European Capital of Culture

Still life on the Ruhr District’s express motorway

By far the most elaborate project of the Ruhr.2010 celebrations was a logistical masterpiece. 60 kilometres of the Ruhr District’s main motorway was blocked off to accommodate one very long dining table consisting of innumerable smaller tables stood end-to-end, instead of the motorway’s usual traffic jam of cars stood end-to-end. In the spirit of the Capital of Culture celebrations, each of the individual tables was rented to persons or groups presenting art and performances of all types.

3,000 mobile sanitation facilities were on hand along the entire stretch to ensure the environmentally-friendly disposal of everything resulting from people dining and drinking together. Along with the familiar mobile full-range toilets, the specialists from TOI TOI and DIXI Sanitärsysteme GmbH also provided urinals for quick relief for the gentlemen, leaving more roofed facilities for the female visitors and the numerous children.

Instead of the anticipated one million visitors, the organisers reported actual attendance of almost three million visitors to the blocked autobahn, parts of which even had to be blocked for pedestrians and cyclists for safety reasons.

200 TOI TOI and DIXI employees were additionally involved in this event in the midst of the high season. Cabins were brought in from all over Europe, since in the summertime almost 100% of the facilities are booked out, even without the A 40 motorway event. Marc Brameier, one of the TOI TOI and DIXI Project Managers at the event commented, “We spent months in planning and organisation to ensure that everything could be assembled and installed on time during the short night of July 17th to 18th. On Sunday our Stand-By Service staff were working to their limit because three times as many visitors showed up and were using our toilets”.

The next events coming up in the Ruhr.2010 calendar are:

Oberhausen: July 23rd, 11 a.m., opening of the exhibition “Besetzt! Geschichten im stillen Örtchen” (‘Occupied! Stories in quiet places’) (Exhibition dates: July 24th to October 24th), an exhibition in 20 portable toilet cabins on the Emscherinsel stretch of terrain, presented by the Emscher Genossenschaft.

Duisburg: July 24th, starting at 11 a.m., Love Parade, with 1,740 sanitary facilities (toilets, showers) as well as room container facilities for the backstage area.

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