A few minutes by bus from the city center, Mülheim an der Ruhr looks a bit as romantic as they say. That’s the interesting thing about the Ruhr area anyway, the reward country for brave travelers who quickly understand that you have to walk through a lot of ugly things – pedestrian zones, town hall squares, bus stations – to get there, where it is actually much more beautiful than anywhere else. Helge Schneider, Germany’s wisest music philosopher, lives where the river that gives the city and country its name looks like a dark green swimming lake. Geese instead of swans, mobile homes on the bank, weeping willows. A few stone steps lead directly into the water. Anyone who thinks you can’t swim in the Ruhr hasn’t been paying attention to Ruhr area studies for the last fifty years. Schneider’s apartment is part of the site of a former leather factory, band saws were most recently manufactured here – most of the factories in the Ruhr area are former factories, the word for this is: structural change, it has not become a successful model.
Helge Schneider in portrait: first of its kind – culture
