Discover North Rhine-Westphalia - the new "green" pot

baldeney see nordrhein westfalen With around 17.9 million inhabitants, North Rhine-Westphalia is the most populous federal state in Germany and the fourth largest in terms of area at around 34,100 square kilometers. 30 of the 81 major German cities are in its heavily urbanized area.

The northern part of the Rhine-Ruhr conurbation is formed by the heavily urbanized Ruhr area with the centres of Dortmund, Essen, Duisburg and Bochum. Its economic rise in the early 19th century was based on industrialization and the mining industry, particularly ore and coal mining.

The Route of Industrial Culture is a tourist themed route that leads to the most important industrial-historical sites in the Ruhr area and serves as a starting point for marketing the Ruhr area as a tourist region.

There are numerous technology and industrial museums in the Ruhr area, such as the German Mining Museum in Bochum, the Museum of German Inland Shipping in Duisburg, the Recklinghausen substation, the DASA – working world exhibition and the Hoesch Museum in Dortmund, and the Bochum-Dahlhausen Railway Museum in Bochum and the decentralized museums Westphalian Industrial Museum and Rhenish Industrial Museum. There are also several art museums in the Ruhr area, such as the Museum Folkwang in Essen, the Lehmbruck Museum and Museum Küppersmühle in Duisburg, the Ludwig Gallery in Oberhausen Castle, the Karl Ernst Osthaus Museum in Hagen and the Museum Ostwall in Dortmund. With the opening of the Capital of Culture in 2010, the Ruhrlandmuseum was reopened as the Ruhr Museum in the former coal washing plant of the Zollverein colliery. The Zollverein colliery and coking plant in Essen was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 2001. In 2010, Essen represented the European Capital of Culture region.

Xanten - far more than just Colonia Ulpia Traiana

Xanten - far more than just Colonia Ulpia Traiana

Every year, about 800,000 tourists visit the city of Xanten, located in the northwest of Germany, mostly because of its historic center, but also due to the archaeological park of the Roman Colonia Ulpia Traiana and the leisure center with its distinctive cycling and walking routes in the relatively flat terrain of the Rhine meadows.

New Isenburg - impressive destination on the Baldeneysee

The beautiful weather had lured us again below the open sky to Baldeneysee near Essen, where we, supplied with coffee, homemade waffles, no longer hot cherries and whipped cream, wanted to hike the castle ruins New Isenburg, which are located in the Essen district Bredeney.

Locks of Love at the Hohenzollern Bridge in Cologne

Our short walking tour through the centre of Cologne had lead us into the direction of Central Train Station and to Hohenzollern Bridge, where the architecture of the bridge does not only counts to the peculiarities of Cologne, but is also the original place, at least for Germany, of an interesting tradition to be seen in thousands: the Love Locks.