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The BERMUDA3ECK in Bochum's city centre is the description for an area with a high density of gastronomical businesses. It is situated between the Südring and Konrad-Adenauer-Platz. Benefitting from the shorter distances to the Bochum Playhouse, the Union cinema and the main train station the number of gastronomical businesses started to increase in the 1980ties.
Culture and Gastronomy:
By now, there are over 80 gastronomical businesses in Bochum's BERMUDA3ECK. The expansion of the area is roughly 2 km². Of the around 8000 seats in restaurants and other public houses, over half are outdoor gastronomies, which is typical for Bochum's scene streets since the seats outside on places and pavements were introduced by Bauer's restaurants in the 1970ties. The first inner city open-air culture stage was also created here. The gastronomy has over three million guests per year. In summer, on sunny weekends there are sometimes 30.000 guests per day and during big events, like Bochum Total, there are around 300.000 estimated guests.
Centre of the BERMUDA3ECK was and still is the place around Engelbert fountain, named after Engelbert III von der Mark. The modern created large open-air stage is also situated there. But, since spring 2009, the fountain doesn't exist anymore.
The big events are:
- the four-day Bochum Total annually beginning July, on an European scale an outstanding street music festival
- the May evening fete, starting point for a traditional procession since some hundred years
- the Sparkassen-Giro Bochum, a bicycle race, happening directly at the BERMUDA3ECK along the bordering road sections Südring (start and finish) and Viktoriastraße
The quarter, as the city's cultural centre is a popular meeting point for people from the whole Ruhr area.
History and change:
Until the end of the 1970ties, the place around the Engelbert fountain wasn't marked by anything unusual. Only the cinemas Intimes (today Casablanca), Union and nearby the Capitol (today Bofimax) as well as the English theme Victory Pub and an adjacent situated tavern, today a Turkish restaurant, were then the evening attraction in Bochum.
At the end of the 1980ties, when the pub density increased the area became a regular clubbing quarter. Especially the trafficability of the Brüderstraße, turned the quarter into a kind of stage for remodelled cars (then, especially - due to the local Opel/Vauxhall-Factory - Opel Mantas). The description BERMUDA3ECK was first mentioned in the former magazine MARABO. The reporter Werner Schmitz wrote an article about Leonardo Bauer (the 'father' of the Bermuda3ecks) with the title Captain in the Bermuda triangle', in which he quoted him.
Since the 1980ties, belongs the Logos Group with numerous different gastronomical business types to the main developer of the BERMUDA3ECKs. Thereby, other as in conventional system gastronomy, not many locations with one concept, but, one with many concepts was developed.
In the mid-1990ties, Bauer and the Logos Group covered a wide spectrum of different gastronomy concepts, thus nearly the whole market in the Bermuda3Eck.
Bauer and the Logos-group were the initiators of the ISG BERMUDA3ECK e.V., one of the first property and local community locations (Business Improvement District / BID) Nord-Rhine Westphalia. Bauer and Hans-Joachim Hauschulz for the Logos-Group are part of the supervisory board.
The great appeal to visitors from outside the city, who didn't know the allocation of the different youth cultures and weren't used to this from other cities, led in the 1990ties, to a wide egalisation of the gastronomies, to a price increase as well as the predominance of occasional guests to regular guests.
In the course of an extensive redevelopment of the upper Kortumstraße, in the area of the BERMUDA3ECK, nearly all the old trees as well as the Engelbert fountain were diminished since the end of 2008 to the beginning of 2009. Later, as compensation serves a water feature for big events, that can be dismantled. The knight's figure from the fountain, got a new location, directly opposite the entrance of the Brüderstraße, while the tree population was replaced by young trees.
In January 2013, an extensive, illustrated article 'Die B3E-Story' was published in the blog 'Ruhrbarone' (http://www.bermuda3eck.de/assets/B3E-Story1.pdf)
The original text is based on an article on the Free Encyclopaedia Wikipedia http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/BERMUDA3ECK