The World: Club Ruhr

It is a swampy, flat, coal-coated zone of smokestacks and smelters. But there are those who love it and want to share it. In May, the Local Residents’ Organization (L.R.O.) of the much-maligned Ruhrgebiet (Ruhr region) will offer its first tourist “adventure” through West Germany’s industrial heartland. The idea, says the L.R.O.’s Dietrich Springorum, is to shed the region’s grimy stereotype and show “that it is not only fascinating but has its beauty spots too.”

For a bargain $110 per person, including hotels, meals and guides for a week, groups of 40 tourists will gambol through mechanized mine shafts, mephitic chemical plants and the computer-guided rollers of Krupp’s behemoth steel mill in Essen. Lest romance wilt amid the furnaces, adventurers will be whisked away for interludes at centuries-old castles above the once-green valley. Club Med officials hardly need run scared. Still, some 5,000 tourists have signed up to see the Ruhr.