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PENTECOSTAL EXCURSION TO KRAKOW, WROCLAW

AND PRAGUE FROM 28/05/2012 TO 06/02/2012
J aroslav Kohoutek, Carl-Alexander Graubner
A group of 42 students, professors and scientific employees of the Institute of Concrete
and Masonry Structures of the TU Darmstadt and the Institutes of Concrete and Masonry
Structures and Steel Structures of the TU Kaiserslautern set out on Whit Monday by plane
to this year's big trip to Poland and the Czech Republic. First stop was the 111 m high
wooden radio tower of Gliwice. Thereupon we went straight on towards Opole inside the
cement plant Grazdze of the Heidelberg Cement GmbH. Here we got a factory tour in
English and could closely inspect the rotary kilns for clinker production.

Abbildung 1: Group picture in front of the cement plant Grazdze
First highlight on Tuesday was the UEFA European Championship stadium of Wroclaw.
In this 42,000-seat stadium we were given an informative tour by two UEFA employees.
Then we went to the Centennial Hall. This was built in 1911 and inherited the title of the
largest dome in the world from the Pantheon in Rome.
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The tour led us through the beautiful city of Grlitz to Prague, where we first visited a
subway construction site on Wednesday. On this site were various tunneling techniques
used - the NATM (New Austrian Tunneling Method), the tunneling method using the
tunnel boring machine and the open tunnel forming. We were able to visit a tunnel boring
machine, as well as excavators and other excavation equipment. Visibly impressed and
with many stories from the lives of the construction workers we went on to the bridge
construction site "New Troy Bridge Prague". At the time of the visit the assembly of the
arches was performed. In the evening, we took part of a guided tour of Prague Castle.
On Thursday we left early in the morning towards Krakow. First stop was a stress ribbon
bridge in Brno-Bystrc, here we got a little lecture by a student about the construction of
stress ribbon bridges. We then drove on to Ostrava, to visit the steel mill of the company
ArcelorMittal. Our tour started with a visit of the factory premises, where we were given
an explanation of the iron production steps. Then we visited the rolling mill, with an
impressive length of one kilometer. In the evening we then visited the construction site of
the J agiellonian University in Krakow.
On Friday first two sites were on the program. At the construction site Novum we visited
the construction of 400 new apartments, at the construction site Auchan in Bronowice a
large shopping center. Then we visited the old town of Krakow with the marketplace and
the Cloth Hall and also the Krakow castle. Crowning the day's events was the visit of the
salt mines and UNESCO World Heritage in Wieliczka. Here we could visit the largest
underground chapel in the world. This trip was made possible not least by the generous
support of the Darmstadt students by the Freunde des Instituts fr Massivbau, for which
we would like to thank you here again quite cordially.