Ruhr Area

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The Ruhr Area

The Ruhr Area, also called simply Ruhr, (German: Ruhrgebiet) 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-Ruhr.

Altough, there is a very high density of motorways, hitchhiking there is quite tricky.

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.

Even worse is the fact, that there are almost no service areas or gas stations directly at the motorway, which means, no good places to get dropped of, and no good places to start.

Transiting

Long distance traffic usually tries to drive round this area, and this is what you should try, when transiting, if possible.

When coming from, the south, heading to north or east, you should take the A1 until Kamener Kreuz, and then follow the A1 for north or transfer to the A2 for east. Close before Kamener Kreuz, there is one of the few service areas (Lichtendorf), which is great to get a ride in direction of Bremen, Hamburg, Hannover and Berlin (but also for Cologne).

When coming from the East (on the A2) and having a ride that goes to somewhere into the Ruhr Area, it's recommended to get dropped at Rhynern, a big service area close before the Ruhr Area. From there you can get a ride to south (direction Cologne), or maybe to the Netherlands.

When coming from the West, it will be quite difficult to cross the Area. A good place could be the service area Ohligser Heide, close to Düsseldorf, which is difficult to reach by hitching, but easy to reach by public transport.

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 euros, you can get a ticket to get from anywhere to anywhere.
Tickets for only one city are about 2,20 Euros.