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[[File:Ruhr area-map.png|thumb|right|420px|The Ruhr Area]]
The '''Ruhr Area''' (German: ''Ruhrgebiet''), also called simply the Ruhr, is an urban area in [[North Rhine-Westphalia]], [[Germany]], consisting of a number of large formerly industrial cities, including [[Duisburg]], [[Oberhausen]], [[Bottrop]], [[Mülheim an der Ruhr]], [[Essen]], [[Gelsenkirchen]], [[Bochum]], [[Herne]], [[Hamm]], [[Hagen]], [[Dortmund]], [[Wesel]], [[Recklinghausen]], [[Unna]] and [[Ennepe-RuhrWitten]]. It has about five million inhabitants and is thus significally bigger than Berlin, Hamburg or Munich.
Altough, there is a very high density of motorways, hitchhiking there is quite tricky because of the maze of minor motorways. Major motorways in this area are the [[A1 (Germany)|A1]], [[A2 (Germany)|A2]] and [[A3 (Germany)|A3]]. If you hitch here make sure you stay on this major motorways, on the smaller ones it will be really hard to find transit traffic. [[Germany is a nice place for hitching, but the Ruhr Area is by far the most unpleasant part of the country from this point of view]]. Hitching in the Ruhr Area can be compared with hitching inside a big city like Istanbul and the cities are independent, but for the traveller they will all seem like districts of one big city.
On the one hand, there is a lot of local traffic and even though there will be a lot of cars and usually many traffic jams, the most cars won't go in your direction.
For the Netherlands, use a sign saying "A3 north".
Heading to Köln is quite easy from the A1 spot in [[Dortmund]].
=== North towards [[Bremen]], east towards [[Hannover]] ===
From the Westen part of the Ruhr Area the by far easiest spot to reach is a petrol station on the A2 in [[Bottrop]], See that article for details.
Even better, especially to Bremen is the spot at A1 in [[Dortmund]] at the Western end of the Ruhr Area. See the page of the city to recieve detailed information.
The best spot to go East you can find in [[Hamm]]. The disadvantage here is that for a reason nobody knows Hamm is not a part of the Ruhr Area public transport network (VRR), what leads to the consequence that you can not use your VRR ticket and it will be much more expensive to get there.
== Public transport ==
The public transport in this area is coordinated in a transport network (called ''VRR''), which means that you can take any bus/tram/subway/supension railway/train (execpt IC and ICE) with one ticket. For about 9€, you can get a ticket to get from anywhere to anywhere. Tickets for only one city are about 2.20€.
On working days between 7PM and 3AM and Saturday/Sunday the whole day students and owners of several other tickets can take a second person for free inside the VRR area. Just ask young people on the plattform or the bus stop and you should be fine.
== Sleeping ==
Despite the area is very big and there is some kind of touristic infrastructure, it is good to know that most tourists are not staying over night. This leads to the problem, that there is almost no hostel network and those existing ones are pretty overpriced (like 20 Euro per bed in a dormitory).
Try your luck with hospitality networks and you should find a host without a big problem. Hint: It will be even easier if you try it in a smaller city where are not tourists at all like Herne or Recklinghausen.
Sleeping on public places like train stations is not recommended, because they are never quiet.
If you have a VRR ticket you can sleep at the airport in Düsseldorf, it is no part of the Ruhr Area, but of this ticket network.
