Let me start with a confession.Ā Wuppertal is not exactly on the bucket list of most people I know. When I mentioned it to friends, the reaction was mostly "...where? šĀ " which is fair. It sounds less like a city and more like something you'd say when you sneeze while speaking German.
I took a chance and went there. And I'm glad I did. Even with everything that went wrong ā and quite a few things went wrong.
Sway in style on a Schwebebahn šĀ
My friend and I stayed outside the city, in a nice green area on the outskirts where it's quiet and the air is clean and getting anywhere takes actual effort. Day one, we took a taxi into the center because we were hungry and had our priorities sorted. We found a restaurant,enjoyed delicious dinner and had a great time. And then we realized we'd spent our first hours in Wuppertal entirely inside a restaurant, which is either very relatable or very embarrassing depending on how you look at it.
After dinner the plan was simple ā take the Schwebebahn back to the hotel. We bought the ticket, found a station, went home. Sounds straightforward, right? Except one tiny detail. Navigating a foreign city with girlfriends is a particular experience. At some point between "I think it's this way" and "no wait, this way," you stop consulting even chatGPT and just commit to whatever direction feels right and hope for the best. That's what we did. We got on the Schwebebahn. We rode it, chatted, looked out the window, floated above the river feeling very pleased with ourselves. We also completely forgot to count the stops. 20 minutes later we got off somewhere and it became immediately clear we had overshot by a lot. Like, a significant amount. We needed to go back.
So we got back on. With the same single ticket we originally bought. I'm not going to explain our reasoning because there wasn't any. We just did it š . We made it to the right station. Decided from there we'd just walk ā about 40 minutes, not a big deal. It was evening, after 9 p.m. still light enough, nice city, why not. ''What can possibly go wrong?"
About halfway through, the sky turnedĀ very specific 50 shades of dark grey which means you have roughly 90 seconds before something about to happen. Then it opened up completely. Absolutely pouring. I had one small umbrella for 2 of us. We ran for the nearest bridge and stood under it like two people who had made a series of small but compounding mistakes. We waited for the rain to stop. It didn't so we just walked. Wet and getting wetter.
Through a city we didn't know, in the dark, following a Google maps we were stunned how hilly Wuppertal is.Ā Our route back went straight up through a hill that had zero sympathy for our situation. We had wet shoes, tired legs, end of a long day. Somewhere on that hill we realized that our gym membership finally paid off. We got to the hotel soaked through. Finally we were happy we made it to our hotel.Ā
Botanical Garden and A Dick StreetĀ
Next morning was sunny and bright. After having a nice breakfast we decided to go to the botanical garden. This time we got off at the right Schwebebahn stop which was an actual progress. The botanical garden is situated on a hill. Because of course it is ā everything in Wuppertal is on a hill. At the bottom of the entrance staircase I stopped and just looked up for a moment. It reminded me immediately of Montmartre in Paris, those stairs that go up and up and you stand at the bottom doing a quick internal negotiation about whether your legs are up for this.
On our way all the way up we passed lovely houses that looked like castles. The steep way was swaying left and right and we could barely look up properly because the climb demanded full concentration.Ā
At some point we stopped for a small look out point and... we couldn't belive our eyes š. Not only we had amazing view we noticed something else which we couldn't stop talking for the rest of our trip. The name of the street we were standing was Piemeltreppe.
We stared at it. We looked at each other and we looked at it again.For the non-Dutch speakers: piemel is a very common, very informal Dutch word for... well. A certain part of the male anatomy. The childish one. The one a five year old uses.
So we were standing on what was, to our ears, Dick Staircase Street.Ā We absolutely lost it. Laughing, taking photos, sending it immediately to every friend we could think of with zero context.
Then ā because we're curious people ā we looked it up.Ā The street was named after Johann Diemel, a German surgeon and scientific writer, a respectable man.Ā The only problem is that somewhere along the way, the letter D became the letter P, and the meaning of his name changed... drastically.Ā A surgeon became a punchline. An entire street was renamed by one letter into something that makes Dutch tourists completely unable to keep a straight face. šĀ
The City That Didn't Exist
How many cities can you name that are younger than 100 years?Ā Wuppertal is one of those. Before 1929 this was just a string of separate towns in a narrow valley ā Elberfeld, Barmen, Vohwinkel, Cronenberg, Ronsdorf. All running into each other along the river Wupper. Then someone decided to merge everything and give it one name. So the city has no real center. It stretches through the valley in sections, like an international train you try to catch.
Industry First, Beauty Optional
Wuppertal from its origin is an industrial city. It was built to work. The river Wupper powered textile mills and dye factories. Cloth was made here, dyed here, shipped from here. Probably it is one of the reasons I couldn't find any beautiful postcard from Wuppertal.Ā
A famous pharmaceutical giant Bayer started here. It began as a dye company in a city called Barmen in the 1800s, making synthetic colors for fabric, before eventually becoming the company behind aspirin and half your medicine cabinet.
I think it is a very Wuppertal origin story: start practical, scale up, end up everywhere. A great lesson for any starting entrepreneur š.Ā
The Hanging Train or The Famous SchwebebahnĀ
Have you ever wanted to sway in style above the city? To experience it's buzzing streets, rushing people and not being part of the traffic jam on the road? Well... come to Wuppertal and take a Schwebebahn. The hanging train.
It hangs from a steel structure above the river and the streets. It has been doing this since 1901. It looks like the future as imagined by someone in 1895, and nowadays people use it every day for their commute.
So why hanging and not riding on the ground? The reason it exists is actually sensible: the valley was too narrow and too full to put tracks on the ground at the beginning of XX century. River, roads, factories, buildings ā the city was packed. So they went up instead. Which I think is one of the better responses to a logistical problem I've ever come across.
The Schwebebahn has own mascot called Schwuppi. Named after the sound the train makes when it passes ā schwupp.Ā
Every great story doesn't come across with a pinch of bitterness. In 1950, a circus thought it would be good publicity to put a young elephant on a hanging train above a river. At no point in the planning of this did anyone apparently stop and say ā hang on, is it smart? The elephant named Tuffi panicked, crashed through the side of the carriage and fell into the River Wupper. Luckily she survived with minor injuries, which is almost more unbelievable than the event itself. Apparently there is a foto circulating on the internet with a falling elephant š out of schwebebahn. According to the sources it is reconstructed because the real moment was never captured.
If you are curious about dick street and swaying (or should I'd better say schwupping šĀ ) in style above the city, go to Wuppertal and experience it first hand. šĀ