Today’s the day Al has been looking forward to the most. We’re heading to the Völklinger Hütte (ironworks) back in Germany.
On drive from France into Germany we travel about half a mile along a road where one side is in France and the other in Germany! No idea how borders were actually maintained before the Schengen agreement.
The Völklinger Hütte is the world’s only fully preserved ironworks from the heyday of industrialisation, and is also the first industrial monument of this era to be added to the UNESCO World Heritage List. It is now a museum and a location for exhibitions.
The current installation is called “When We Are Gone” by Julian Rosefeldt with the main focus being his latest movie Euphoria. This is described as an artistic tour de force journeying through the history of capitalism and asks why there still seems be no alternative to this economic system today. Drummers keep time and a youth choir sings, transforming the text collage of quotations ranging from Adorno, Virginie Despentes and Einstein to the Rolling Stones and Snoop Dogg into a veritable film opera. As the film is 2hrs long we only stay around to watch the first 35 minutes as it is shown continuously in the vast space between the old machinery. We do take a look at some of the other videos as well, the strangest of all being Deep Gold and its description is that it continues the tradition of Luis Buñuel’s surrealist films. A male protagonist loses his way in a bizarrely allusive world of lust and desire, where feminism has already triumphed. The revival of 1920s’ Berlin is utopian yet also evokes a sense of danger, all to the soundtrack of tangos, Peaches and a Wagner aria.
No idea what the kids made of it all but they’ve not had TV for a month so they’ll watch anything.
In the entrance some of the quotes used in the film are written on the wall and Robert chooses his favourite.
The scale of this place is just huge and they have done a decent job of providing information about how it was used with other art exhibits and a children’s science museum that is focused on the making of iron. The kids particularly enjoyed the magnetic experiments along with the bubbles.
We get the chance to climb fairly high to get some impressive views from the top but even from where we are there’s still much more above us, can’t imagine having to work here and climb some of these ladders.
There’s also displays about things from history made from iron and there’s nothing you can’t touch so from that perspective it’s great as the kids love getting hands on.
We also got to use a fun slide to come down between two different levels and there were a couple of other bits in the park so that was also enjoyed by the kids.
It’s definitely not somewhere I would have chosen to come but it turned out to be more interesting than I thought especially with the art installations and the hands on activities for the kids.
After waking up to a hot morning once again just as we are leaving the sky opens up and we’re caught in a huge rainstorm, thankfully it doesn’t last too long and by the time we reach Luxembourg the rain has stopped although it’s now very muggy outside.
I did a short run this morning in France and turns out we’re staying only half a mile from the French border (even though we came in through Germany) I therefore decided to have another evening run to get Luxembourg on the list but I made sure I ran back into France because why not.