So for day 4 an even earlier train awaited us from the hostel. From there we were to journey to Essen to see an old coal mining facility which has been redeveloped since its closure into two museums and the rest of the grounds in being transformed into offices and residences.
It was pretty cool to be there. We got a tour of the Coal Facility and learned how everything worked. The plant itself was extremely modern when it was active and it produced a significant amount of coal for Germany. There are also three architecturally significant building there as well. The main coal plant was turned into a museum of the Ruhr Valley and was designed by Rem Koolhaus. Getting into this building was really cool because there is an escalator that goes up 35m. Then inside the building at the entrance to the museum there is a stair that is all lined with orange neon lights that supposed to represent the molten coal being moved down the shaft. The museum itself is pretty cool too it has a bunch of stuff from historic animals that were there to contemporary photos taken by Ruhr residents. The second museum which we didn't make it to was designed by Norman Foster and was in the former steam plant. It now houses contemporary design projects. The third significant building is a university building by the japanese firm Sanne. It is a four story box with huge windows punched into it. fairly uninteresting and seemingly underused. So after that we decided to head home and on the way back to city center there is a beautiful Philharmonie by Alvar Alto. We attempted to get in by using some classic lines like its our last day in Germany and we are architecture students and all that jazz. But we just walked around and drooled up against the glass an took pictures.
The next day which put us on a 7:45am train was a trip to the small town of Herne where there is essentially a biodome. A climate controlled glass box that has palm trees and a little river running through it. It houses civic functions and even a few buildings for students. It was designed in the late 90s so being as efficient as it is was quite an accomplishment as it paved the way for Germany's green initiative. After having spent half the day there we chose to go back to Köln to see the Peter Zumthor museum that was closed on Tuesday. It was incredible how sculptural this museum was. It was built on the ruins of a 19th century church which was built on the ruins of a Roman Church. There is actually a point where you get to walk through the Ruins and its a really cool experience.
So from there it was off to break. Four of us sitting in the hauptbahnhof in Düsseldorf waiting to board our train to Amsterdam
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