The town, long plagued by misfortune, is so content with its temporary good fortune that it has put up a yellow sign reading “Swiftkirchen,” which literally means “Swift’s Church.”
“We’re looking forward to sharing this experience with Taylor Swift fans,” said Mayor Karin Welge. “We think there will be a lot of positive interactions that will be contagious for local residents.”
She also hopes the attention will be helpful to the city.
Gelsenkirchen is part of Swift’s tour thanks to its stadium, normally home to professional soccer team Schalke 04, which has a retractable roof and is one of the few arenas in Germany that can accommodate more than 50,000 people.
“You could say the spiritual center of the city is actually the stadium,” said local historian Daniel Schmidt.
About 60,000 fans are expected to fill the arena each night for Swift’s shows. During her first performance Wednesday night, Swift expressed her gratitude to the stadium staff. “The amazing staff at this stadium have been really quick to get to you, helping you make sure you have water, making sure you’re taken care of,” she said.
Gelsenkirchen is just under an hour’s drive from the Dutch border, making it easily accessible from both the Netherlands and Belgium.
But until this week, Germans, Dutch and Belgians who actually knew about Gelsenkirchen may not have had a favorable impression of the city, which boasts the highest unemployment rate, highest child poverty rate and lowest wages in the country.
Gelsenkirchen was once a major European coal mining centre, and the station sign still greets arrivals with “Glück auf!”, the traditional way miners pray for the safe return of their colleagues.
But the city has never recovered from the decline of its main industry: last month, when it was chosen as one of 10 sites to host the Euro 2024 football championship, a Sky News reporter told viewers: “There’s almost nothing left of Gelsenkirchen.”
Economic discontent and concerns about immigration have boosted support for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, which won 21.7% of the vote in last month’s European Parliament elections.
But Swift’s shows provide a brief respite for everyone. Anticipation is so high that the local newspaper, the Line Post, began publishing a regular newsletter in May called “Waiting for Taylor.”
This week, pictures of the singer have been plastered on trams running between Gelsenkirchen and neighbouring Bochum, there are Taylor Swift club nights in and around the city, and the three-day “Taylor Town” market is taking place on Heinrich-Königplatz.
The July sun bounced off sequined dresses and jackets as fans in Taylortown danced and sang along to a Taylor Swift-inspired DJ set on Wednesday. Some Swift fans took selfies in front of photos of their favorite albums. Others exchanged friendship bracelets while browsing merchandise and munching on sausages.
At one of the covered stalls, Pauline Rosenstock, 23, a nurse from Uelzen in northern Germany, opted for a more permanent memento: a tattoo.
“This is ‘Autumn Leaves Falling’ from Taylor sang about in ‘All Too Well,'” she said, pointing to a design inscribed near the crease on her left arm.
The three concerts will be particularly beneficial for the region’s retailers, restaurants and hotels, according to the North Westphalian Chamber of Commerce (IHK). An estimated 1,000 hotel rooms in Gelsenkirchen are already fully booked this week, with people charging three times the usual price per night.
Figures based on the spending habits of festival-goers suggest Swifties can spend an estimated $110 to $220 per day on food and drink alone, said Jochen Grütters of IHK, which covers the Gelsenkirchen region.
“The concert will take place during the summer holidays in North Rhine-Westphalia, so we are sure that many families who don’t have tickets will visit Gelsenkirchen and Taylortown as a holiday activity,” Grütters said.
Ice cream parlour owner Graziella Dell’Aquila, 58, created a special Swiftkirchen ice cream in honour of the singer – a mix of strawberries, cream and white chocolate topped with edible glitter, gold and butterflies – and it was a big hit.
“We’ve already sold five the day before the first concert,” she says. “The ice cream makers have been working like crazy behind the scenes.”
Among the people wandering the streets of Gelsenkirchen this week were American fans who planned their summer vacations to coincide with Swift’s European concerts, reasoning that the hundreds of dollars in airfare, hotel and ticket prices in the U.S. are still more affordable than the astronomical prices of Taylor Swift tickets in America.
“The tickets here were a lot cheaper than in the U.S., and it’s nice to be able to travel to Europe,” said McKenna Waldman, 29, a customer service manager from Wisconsin, who was waiting outside the arena with a friend on Wednesday.
Brad Davis, 51, a real estate broker from North Carolina, traveled 4,213 miles with his wife and two teenage children to Gelsenkirchen for Swift’s second concert, then spent time in Germany and France.
“This will be an introduction to Europe for my kids,” Davis said, adding that the family is looking forward to sharing the experience with fans from all over the world.
German Swift bandmates Bernd Gerwing, 20, and Sabrina Munch, 35, who ran a Facebook group connecting fans in the lead-up to the three concerts, had a much shorter trip than that: Munch is “from Gelsenkirchener” and said he was proud to see his hometown listed alongside the likes of London, Paris and Milan.
“This is definitely one of the most unattractive places in the Ruhr,” she said, pointing to a somber patch of architecture in a city built from the rubble of World War II, “but I’m from here and I don’t know anywhere else.”
Julia Meyer and Marius Rupiper, both 31, helped organize the Taylor Town Market. “The negative opinions about Gelsenkirchen have some truth to them,” Rupiper says. “The city is not doing well in many areas and that’s always bothered us. We’ve both seen a lot of the world, but we still want to make a difference here.”
“But the response from locals has also been overwhelmingly positive,” Meya says. “Looking around and seeing the joy this brings to people, it almost brought me to tears.”
Swift is not the first international star to perform at the city’s Veltins Arena: The Rolling Stones, Bon Jovi, Bruce Springsteen and Metallica have also visited the city.
“What’s different this time is the fan base,” Rupeeper said. “Maybe the city can really play host to international stars when they come to town.”
Gelsenkirchen will perhaps be the ultimate test of whether, as Swift sings, “we can make the whole place light up.”
