Construction in Germany

The Germans love construction and will start construction projects at the drop of a hat. Whether it is the autobahn, streets or buildings, there is always construction. Sometimes the construction is minor and at other times it is major and goes on for a long time. When the Berlin Wall came down the City tree became the construction Crane and to this day there is still a good deal of construction. Pam and I were in Berlin in 2006 and right in the center of town on Unter den Linden Str. there is a long term project that is still underway. An old communist era government building has been torn down and is in the process of being replaced. In this case the building was apparently filled with asbestos which needed to be carefully removed.

While the Autobahn has long stretches of unrestricted speeds, those areas are often interrupted by long stretches of construction. Sometimes it is a major planned project where they are adding lanes but there are times that it seems like they are just doing a simple repair. Of course for the Autobahn there is no such thing as a simple repair. In the U.S. a crew will go out and drop a patch in the road and a few hours later it is done. In Germany, a minor repair requires shutting lanes down and redirecting traffic.

Work was done on the A5 where it intersects the A6. One Friday there was no construction and then on Monday the 2 of three south bound lanes were closed and traffic was redirected around the closed lanes. As the construction progressed, they closed the northbound side and again redirected traffic. When the construction was done, they had replaced the road surface but had not changed the layout of the road or the interchange at all. Apparently, all the construction was for repairing cracks in the road….which if it was I-95 in Philly, we would have considered to be in good shape.

Twice I have had runs detoured (umleitung) because they have decided to start a construction project. Once was on a gravel road up in the hills near the Philosphensweg and another on the lanes between Schriesheim and Leutershausen.
Then there is the bridge in the middle of nowhere, between Heidelberg and Schwetzengen (1 town over). As you are driving along, there is a bridge that goes over…well….nothing and it connects…nothing. It is in the middle of a farm field and there is a village not far from the one end and then there is the road you are on that it appears headed towards and underneath there is nothing. They had to build a berm to raise the bridge, and then they had to build the bridge. They just forgot to connect it to other roads and to put a roadway or other natural feature underneath the bridge.

German housing construction is very different than in the U.S. also. Generally, in the U.S. a builder lays down a cement slab to start the foundation and then uses wood to frame out the rest of the house. I have lived in a house where you could have broken in using only a razor blade, there was nothing more substantial than vinyl siding and wall board. This is not the case in Germany where they use a lot of cement block and poured concrete. Generally, the German’s have tougher building codes and tend to build homes to last. The Germans also love to build with cranes.
In the US a builder will hire a mobile crane when they want to lift particularly high or heavy loads, but they will usually use some kind of construction forklift truck to raise things on the job. Not in Germany, they use stationary cranes for even small sites. Many times the first sign of construction is when a crane is delivered to the site. These cranes are probably 50 to 100 feet in height and have some kind of counterweight at the base.

Sidewalks in Germany and most of western Europe are also different than in the US. I have not seen any sidewalk made from concrete. Almost all of the sidewalks are made with pavers. The initial construction of the walks must be considerably more expensive than with concrete, but when they need to get underneath the sidewalk, they lift the pavers dig a hole and fix what needs fixing. Then they replace the pavers. When completed, you have a hard time telling where the pavers were removed and there is no need to patch anything.