Europe or Bust!: Day 1 and 2 of the Cycle Tour

Here I am! Back in the modern world! All right, not really. I just did not have any WiFi, restricting my ability to publish posts on the blog. The reason can be found if you just keep reading.

After our last day of German school, the packing began. We planned to start at Duisburg, home to Germany’s biggest inland ports and also where the Ruhr River becomes part of the Rhine join and then bike 140 km east, following the Ruhr.

The trip started early the next morning. We strapped the bags on our bikes and headed toward the trains. (No we were not cheating, we just didn’t have the time to bike to our “jumping-off point”.) We hustled our bikes off the train and immediately began our 40 km adventure. Part of the way through our cycling for the day, we encountered a water museum that we visited so we could warm up, because there had been a cold drizzle for most of the trip so far and we were chilly. We only skimmed through its content, because we planned to meet Ellie in Essen. (Jax and I were exited to visit Essen because the name literally translates to “food”.)The museum used to be an old water tower, which held 500,000 liters of water. It is now a panoramic observatory and museum and holds only 50,000 liters of water. Relieved to arrive at our campground, on the banks of the Ruhr River, we gratefully set up our campsite, relishing the thought of a warm, dry sleeping bag that night.

On our second day, our biking consisted only of traveling to the train station so we could ride into Essen to visit its famous coal mines. The first mine we circuited was just the original workings. They had no informative signs to read and little audio explanation of the equipment lying about. It would set the stage for the next mining museum we would tour.

The administration of the second mine did not allow anyone down into the actual mine. It was much more of an informative tour, with pictures of life below the surface and then how the coal traveled from the mine carts in the elevator to being market-ready in just 14 minutes. The owners of an iron works decided to drill a coal mine so they could use to coal as heat in the iron making process. They drilled their first hole in 1852. The mine grew until there were 9000 employees and they had drilled 12 main shafts. Unfortunately, the company experienced 300-3000 deaths a year, because of the danger involved in mining. But, they paid the workers well on account of this danger and serious side effects such as deafness from the pneumatic drills that they used without ear protection and suffocation from so much coal dust that would stick to the lungs and restrict oxygen. Until later, even the way the miners climbed down into the mine endangered them. At first, they climbed down a 200 meter ladder. If only one miner fell, well, he and those below him would free fall into a separation of body and soul. Therefore, they attempted to improve the system. They had a rope with platforms that corresponded to other platforms on the wall of the shaft. The rope would then oscillate up and down and the miners would hop on the top platform as the rope went down and, when it began to travel upwards again, they would jump onto the platform on the wall, and then repeat all the way down. This finally led to an elevator which rocketed up and down the shaft at an astounding 17 m/s. It thankfully had a steel cable this time as opposed to just a rope. They transported the coal differently as well. As opposed to being transported in carts on an elevator, which when full weighed 12 tons, they loaded it on a conveyor belt. The conveyor belt took it to a separate elevator, which could now hoist 22 tons, into which the coal dropped. In the time before they used the conveyor belt, they had to have a way to remove the coal from the carts quickly. They found the obvious solution. Dump them! The coal carts would roll down the track to a junction where one man somewhat evenly distributed 15000 coal carts over 16 hours. The one-ton cart would then travel on its designated track, fall through the floor and end up upside-down above the conveyor belt. Then, it would travel back up through the floor and back onto the elevator for another round in the mines. The conveyor belt had little holes to sort out the smaller pieces. 15 year-old boys would sort the rocks from the coal with their bare hands. After this separation, the coal dropped into a bath, where waves settled the smaller pieces and let the larger ones rise to the top. The sorted coal was then ready to be shipped.

But, how did they haul the one-ton carts in the first place? They used horses. The horses would pull the 16-ton, train of coal carts without brakes through tunnels held up by wood beams. Most horses would be down in the mines for twelve - fourteen years, and some never experienced sunlight. The wood used to hold up the walls was not permanent, it only slowed the collapse of the tunnel and acted as an early warning system. When the sound of the wood cracking became too loud, the miners knew to rush out as fast as the varied heights of the tunnels would let them.

Nowadays, there are two cities in the area: The one you immediately witness when you arrive, and the underground city of tunnels that stretches to the horizon. Because of all these tunnels, the city has actually sunk 24m, putting it at a lower elevation than the Ruhr River. This requires dams to hold the water back. But, yet another threat grabs the attention of the town. The area would also be flooded if the water in the mines were not pumped out. As it is not still a working mine, water has filled the mine. The water, if not controlled, would flow up and engulf the town. Much energy is required to pump the water out, and, since it comes out at a warm 20 degrees to a scalding 50 degrees C, it surprises me that it is not used for heating and hot water, as opposed to using more energy to cool it before being dumped in the river.

It was only the second day of our trip and we had learned a head-full.