The Berlin underground is brilliant. Living in Berlin we depended on the U Bahn daily. It’s clean, reliable and safe. We’re all seriously peeved when we need to wait five minutes for a train. “Trains run every two to five minutes during peak hours, every five minutes for the rest of the day and every ten minutes in the evening.” (Wikipedia)
The U Bahn has consistently easy to understand signage, so getting lost wasn’t an issue. Charmingly each station has it’s own ‘look’. Ours wasn’t winning any design awards.
This is just a taste of some of the U Bahn stations…
The longest time it takes us to get from home to anywhere on Berlin public transport is 30 minutes – just ask Google Maps.
The Ubahn opened in 1902 and has over 170 stations. With the building of the Berlin Wall some stations became ghost stations and didn’t re-open until 1990.
It’s possible to take an underground railway tour – sitting on exposed bogeys like coal miners. (Commentary is only in German.) I can’t tell you how strange it is to see one of these trains passing through the station.
This is kind of weird Source: BVG
The station platform stays at a comfortable 20 degrees year round. Worthy shelter when the weather above ground becomes too inclement for drinking. The convivial drunks that populate benches 1&2 at Gneisenaustrasse Station may look dishevelled and smell bad, but their dogs are the most well behaved, well fed, cleaned and groomed that you will find in the city.
Source: www.mapaplan.com
And if the train is taking more than 5 minutes… then the tiles make a great backdrop for reluctant subjects…
