers Michael and Ralf Schumacher. The Schumacher family operated a go-kart race track, where the future Formula 1 drivers drove their first rounds. It’s all gone now. Communities have been torn apart. There are heartbreaking documentaries on YouTube about the villages destroyed by lignite coal stripmining and interviews with the inhabitants. All for low quality coal we don’t even need.

In short, stripmining is evil. It is utterly evil, though it does fit into the zeitgeist of the post-WWII era, where on the one hand we had people from Silesia or Eastern Prussia whining about their lost homelands for decades on end, while on the other hand the powers that were had no problem driving people from their homes and destroying towns, villages and historical buildings in the name of “progress”. And it wasn’t just the Rhenish stripmining pits either, but also the village of Mittelsbüren, which was destroyed for an expansion of the Bremen Steelworks, which was never even built (at least, they left the church, Bremen Protestants being more pious about this sort of thing than Rhenish Catholics) and the fishing village of Altenwerder, which was destroyed for an expansion of Hamburg’s harbour, which at least was built. Once again, they left the church. It’s a mindset that almost destroyed the Visbeker Groom neolithic tomb in the 1960s to built Autobahn A1, though thankfully the route was altered to spare the tomb, though you can see the Autobahn from the tomb.

I didn’t learn about Mittelsbüren and Altenwerder until I was an adult – and my first reaction upon hearing about both was to angrily demand from my parents why they never told me about either and if they did anything to try and stop the injustice. However, I did learn about stripming in Northrhine-Westfalia, including the fact that people’s homes were destroyed because of it and that this was totally justifiable and acceptable, because we need coal (except that we don’t) in primary school.

I’ve mentioned before that for some unfathomable reason, it was considered extremely important in the late 1970s and early 1980s that primary school kids learn about mining. Coal mining, salt mining, we had to learn all about it, though we didn’t even live in a mining area and the coal mines were dying off anyway at the time (and had been dying for a while by that point). Even worse – primary school kids also had to learn about stripmining, complete with photos of bucket wheel excavators in the textbook, and that destroying people’s home in favour of that was totally justifiable. The result was exactly what you would imagine. Kids terrified that bucket wheel excavators would come destroy their homes, bombarding the teacher (who apparently didn’t even understand what she had wrought) and parents with anxious questions about whether bucket wheel excavators would destroy our homes. I personally swore bloody vengeance upon bucket wheel excavators. I would blow the damned things up – and no, I don’t care if they’re seventy meters tall, I just need enough explosives to do the job. I would become the avenger of those displaced by stripmining (part of me now wants to write the story about the masked avenger fighting stripmining and blowing up bucket wheel excavators). Note that there is no lignite coal where I live.

The mining focus of my primary school education was weird enough, but talking about lignite coal stripmining in a textbook for primary school kids is right up there in clueless cruelty with including a graphic photo of the Jonestown dead in a religious education textbook in the chapter warning about the dangers of cults. The fact that the teachers refused to explain or answer questions in both cases made the whole thing even worse – though I suspect the teachers didn’t know the answers either and were just teaching what they were told to teach. Adults, including teachers, also routinely underestimate how easy it is to terrify kids even about remote and highly unlikely dangers.

Nowadays, I suspect that the reason for this weird mining focus of my primary school education was that the textbooks we had where shared with the state of Northrhine-Westfalia, where mining was a relevant topic in the 1980s. And the chapter on stripmining was probably intended to introduce and accustom the kids actually living in those regions to the idea that their homes would one day be destroyed by stripmining. In that case, good job, people. All you did was terrify kids not even affected and turning me into the imaginary avenger of people displaced by stripmining.

To be fair, East Germany, where the other two big lignite coal deposits in German are, probably really did need the lignite coal, since they didn’t have a lot of regular coal. West Germany, however, had the fucking Ruhrgebiet with its massive coal deposits directly north of the lignite coal deposits. And those coal mines have been dying for my entire lifetime and before, cause demand for their product was dwindling. So we never needed the fucking lignite coal in the first place and it’s a crying shame that we’re still stripmining lignite coal in Germany and still displacing people, when the last subterranean coal mine in the Ruhrgebiet closed in 2018. For a chronicle of the whole insanity, also see the YouTube channel Grubenland. What is more, we’re also still burning lignite coal to generate power, even though it is a lot worse for the environment than regular coal, and Germany has pledged to end all power generation from coal by 2038 anyway. In 2023, lignite coal made up eighteen percent of all power generated in Germany – and in Northrhine Westfalia it’s more forty percent. Basically, we’re still mining the stuff, because there are power stations that burn it, and those power stations still exist, because there are stripmines providing lignite coal. It’s a nasty, vicious circle that will hopefully end soon.

Nowadays, there are regular massive protests against the stripmining and burning of lignite coal from environmentalist groups, the most famous of which is Ende Gelände. They mostly oppose the environmental impact of stripmining and burning lignite coal – note that some of the most vehement protests were in favour of protecting the ancient Hambacher Forest. And indeed it’s notable that new reports about the the villages about to be destroyed by stripmining only appeared once environmentalists started protesting – before that the villagers were mostly ignored, even though there have been protests against stripmining since the 1950s. There also are often conflicts between the villagers who just want to keep their homes and the environmental protesters who don’t always treat the villagers with respect and occasionally even make it clear that they just want those pesky villagers gone for some fantasy of unspoiled nature. Even Greta Thunberg was arrested near the Garzweiler stripmine during a protest – mostly because the protesters broke through barriers and got dangerously close to the giant hole in the ground that is the Garzweiler stripmine.

So to sum it up, my views on lignite coal stripmining are that it’s evil and devastating for both people and the environment and should be stopped at once, especially since there is no good reason to continue the process.

And now I found myself smack in the middle of the Rhenish lignite desposit. And I was curious, because even though I have known about and hated stripmining since primary school, I’ve never actually seen a stripmine in person. I did see the effects – sort of – when we drove through the Central German lignite deposit area in Saxony shortly after the Fall of the Wall and chanced to drive through a village that was completely empty with broken windows everywhere. Of course, East Germany was in rough shape after the Fall of the Wall and many people just left for the West, leaving houses and apartments empty. But even by 1989 East German standards, that village was in terrible shape. We later learned from my Great-Aunt that the village had been abandoned and was earmarked to be destroyed by stripmining. But even though I saw a deserted village more than thirty years ago, I never saw the actual mine nor my old nemesis, the bucket wheel excavator. Time to remedy that.

Stripmine Garzweiler

The Garzweiler stripmine (named after a village that was destroyed by it) is probably the most infamous and controversial of the Rhenish stripmines, because it is the most recent one and also the most obviously unnecessary one. The Garzweiler stripmine is also directly adjacent to the town of Grevenbroich.

Google Maps informed me that there was an observation point and skywalk at the Garzweiler stripmine, so I decided to drive there and see the infamous stripmine for myself. There was only one problem. The observation point and skywalk didn’t have a street address, just a town name, Jüchen. A town that was located on the other side of the stripmine at that. There was also another, smaller village named Jackerath nearby, so I set my GPS Else for Jackerath and figured I would find the stripmine. After all, stripmines are huge – the Garzweiler stripmine is a whopping 48 square kilometers big.

Else directed me back onto Autobahn A46, headed towards Heinsberg – which became infamous as the site of the first big covid outbreak and the first covid death in Germany and also as the site where one of the first systematic studies of covid was carried out (and where e.g. the common symptom of people losing their sense of smell, when infected with covid was discovered), though the study was later discredited, IMO unfairly due to an internal rivalry between virologists spilling over into the news media. Though I didn’t have to drive all the way to Heinsberg, but just a few exits. The rain had stopped by now and the sun had even come out, making the trip a lot more enjoyable.

I passed an exit that was called Grevenbroich, i.e. the town where my hotel was located, and a construction zone, but then things got weird. Because Else insisted that I leave the Autobahn where there was no exit and subsequently didn’t recognise the route at all. However, I knew I was driving in the right direction, because I came to an intersection and suddenly I saw the gigantic stripmine lying to the right of me. I later learned that they had actually relocated two entire stretches of Autobahn complete with exits and intersections for the stripmine. Here’s also a video about the whole thing, complete with photos of the remnants of the old Autobahnen and the horrendous costs for all of this. And since Else can’t be updated anymore, so she didn’t recognise any of this. BTW, the relocation of Autobahnen A44 and A61 was paid for not by the German government, which normally builds Autobahnen, but by the mining and power company RWE in a case of “You break, you replace it”. They managed to rebuild the Autobahn in record time, too, considering how long Autobahn construction normally takes. Indeed, the reason why there aren’t more protests against stripmining from the people displaced by it is because RWE is throwing shitloads of money at the problem and rebuilds villages, roads and entire Autobahnen. If you consider how much building a stretch of Autobahn costs (the relocation of the two Autobahnen und junctions at the Garzweiler stripmine apparently cost some 150 million Euros), let alone rebuilding entire villages, you can see that RWE has to be making a shitton of money with stripmining and burning the lignite coal to generate power, because otherwise none of this would be even remotely profitable.

Since neither Else nor I had any idea where we were, I decided that I would leave the Autobahn at the next rest area or exit to consult Google Maps. But then the next exit came up and it was Jackerath, i.e. the exact same village I was looking for. Though Jackerath isn’t just an exit, it’s actually a junction with the A61, the other Autobahn displaced by the Garzweiler stripmine.

So I took the Jackerath exit, stopped my car at a suitable place by the roadside and consulted Google Maps to figure out how to get the stripmining observation point. Turned out it wasn’t far, I just had to follow a certain road as far as it would go. Though that was its own adventure, because the road was a regular country road for the first kilometer or so. Then suddenly there were signs stating that “This is no longer the B-whatever. This is a dead end.” The condition of the road also deteriorated at this point. I drove on anyway, because I wasn’t looking for the B-whatever (in Germany, national roads that are not Autobahnen are designated B and a number). And that dead end was probably exactly what I was looking for. Though – and I found this odd – there was no sign pointing to the observation point, though I did see some fairly inconspicuous signs pointing to the Garzweiler stripmine. At times, it almost seemed as if RWE was trying to hide the stripmines – except that they are way too big to hide. And why build an observation point at all, if you don’t want people to visit? I suspect RWE might be worried about protesters, but the protesters will protest anyway and they don’t care about fences and barriers and a lack of signage will certainly not keep them away either.

Suddenly, there was a sign pointing to a parking lot, while the rest of the road was only open to official traffic that had business at the Garzweiler stripmine. I swerved onto the road that led to the parking lot and abruptly found myself on a circular parking lot at the very edge of the stripmine, so abruptly that I had to brake quite sharply, even though I hadn’t been going very fast. At last, I had found the observation deck.

I parked my car and briefly talked to a woman who was attempting a recapture a runaway toddler. It was very windy here, so I left He-Man in the car. Indeed, the entire area around the Hambach and Garzweiler stripmines is extremely windy, because there are no trees, hedges or forests here that could block the wind. The stretch of Autobahn A44, which was moved to make way for the Garzweiler stripmine, is infamously windy to the point that the wind keeps knocking over trucks here. Come to think of it, I did notice that this Autobahn was windy in a way that you normally only experience on bridges. Turns out if you cut down all the trees and hedges that would act as natural windbreaks, you get problems.

Then I went over to the skywalk, a steel walkway that juts some fourteen meters into the Garzweiler stripmine and ends in a round observation platform. And this is what I saw:

View across the Garzweiler stripmine from the Jackerath skywalk. Note the terraced layers where soil has been removed. The rails in front are intended to transport the lignite coal out of the pit.

Another look across the Garzweiler stripmine from the Jackerath skywalk. In front, you can see the rails that transport the coal as well as some kind of processing station. In the back, on one of the terraces, you can see an excavator.

And here is my old nemesis, a bucket wheel excavator. This particular model is called Bagger 288, was built in 1978 and was once the largest land vehicle on Earth, though it has since been superceded by another bucket wheel excavator used in Saxony.

A closer look at Bagger 288 at the Garzweiler stripmine. This monster is 220 meters long and 96 meters high.

As for where all the coal is going, here you can see the various railway lines inside the Garzweiler stripmine coming together to transport the lignite coal via a central railway to the Frimmersdorf power station on the horizon. And as if to twist the knife even further, dozens of wind turbines have been planted between the mine and the power station to prove that we don’t really need the lignite coal at all.

So how do I feel about lignite coal stripmining, now I’ve looked into the abyss with my own eyes and came face to face or rather face to wheel with my old nemesis, the bucket wheel excavator?

It’s complicated. I obviously did not jump into the pit and attack Bagger 288 on the spot nor did I expect to do that, a) because I’m not suicidal and b) I didn’t bring explosives to dismantle Bagger 288 and a tire iron would clearly not be sufficient against a 96 meter tall machine. However, I expected that the sight of the mine would make me angry, but it didn’t. On the contrary, I found the whole thing fascinating and the view was spectacular. In fact, my first thought upon looking out across the Garzweiler stripmine was, “I want to shoot a science fiction film here, because this place already looks like Mars. This could be Germany’s Vasquez Rocks.”

And indeed, Bagger 288 has starred in a number of films and TV shows, appearing in Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, Westworld and The Wandering Earth. Yes, Bagger 288 is a movie star.

I’ve also made my peace with Bagger 288 and his brethren now. Bagger 288 is not evil. Bagger 288 is an incredible feat of engineering. It’s not his fault that he is being used for evil. I’m sure Bagger 288 would prefer starring in movies to destroying people’s homes. And now I want to write a story about bucket wheel excavators rebelling against their masters.

RWE, however, the company who operates the stripmines in the Rhenish lignite coal mining area and also the lignite coal fired power stations, well, they’re still evil, though they are very much trying to greenwash their image.  At any rate, there were info boards along the short path from the parking lot to the skywalk, all put up by RWE. There was one info board about Bagger 288, another one about the mine itself and then there were boards about RWE‘s wonderful sustainability initiatives and how many species found a home in their former stripmines after RWE had taken out all of the coal. The sustainability board made me laugh out loud. Yeah, right, you’re destroying fields, forests and villages and are literally tearing up the earth to extract and burn lignite coal which emits more CO2 and other harmful substances than regular coal and which pollutes the environment and contributes to global warming. You’re not even remotely sustainable, you’re still fucking evil.

Honestly, the RWE website is a blatant exercise in greenwashing. They even have a subpage for the people who are losing their homes to stripmining, except that RWE is happy to work with the victims of their mines and most of the people are totally okay with everything. Even more shocking is that apparently a lot of the people who are losing their homes to the stripmines are RWE employees. Yes, this company is displacing its own employees.

Here is a documentary about some villages about to be destroyed – some of which have thankfully been saved – which includes an interview with an RWE “relocation specialist”, which must be one of the most evil jobs in the world along with executioner and ICE agent. Frankly, I’m surprised that the “relocation specialist” is still alive and in one piece. I’d expect him to sport at least a black eye. And come to think of it, it’s remarkable that there apparently is very little violence associated with protests against stripmining and what violence there is comes from radical environmentalists, not the villagers about to be displaced.

When I returned to my car, it was shortly before five PM. I consulted Google Maps again, because there was a castle in the area that I wanted to visit before heading to my hotel in Grevenbroich. The castle was open until seven PM, so there was plenty of time. As I consulted Google Maps, I also realised that the way to the castle would take me past the other big lignite coal stripmine in the area, Tagebau Hambach. And like the Garzweiler mine, Tagebau Hambach also has several observation points.

So I thought, “Since I’m in the region already, I might as well visit the other infamous stripmine. After all, this is not something I’m likely to ever see again.”

Stripmine Hambach

Unlike the Garzweiler stripmine, there was a street with an actual name leading to observation points of the Hambach stripmine. Even better, my GPS Else recognised that street name. So off we went.

I drove onto Autobahn A61, i.e. one of the two Autobahnen displaced by stripmining, at the Jackerath junction, but left it again after two exits, only for Else to direct me through fields and small villages. There were lots of crucifixes and shrines by the roadside, common in Catholic parts of Germany. The whole region seemed peaceful and there was no sign that bucket wheel excavators were tearing up the Earth and destroying villages just like these mere kilometers away.

The region also felt distinctly different with regard to the way older houses and churches looked. There is some debate about what precisely counts as Ruhrgebiet – some people don’t even consider Wuppertal part of the Ruhrgebiet, which I would definitely include, and most Ruhrgebiet people are very adamant that Düsseldorf is not part of the Ruhrgebiet, though to me it has always been. I once even considered the mining region around Ibbenbüren as part of the Ruhrgebiet, because to me, anyplace that was south of Bremen and had coal mines had to be the Ruhrgebiet. Though I remember I said to my Dad (we were in the car together to pick up a spare part for our co-generation unit in Hagen in the Teutoburg Forest), “Wait a minute, why are there coal mines here? Are we that far south that we’re already in the Ruhrgebiet?” For that matter, I always assumed Grevenbroich was a Ruhrgebiet city, too – mostly because of its association with Ruhrgebiet born comedian Hape Kerkeling and his popular character Horst Schlämmer, report of the Neuss Grevenbroicher Tagblatt – without knowing where exactly the city was. But this region – the official name is Jülicher Börde – is definitely not part of the Ruhrgebiet in spite of its association with mining and neither is Grevenbroich, because it looks and feels different.

At one point, I found myself driving through a village called Neu Etzweiler, which felt very off. The entire village was eerily, creepily new. Rows of nigh identical houses that looked more like some identikit US suburb than a German village. Of course, many German villages have newly built neighbourhoods, but Neu Etzweiler was different. Because it wasn’t just one neighbourhood or subdivision, the entire village was new. Houses, streets, shops, schools, kindergartens, the church – nothing here was older than twenty years at most. Now most German villages are old, hundreds of years, sometimes a thousand years old. And you always find a mix of newer and older buildings. But not so in Neu Etzweiler. There weren’t even any old trees here, everything was sparkling new and extremely eerie. It looked like something out of an episode of Black Mirror. Gradually, it dawned upon me just why Neu Etzweiler felt so creepily new, namely because it really was a completely new village, built to house people displaced by lignite coal stripmining. A quick Wikipedia check confirmed my suspicions. Here are some photos of Old Etzweiler, taken during its decline when the village was already half empty.

Else directed me to a residential neighbourhood in a village called Elsdorf and announced that I had reached the destination street. So I followed the street through a residential neighbourhood with suspiciously new looking houses and wondered whether I was in the right place, especially since once again there were no signs. I finally saw a couple walking a dog on the sidewalk and I stopped and asked them, “Excuse me, but according to my map, there’s supposed to be an observation point for the stripmine somewhere around here. Is that right?”

I was a tad nervous about asking them – what if these people had been displaced by the very stripmine I was looking for? But the couple was very friendly and helpful. They told me that yes, this was the right way, but the observation points were still a kilometer or so away. Also there were several observation points and the one with the best view was the last one by the roundabout.

The road left the residential neighbourhood behind into open fields. By the side of the road, there was a high wall – like the sound barriers found along Autobahnen – literally in the middle of nowhere. I eventually realised that this wall was all that separated the road from the stripmining pit. I did pass the first two observation points, which were just stairs allowing you to take a peak over the wall. As directed, I followed the road to the roundabout and suddenly the Hambach stripmine lay before me.

In this place, they actually had turned the stripmine into a tourist attraction, which is the locals using lemons to make lemonade, I guess. There was a café/restaurant and events venue called Forum: terra nova with a view of the stripmine, there were sun loungers right on the edge of the pit and a minigolf course, too. The whole thing was exceedingly weird and felt almost dystopian. Relax on a sun lounger, sipping a cocktail, while watching people’s homes be destroyed.

I parked my car and admired a wheel segment of a bucket wheel excavator that had been set up right next to the car park. Quite possibly it used to belong to Bagger 287 whose bucket wheel had to be replaced in 2009. Displaying the full wheel would have been too big – that’s how huge these things are.

Segment of a bucket wheel excavator with handy tourists for size comparison.

Another look at the bucket wheel excavator wheel segment on display at the Hambach stripmine

Then I walked up to the fence separating the observation point from the mining pit and damn, that view was impressive, since you could look along the entire mine from this location. But you don’t have to take my word for it. See for yourself:

Mars? No, stripmine Hambach, as seen from the Forum terra:nova observation point. Note the bucket wheel excavators in the distance.

The other side of the Hambach stripmine. Note the fence and the information signs, which explain how wonderfully RWE is protecting the environment by digging up the soil to extract extremely harmful lignite coal.

A lone bucket wheel excavator stands guard on the top ledge of stripmine Hambach.

A look directly into the heart of the pit that is stripmine Hambach.

One last look into stripmine Hambach. Note the bucket wheel excavators on the terraces and the equipment on the ledge just below the fence.

The bucket wheel excavators that look like toys in the photo include Bagger 287 and Bagger 293, the biggest and heaviest land vehicle in the world. Bagger 293 also starred in Westworld, BTW, for why should his brother Bagger 288 have all the fun?

There were quite a few other people milling around the Forum terra:nova observation point to take a look into the Hambach stripmine. And the snatches of conversation I overheard mostly echoed my own feelings, namely “This is terrible for both people and the environment, but it’s also kind of cool.”

So what do I think about lignite coal stripmining, now I’ve actually seen the mines for myself? Am I suddenly a fan? Of course not. Stripmining is still wrong and burning lignite coal is still wrong and RWE is still fucking evil. And yes, the stripmine pits and the giant bucket wheel excavators are cool, but that doesn’t make what they’re doing right.

So what do I think should be done about the stripmines in the Rhenish lignite coal deposit as well as the two lignite coal deposits in Saxony? For starters, the destruction of villages and forests needs to stop now. No more ancient trees should be felled and no more homes destroyed for stripmining. And in fact, the villages of Immerath and Lützerath will be the last villages destroyed (on the maps both villages are still on the edge of the stripmining pit, but apparently both have been completely razed and can’t be salvaged) in the Rhenish lignite coal mining area – a couple of others have been saved (though the former inhabitants have to buy their own houses back and don’t even get a guarantee that they will get them back, which is just infuriating, plus the villages are already half empty) as has the Hambach forest, because Germany will stop generating power from coal by 2038 altogether. Though I’m still pissed that they didn’t save Immerath and Lützerath, too, since Lützerath was only destroyed last year.

In those areas, where villages have already been destroyed and the ground has already been torn up, they might as well extract the lignite coal. It would be stupid to just leave it there, since the damage is done already. As for the power stations that burn the lignite coal, as long as there is still coal to be extracted, keep them running and then try to retrofit them to burn something else – regular coal, gas, trash – and keep them as stand-by units, because we will always need stand-by power stations in case windpower and solar power aren’t enough. If retrofitting is not possible, they’ll have to be shut down.

As for the giant Garzweiler and Hambach stripmining pits, RWE just wants to fill them with water and turn them into lakes, because that’s the cheapest option – and then they’ll probably pat themselves on the back for creating such a wonderful biotope. Note that the Jülicher Börde used to have the most fertile soil in all of Germany, so digging all of that up and turning it into lakes is certainly a choice. That said, part of the giant mines can be turned into a lake, other parts should be filled in and used as farmland or woodlands, though it will take a generation for the new forests to grow. One part should be left as it is – complate with bucket wheel excavators and all the equipment – as a kind of open air museum to engineering feats and human folly. And yes, you can also shoot science fiction movies there. Our own movies, not Hollywood movies taking advantage of German film grants.

Paffendorf Castle

By now, it was almost six PM and time to make my way to Grevenbroich and the hotel. However, I put in one more pitstop along the way at Paffendorf Castle, one of the many castles in the Cologne Bay. Why this particular castle? Mostly, because it was the closest to the Hambach stripmine. It turned out to be a good choice, because Paffendorf Castle is very pretty.

I parked my car on a parking lot that was remarkably full, considering the time, and walked up to the castle gates, where I noticed a sign with the RWE logo, informing me that the castle houses an RWE information center.

By this point, I thought, “Wait a minute, why the fuck does RWE own a castle? Did they buy up the entire area to be able to get at the juicy lignite coal underneath? Is this actually RWE‘s private little fiefdom? But surely they wouldn’t destroy a castle for the sake of coal? At this point, I didn’t know that RWE had already destroyed several historic castles in the area, the last one as late as 2015, after forcing out the family who had lived there for 170 years. Just imagine growing up in a castle and then being kicked out and forced to move into a cookie cutter single family home. And for an extra dose of cruelty, RWE destroyed the castle just before Christmas as well. As for how RWE came to own Castle Paffendorf, the last Baroness sold the castle to RWE or rather their predecessors in 1958, when the stripmine Fortuna-Garsdorf, since closed, reached the edge of the castle park and the writing for her home was on the wall. Thankfully, the castle and the park were saved.

Paffendorf Castle is beautiful, originally built in the 16th century and remodelled in a gothic revival style in the 1860s. Parts of the castle were closed to the public, because there was a wedding going on – the castle is a wedding venue. The restaurant in the courtyard was closed as well or I might have had dinner there.

But there was still plenty of the castle and its park to explore, so have some photos:

Entrance of Paffendorf Castle. Note the blue and white RWE sign next to the door.

The moat and the outer walls of Paffendorf Castle

The moat, the outer wall and a turret of Paffendorf Castle.

The inside of the gate of Paffendorf Castle

The main building of Paffendorf Castle with turrets. This area was closed off because of a wedding.

A view of Paffendorf castle with turret and moat.

Paffendorf Castle, looking very gothic and haunted.

Another look at Paffendorf Castle and its moat. This place could be the setting of a gothic novel.

The rear of Paffendorf Castle with lots of windows and statues.

An ornate window of Paffendorf Castle

A crucifix on the grounds of Paffendorf Castle. As I said before, people are very Catholic in this region.

A look across the park of Paffendorf Castle with a large pond.

“By the Power of Paffendorf, I have the Power.”

Grevenbroich

By the time I left Paffendorf Castle, it was about half past six. I hopped back into my car and drove to Grevenbroich, past one of the huge power stations that burn the lignite coal stripmined in this area.

I drove in circles a few times, because the entrance to the hotel parking deck was hidden behind a 1980s shopping mall. The parking deck itself was also extremely narrow.

The hotel itself was a Best Western dating from the 1980s and was probably built along with the shopping mall. I guess it was flashy and modern at the time, but that time was forty years ago. However, I didn’t want to move here permanently, I just wanted to spend the night and it was perfectly adequate for that purpose.

The very 1980s looking Best Western Plaza Hotel in Grevenbroich

The obligatory view out of the hotel room window is nothing to write home about. However, it was quiet, because there was only an access road to the parking garage here.

And here is what the room itself looks like. As I said, perfectly adequate.

After I had dumped off my bag and refreshed myself a little, I went down into the lobby again. Remember that I hadn’t eaten properly all day, so I asked the receptionist (who was very nice) where to find a place to eat. “Well, there’s a döner shop just across the road,” he replied. “Döner is fine,” I said, “But is there anything else?” The receptionist replied that there was a Café Extrablatt in the city center. Café Extrablatt (Café Special Edition) is a restaurant chain which offers everything from breakfast and bar drinks. The food is usually solid and Café Extrablatt is literally everywhere in Germany (plus in Morocco and Cap Town for some reason) – with one exception. Bremen doesn’t have a Café Extrablatt. There was one in the 1980s and early 1990s, but it closed and since then, several other restaurants have occupied its former site. The current tenant is called September and is pretty similar to what Café Extrablatt offers.

So I left the hotel. I had to walk through the mall to get to the city center, which was eerie and deserted, because all the shops had already closed. Not that there were a lot of shops in the first place. I did see the döner shop, but since I wasn’t really in the mood for döner, I walked onwards through a pedestrian shopping street full of closed shops. Grevenbroich probably has beautiful areas, but the part I saw was mostly generic 1950s to 1980s shops and office buildings with very little of interest.

I did see one interesting piece of public art, the guild column, which represents the craftsmen’s guilds once found in Grevenbroich.

The guild column in Grevenbroich, designed by Bonifatius Stirnberg in 1979

In the end, I did not go to Café Extrablatt, because I found a place to eat before that. It was a small restaurant/bar called Fräuleinwunder. I prefer independent restaurants to chains, so this place was perfect for me.

I had a vegetarian mushroom burger, which was very good, though a bit bare. I guess I should have ordered some fries to go with it, except that I normally expect a burger to come with fries.

Vegetarian mushroom burger, courtesy of restaurant Fräuleinwunder in Grevenbroich

For desert I had mascarpone cream with fresh strawberries, sprinkled with pistaccio slivers, which was delicious.

Mascapone cream with fresh strawberries and pistacchio slivers, courtesy of restaurant Fräuleinwunder in Grevenbroich

After dinner, I walked back to the hotel. It was still light outside, though dusk was falling, but then it was only two weeks before the summer solstice, when the sun sets at close to ten PM.

At the hotel, I performed the usual bodily hygiene duties, went to bed and slept soundly until the next morning.

Part 4 will be about the drive home as well as a visit to the Unesco World Heritage site Mine Zollverein in Essen. However, it may be delayed further, because I have another con – also toy-related and also in the Ruhrgebiet – coming up.

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