We glide down the deep black mountain, sink to the ankles in the ancient witness of the forest that it once was. It’s a strange feeling as it were to wade through the Hambach Forest of superimposed in accurately piled hills in the coal bunker at the Hambach mine. Like bones excavated from a grave. I breathe in the smell, feel the mud of coal dust on my shoes, trousers, gloves. A slightly smaller version of a bucket wheel excavator moves slowly in our direction. We reach firmer, albeit from wet coal dust slippery floor and approach with quick, firm steps the steel monster in front of us. A staircase invites us to climb up. The railings are covered with a centimeters thick layer of soft coal dust. My gloves are already quite sticky of it. There are many steel passageways, staircases and ladders, we climb upwards. But already after a few stairways it goes no further. Crap! We saw before that it must be possible! Hopefully we are not yet discovered. We are at an impasse which looks as if it was little used and talk about what to do. Next to us we hear a loud crackling, for a second I am terrified but then I understand that it is the coal as it crackles through a giant funnel on the conveyor belt. Just stay here? No, it must be possible somewhere. There is still the other half of the excavator. So back down, passing under the monster and on the other side there is an inviting stairway. Here it looks already quite different. How good that the door is open there, there is a way up. we finally found the right way. They seem to have not yet discovered us. Ladder after ladder, we climb to the highest point. With each ladder I get get more quiet, with each ladder we bring more distance between them and us. They must indeed take the same route as we did.