Road Trip: Deutsche Demokratische Republik

The mandatory group picture; on a bridge in Magdeburg. 

As hinted I've just returned from a week-long school trip to the far east of Germany; specifically the cities of Magdeburg and Dresden along the Elbe River. This fine watercourse has been the subject of our studies for the last few months and the purpose of this excursion as to get a closer look at the area and its challenges. Namely floods, droughts, pollution, and invasive species. 

Both cities were in the former Deutsche Demokratische Republik, in my opinion the strangest of the Eastern Bloc countries. We had a few lectures on the lingering east-west divide and how this affects the Elbe River basin. As hard as we searched for traces of the former regime, we found few physical ones. The countryside is emptier and has more factories, and there are a few out-of-place apartment blocks, but otherwise it's exactly like the west. 

Unfortunately for us, we were made to drive to this region. From Middelburg it's about seven hours to Magdeburg, our first stop. And seven hours is a long time to either chat or sit in awkward silence with the professors up front. Regardless we made it work, and our first stop was along in no time: Landschaftspark Duisburg-Nord

"Landscape Park" means "abandoned blast furnaces that you can climb around on" in this context. The Ruhr region is quite industrial even today, and the area is dotted with closed mills like this one. 

A maze of pipes, channels, and cables wraps around the furnaces. The excess heat was taken via a pipeline and used to heat buildings in the city. 

Sometimes it feels rather cinematic!

They had rock climbing walls all over the place too. 

All of our driving in Germany was on the Autobahn, famous for having no speed limit. 130 kilometers per hour (80mph) is recommended, but only trucks actually go that slowly. There are always six lanes, three in each direction, with the rightmost reserved for trucks, the center for the average motorist, and the leftmost containing minivans, daredevils, and those with a death wish. We averaged around 150kph, but traffic jams and road works are frequent on the road network, so it felt much slower.

Duisburg and the Ruhrgebiet was roughly halfway to our destination, which we arrived to around 5:00. We stayed in a jeugdenherberge, a youth-hostel that had something of a summer camp vibe. It was right in the city center, which felt quite like an American city to me: wide avenues, tall buildings, and lots of cars. (the reason being that Magdeburg was reconstructed in a new style after WWII, unlike many other cities which were rebuilt with all their historic buildings) 

A typical Magdeburg street scene. The city of 250,000 is an hour southwest of Berlin, and in most regards quite nondescript. 

We ate a typically German meal in a restaurant full of dark wood paneling, mirrors, and thick carpets.  

This fountain is a landmark in the city, my spur-of-the-moment imitation doesn't do it justice. 

Magdeburg on the Elbe. The river flows swiftly here and there are even some rapids. The Dutchies calculated the flow at 5.6 kph by dropping a banana peel in the river and timing its progress. (after a lengthy discussion in Dutch about whether or not banana peels float and if it's an environmental hazard to throw one into the river) 

Prof. Bleuze inside the courtyard of an amazing piece of architecture in the city center. 

This is the Hundertwasser house, designed by the eponymous Austrian architect. It integrates nature, color, and living space into the same design. 

On Wednesday we drove from Magdeburg to Dresden, a route of about three hours through the countryside. At a few locations we stopped to see floodplains, dikes, and technical measures along the river. It must be said we had pristine weather for the entire trip, not a drop of rain or gust of wind!

A bridge carries a canal over the river near Magdeburg. Sadly it was closed and under repair for an alarming reason: the canal had sprung a leak!

The Pretziehner Wehr, a flood-control device from the 1870s. When these gates are opened, a quarter of the Elbe's flow can be diverted around Magdeburg, lowering the water level in the city. 

A typical floodplain landscape. What was promised to be a six-kilometer walk around the nature park here quickly turned into nine. I enjoyed it regardless!

We stopped for lunch in Dessau, famous as the birthplace of the Bauhaus architectural movement in the 1920s. Think of simple, functional buildings with lots of light and open spaces. "social responsibility through design" is one of the leading values in the movement; and while it's not directly related to Water Management, I found it quite interesting. 

Your average Bauhaus haus. 

It's also a university, so we had lunch in their cafeteria and explored their academic buildings. 

Dresden was our stop that night, which many of you may know from the novel Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut. It was rebuilt in an entirely old-fashioned style after the war, and we stayed in one of the coolest neighborhoods ever. Full of old, crumbling mansions, and with a lot of graffiti, but it felt safe despite this. Our hostel was in one of these mansions and every room had 12-foot ceilings! 

On the street outside our residence. It's also much larger than Magdeburg, but more compact as well. 

Amazing murals all around, and great restaurants: we had ramen, sushi, and Eritrean cuisine. 

We spent most of our two days here walking around. The city was hit hard by floods in 2002 and 2013, and has been deploying various measures to help mitigate such events. Notably, the Elbe is lined on both sides by broad meadows, space for the floodwaters to occupy. And one district near the city center has a parking garage which can be flooded to divert water off the street! 

There was a pretty serious bridge collapse last September, which has really disrupted traffic around the city. As you can see cleanup and repairs are ongoing. 

It's an imperial-feeling city, with many grand soot-stained buildings. Statues are found on practically every street corner! We had just a few hours to explore the city center and it's high on my list for another trip. Das ist eine echte Hipsterstadt. 

An average city center scene.

A crazy imperial mosaic and bumper stickers. I'd buy one if I had a car!

A blue building in the Kunsthofpassage and the cherry trees in blossom. 

Sadly all good things must come to an end, and on Friday morning we crammed back into our sardine-can vans and drove for 10 hours back to Middelburg, excluding stops. This was easily the most taxing part of the excursion! No fun industrial sites to explore this time, and only three stops on the entire drive. Suffice to say I slept well that night and dreamt about funky German cities.