“What we are creating here is unique and I am proud to be a part of it,” says Ehsan Atigh. He works as a construction supervisor on the giant construction site. He’s actually responsible for concrete, but now he has to stand in for his colleague who sprained her ankle. That means he also has to supervise the completion of the last chalice support, an unprecedented column construction that is to become the architectural landmark of the new station.
Time is pressing: In order to keep the opening, which has been postponed several times, the column with 350 tons of integrated steel is to be completed before the summer of 2023. Iron weavers from Turkey work under high pressure in two shifts. And Ehsan, who comes from Iran, keeps an eye on them. “I’m accurate, but still reasonable,” he says of himself. Because it means being quick and still working thoroughly.
“I want to give the people on the construction site a face,” says Peter Maile, Germany’s only construction site chaplain. He knows almost every construction worker by their first name and lends a hand with the various teams to get the tough guys to talk. About her homesickness, the often troubled marriages, about conflicts on the construction site. “I would like there to be a canteen here, a meeting place,” says the pastor. Because despite working ten to twelve hour shifts, the construction workers feed themselves.
On this day, Peter Maile cooks turkey goulash for the track builders. On a camping stove, under a temporary tent roof. During the short lunch break, the men talk about their worries. Bojan feels at home with the family like the fifth wheel on the wagon. He would like to be a real father to his sons. His colleague speaks wistfully of his child’s first tooth, which he missed. Of moments that will never come again. Appreciate the people behind the machines as part of the project of the century, that’s what the construction site pastor Peter Maile lacks.
Tough, no frills and edgy: that is what distinguishes tunnel builders like Hubert Rams. In tunnel construction, it is essential not only to know nature and geology, but also to conquer them. Blasting, drilling, excavating – everything with the utmost precision. They work underground in twelve-hour shifts, without daylight, eating their way through the rock meter by meter with their heavy machines. Hubert Rams, an Austrian in his early 60s, has already worked on tunnels in India and Sweden, and is an absolute expert in his field, of which there are not many in the world. Being able to rely on others at all times is particularly important in dangerous underground work.
The “ZDF.reportage” accompanies people and machines on Germany’s largest construction site and shows what it means to complete this massive, billion-dollar project, which some consider megalomaniacs, under time pressure.