Yesterday, on the A40 Motorway...

[bimo]

For the people of the Rhine-Ruhr area the A40 motorway open air festival "Still-Leben" (Still Life) was quite a big thing. Years of preparation, tons of news coverage, much of it sceptic. Just think of it: About 60 kilometers of one of Germany's busiest motorways turned over to pedestrians, cyclists, skaters and picnickers for the duration of six hours on a Sunday in July.

Cavendish and I went there, together with a couple of friends, and were blown away by the blue-skied, happy, relaxed atmosphere. The last time I experienced something so joyful, easy-going and in a very strange way self-explanatory as this was the "Wrapped Reichstag" of 1995.

An article in English about the A40 Still-Leben





No festival without queuing *g*. The stairs at the motorway entry Duisburg Häfen...


Finally there!


The cyclists' lane


Ladies and gentlemen of the Highway...


One of the many bands along the way. These guys were actually rather good


People used the tables and benches for quite a few purposes...


Where there's life, there's art!


Table with logo


Highway Haikus.
"Das Wetter ist super,
die A40 ist lang,
wir sind happy."


Another band


Life, seen through a windscreen *g*


This would roughly translate as "The gourmets of Duisburg Neudorf are celebrating the Spaghetti-shaped traffic knot". And yes, they did eat Spaghetti...


The A40, seen from above on the way back


Looks quite idyllic, doesn't it?


Exit Duisburg Kaiserberg, about 4 km away from the point where we had entered


Exhausted but happy :-)