B1|A40 THE BEAUTY OF THE GRAND ROAD

ZWISCHENWELTEN Gleich hinter dem Schlachthof
drängt sich eine ambivalente Halbwelt zwischen
Schienenstrang und Autobahn, die nur unter der Fernwärmeleitung
hindurch zu erreichen ist. Wer die nur
einen Meter hohe Passage unterquert, findet Kleingärten
und Ponys, Goldsucher (im Computerschrott)
und ominöse Familienclans im Niemandsland zwischen
den Welten.
WORLDS IN BETWEEN Right behind the slaughterhouse,
only accessible through under the district
heating pipes, begins an ambivalent demimonde. Once
you cross the only one meter high passage, you find
a no-man’s-land, wedged between railway tracks and
the autobahn, inhabited by dubious family clans in allotment
gardens, ponies and even gold prospectors
(digging through the e-waste).
usually led ordered lives sought to live out their
steamy fantasies in the shadows of lunchtime, at
a place that closed at eight p.m. and where Happy
Hour was at five.The Turkish disco Taksim,
which occupied the same building, had other
interests: Close proximity to the autobahn allowed
customers to drive from as far away as
Rotterdam and Berlin, and made a hundredkilometer
drive seem as easy as driving to a local
urban disco. For a long time, stars of various
pop scenes met in the demolition- ripe hall, with
its contrastingly luxurious interior spread out
over thousands of square meters. The neighborhood
bordello was always an eyesore to
the Islamic proprietors and guests. Today, the
Taksim is in downtown Bochum and the building
has been orphaned.
In accordance with his profession, though,
the pastor of the drive-in church is interested
in the guests of both Freude 39 and Taksim.
The church, which had been separated from its
parishioners by the autobahn, has been looking
for and finding a new congregation among
travelers, who anonymously write down their
hopes, dreams and fears in the church’s public
journal. The Epiphanias community hosted
an exhibition by the artist Judith Pappe, who
photographed drive-in churches all over Germany.
Right now, the nearby slaughterhouse is fighting
for its location, since accessibility to the A40 and
its latent anonymity is a continual benefit. In this
place, where every day hundreds of animals begin
their journeys to our plates, invisibility is valued
and contact with the outside world avoided.
And anyway, animal protection activists and
other dissidents regularly make trouble for the
owners. Nevertheless, the people who operate
this family business show up friendly. Since
the slaughterhouse only takes up a small portion
of the property, they need to be innovative,
so various retailers have moved in around them.
When meat goes on sale on Friday evening and
the cost of cutlets falls below one euro, it causes
a traffic jam that reaches all the way to the
autobahn. A dealer in sausage casings, a knife
sharpener, an architectural office, a photographer,
and a railing manufacturer with a museum-like
display are now part of the mixed array
at this traditional locale.
Where the property meets the railway’s facilities,
allotment gardens and other peripheral
operations have settled in. In the no-man’s-land
in between the oversized district heating pipes
and the railway tracks, dubious micro-communities
can be found abutting bourgeois gardens.
The complex of entrances, some of which lead
through a pipe just one meter above the ground,
make this space seem more than unattrac tive.
In addition, towards the back it borders on a
cemetery, which is slowly being turned back
into a park.
MARKUS AMBACH
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