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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 petrol stations directly at the motorway, which means, no good places to get dropped of, and no good places to start. The service areas that are there can be found on the site of [http://www.tank.rast.de/standorte/servicenetz/index.php Tank & Rast], click anywhere between [[Bielefeld]] and [[Aachen]] for the detail map of the Ruhrgebiet.
== Hitching around ==
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 is quite difficult to cross the Area. Resonable Reasonable places are
* the service area ''Ohligser Heide'', close to [[Düsseldorf]], which is difficult to reach by hitching, but easy to reach by public transport.
* the service area ''Aachener Land'', just east of [[Aachen]], which is just after the Dutch and Belgian borders.
Good places to hitch out of the Ruhr Area are few and far between. You'll usually have to find a sympathetic person to drop you off there, or spend a bit of time on the VRR website to figure out what buses/trams to take and where to change.
=== South towards [[Cologne]], northwest Northwest towards the [[Netherlands]] ===
The A52 runs through Essen and Mühlheim and joins the A3 running between the Dutch border in the North and Cologne/Frankfurt in the South. There's a good on-ramp onto the A52 near the Essen/Mühlheim air strip, reachable by bus (to a stop called "Abzweig Flughafen"); with dense traffic even on Sundays.
== 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€EUR 9, you can get a ticket to get from anywhere to anywhere. Tickets for only one city are about EUR 2.20€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 platform or the bus stop and you should be fine.
== Sleeping ==
Despite the area is very big and there is some kind of touristic tourist 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 EUR 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.
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.
{{IsIn|North Rhine-Westphalia}}