Bochum

The Mining Museum and the Jahrhunderthalle in a Bochum day

A day in Bochum fits its two main sights. Spend the morning at the German Mining Museum, with a replica mine 20 metres underground and a lift up the green headframe, and the afternoon in the Westpark around the Jahrhunderthalle, the 1902 hall now used for concerts and the Ruhrtriennale.

Morning. Walk or take the U35 a short way north to the German Mining Museum. A guided route leads through a replica mine built 20 metres beneath the museum, with real machinery and the noise of drilling. Take the lift up the green headframe brought from a nearby colliery for a view across the Ruhr.

Afternoon. Ride the tram west to the Westpark, a former steelworks site turned into a park. Its centrepiece, the Jahrhunderthalle, was built as an exhibition hall in 1902 and later used for gas-powered engines; today it hosts concerts and the Ruhrtriennale arts festival. Rail enthusiasts should instead take tram 318 to Dahlhausen for the railway museum, with dozens of steam locomotives in an old engine shed.

Evening. See Starlight Express in its purpose-built theatre on the Stadionring, or a play at the Schauspielhaus. Afterwards, head to the Bermuda3Eck around the Engelbert fountain, where dozens of bars and restaurants spill onto the pavement.

Next day. Ride the U35 to the Ruhr University campus to see its concrete architecture and the botanical garden with its Chinese garden. Cycle on to the Kemnader See, a reservoir on the Ruhr with sailing and riverside paths.

Currywurst and Fiege beer in Bochum

Bochum's food claim is the Currywurst, made classically with the Dönninghaus sausage and sold at almost every Imbiss, including several in the Bermuda3Eck nightlife district. Herbert Grönemeyer sang about it in the early 1980s. The local beer is Fiege, and older Ruhr cooking relies on cabbage, pork and potatoes.

The Ruhr's food history is a miner's kitchen: filling Westphalian dishes of cabbage, pork and potatoes with Rhenish and East Prussian influences from the families who came to work in the pits. Older recipes used rabbit, goat and pigeon, animals that miners kept in their back yards.

Bochum's contribution to German cuisine is the Currywurst. The classic version uses the Dönninghaus sausage, a local butcher's recipe known all over the region, sliced and drowned in curry ketchup with fries on the side. It is sold at almost every Imbiss in town, and the Bermuda3Eck has several famous ones. Herbert Grönemeyer, who grew up here, gave it a hit song in the early 1980s.

Beer is the drink. Fiege is Bochum's last big brewery, a family firm whose Pils is poured all over town, from corner pubs to the Bermuda3Eck terraces.

Bochum's population has changed the menu. Turkish, Polish, Russian and Mediterranean influences show in the bakeries and grills around the centre and the university. In summer, Bochum Kulinarisch brings local chefs to stalls on the Massenbergboulevard for a long weekend. For a sit-down meal, the Bermuda3Eck has everything from steakhouses to vegan cafés.

Show mine, headframe and tours at the German Mining Museum

The German Mining Museum (Deutsches Bergbau-Museum) needs at least half a day. Founded in 1930 and reopened in July 2019 after three years of renovation, it combines a show mine, a 71.4 m headframe you can ride up, and four permanent tours on hard coal, mining, mineral resources and art.

The show mine runs about 20 m below the museum through roughly 2.5 km of galleries, of which about 1.2 km are open to visitors. No coal was ever dug here; the tunnels were built to show machinery and working conditions. The green headframe came from Zeche Germania in Dortmund-Marten, where it was built in 1944, and was moved to Bochum in 1973 and 1974. A lift takes you to a platform at about 50 m and stairs continue to about 62 m. It closes in strong wind. From the 1990s to the mid-2000s the museum regularly drew 380,000 to 400,000 visitors a year.

For a mine that actually worked, head to Zeche Hannover in Hordel, now part of the LWL industrial museum. Coal was raised here from 1870 until the closure on 31 March 1973. You can walk through the brick Malakow tower over Shaft 1 and watch the restored steam winding engine turn; it is the oldest steam engine of the Ruhr coal industry still at its original site. Three 1890s workers' houses stand on Am Rübenkamp, and the old ventilator building is now a cafeteria.

The railway museum in Dahlhausen occupies a steam depot built between 1916 and 1918 on the Ruhr valley line, which once housed around 50 freight locomotives. Volunteers began restoring it after it closed in 1969, and it opened as a museum in 1977. More than 120 vehicles dating from 1853 to 1976 stand around a 14-track roundhouse and a 20 m turntable, both listed since 1984. On the first Sunday of the month from April to October a steam train runs to Wengern-Ost, and on the third Sunday the trip is diesel-hauled. Museum festivals in April and September put the engines in motion.

Starlight Express opened in its own theatre in Bochum on 12 June 1988 and has played there ever since. The run holds the Guinness World Record for the longest-running musical at a single venue, and by 2022 it had passed 18 million visitors.

For a summer afternoon outdoors, the Kemnader See on the Ruhr was completed in 1979. The reservoir is about 3 km long, an 8 km path circles it for walking and cycling, and rowing, pedalos and sailing are allowed; swimming is discouraged because of water quality. Haus Kemnade, a moated manor near the weir, contains museums.