Köhlbrand Bridge

This guide to the Köhlbrand Bridge in Hamburg starts inside the hollow steel deck beneath your feet, a sealed box girder that for decades required inspectors to crawl its length by flashlight, checking for cracks in noise so fierce that two people ten meters apart couldn't hear each other shout. It follows that grueling routine, repeated every three and six years, until a four-legged robot took over much of the work in 2022. Look up at the two towers holding the whole crossing aloft on cables strung since the bridge first opened.