Berlin - Transportation

The first thing to learn about Berlin is the transportation system, unless you have a private driver who can take you everywhere. I love subways, so I was looking forward to learning all about it. The first thing I learned is that the subway system - the Ubahn - is not an "it". There are two systems which are separate but meet in certain stations.

I was used to the Paris metro, which I thought was confusing enough. But that one is pretty simple, compared to the Berlin system. In Berlin each line is numbered, and the signs direct you by the numbers only. Then I had to learn the destinations of each line, which is similar to other subway systems; they are named by the end of the line. So first we had to learn the numbers and then the names of the lines to figure out which direction to head.


Since we were going to be in Berlin for several weeks, we decided to buy a monthly pass. In the little station near our hotel we punched in our requests - these machines are also in English - and got a card, saying that our money was lost in the machine and we would have to go to some address to redeem it - no subway ticket, just a voucher. Of course we had no idea where in Berlin this addres was, so we were very frustrated.

We had already learned that there are not always information booths in every station, so we must have asked which station to go; I can't remember now. Anyway, we rode the U2 toward Pankow to Alexanderplatz to find the subway information booth to find out what happened to our money and get a monthly pass.

It was there that we found out there were two companies running the U and the S. Jack did his best to communicate our dilemna, but the BVG man just directed us to another office where we could buy tickets from a real live person. So we trudged up steps and down steps, trying to stay out of the way of the streaming people going this way and that. The signs are clear if you know what you are looking for. We found the ticket office and Jack waited in line to find out about the ticket and where to go to redeem our voucher. The amount for the monthly tickets was 100 euro, so we couldn't just forget about the money.

While he was in the office I was over in the corner, trying to make out the map that the BVG man had given me. A young woman stopped and asked if I needed help. In English? I asked. Of course, she said. She explained the two systems, one literally on top of the other and how to read the routes, etc. She was very helpful and I thanked her profusely. By that time, Jack had the tickets and the directions to the BVG office.

In Paris and London there are machines to enter the metro, where one pushes in the ticket and it pops out on the other side and the gate opens to let you through. In Berlin there are none of those things. We are supposed to carry around our tickets but everyone just enters the subway station and goes to the cars. There are subway police who ride the rails and check tickets, and there are signs on every car, saying that if you don't have a ticket you will be fined 40 euro. It is nice not to have those machines to walk through - the traffic runs more smoothly. Are the Germans more trustworthy to buy the tickets? I wondered at the philosophy of each country.

We learned a lot that day about the system, since we had to report to an office in some god-forsaken part of Berlin - somewhere we never went again. It was way on the east side of town, in a huge office building, near the Soviet TV tower, that I remember. The people were very nice and returned our money. I noticed a few days later in our little local U station that the machine where we had lost our money had a sign saying "out of order".

I carried our monthly tickets in a safe place in my purse during the whole month and only once did we meet a subway policeman - on a Sunday - and he found someone who did not have a ticket and was escorted off the train and made to pay the 40 euro. Since a day ticket is about 6 euro, it is worth it to pay for the ticket.

We were going to be in Berlin for the first week of October, which meant we needed a weekly ticket after September. I persuaded Jack for us to go back to Alexanderplatz to buy the weekly ticket at our leisure, and then when the first of October rolled around, we could stamp it in the machine, to show when we started using it.

On October 1, we went to the subway station for our daily field trip and I remembered that we had to stamp the ticket. We got on the train, enjoying the sights, when we were aware that there were subway police checking tickets. The woman checking our tickets, I swear, was disappointed that we had it stamped correctly! I guess we just looked like dumb tourists who did not know the ropes.

The two sets of subways are very efficient and always on time and, during the week, coming every few minutes. On Sundays the trains do not run as often. One Sunday we noticed all kinds of subway police, with German shepherd dogs. They were riding the rails that day because one of the German soccer teams was playing and all the fans were riding subway out to the olympic stadium.

Once we understood the signs - and the long German street signs end mostly in "strasse" so you just read the first part of the sign - we were able to navigate everywhere we wanted to go. The stations themselves are huge - in Paris everyone just gets off the train and goes out or goes to the connecting train - but here the stations are very long and there are shops to buy snacks and papers and postcards or to eat lunch or buy magazines. The stations that connect the U and the S are huge, and we had to be careful to follow the signs to go up or down or around. We had to know where we were going before we read the signs so we knew what to look for. One time we got on the wrong train because I did not know the name of the destination. By the time I pulled out my subway map and studied it, we were at the next station so we hopped off and tried again.

The next big step in learning how to get around Berlin was to figure out where we wanted to go and then figure how to get there. We had museums, places of interest and neigborhoods on our list of required visiting, so the first thing to do was to get a detailed map which had the U stations superimposed to make our journeys easier. We soon learned that it would be necessary to walk a long way once we arrived at the appropriate subway destination. There is just a lot of walking in Berlin, no matter how good the public transportation is. We really were not prepared for how long the blocks were, but I think we got used to them and accepted the walks as good exercise.

The U2 was our primary U bahn that we rode during our two week stay at our first hotel. This hotel was more or less in the middle of the city, so it was connected to most of the tourist sights that we were interested in. It was a horizontal, east/west line, and the S line looped around the city and then headed out to the suberbs. When we stayed in the eastern part of the city, we had a more complicated route to get around, since the U5 ended at Alexanderplatz, so we had to transfer to the U2 or the S. Traveling around Berlin is just long and complicated because it is such a huge city. Now I need to talk about what we saw - unbelievable history in the city and they are still working on construction projects all over the city to build it up to its former glory.