The Berlin Transportation Network

My son John was going to meet me at Tegel Airport if it wasn't too early for him to get up. As it turned out, he was sick and didn't make it, so I needed to get to his apartment in Kreuzberg myself. I had his address and knew where it was. I also knew that the U-Bahn station closest to him was Gneisenaustraße on the U7 line, so I didn't expect any trouble. Berlin has a fantastic transportation system, consisting of first the S-Bahn, short for Stadtbahn (city railway), which are regular rail lines, right next to long distance (city-to-city) rail lines. They are mostly above ground. Intermingled with the S-Bahn is the U-Bahn, short for Untergrundbahn (underground railway), and mostly below ground. Of course there are also buses and trollies.

Below at the left are two PDF files each giving the S- and U-Bahn network. The one on the far left dates from December 2005, as shown by several stations that have been rebuilt and changed their names, such as the Südkreuz station that used to be Papestraße, and the old name Lehrter Bahnhof attached to the new Hauptbahnhof (main railway station). The map second from left is valid as of May 2006 and shows the new names. At the right are two maps showing just the U-Bahn and just the S-Bahn.

S- and U-Bahn Network				U-Bahn		S-Bahn

Only buses go to and from Tegel, so one has to first take a bus somewhere. I bought a 7-day pass good for everything in zones A and B, and then caught the TXL bus going to the new Berlin Hauptbahnhof (main railway station), since I wanted to see it anyway. This station was part of a major change to the railways in Berlin, adding a new North-South line to the existing East-West line. The new station sure looks fancy, but it ought to for 5 billion Euros, the same cost as the insane Denver airport. The entire set of changes cost about 10 billion Euros.

I took the first picture below, but the remaining eleven came from the Internet. (I hadn't yet decided on taking pictures of everything when I first visited this station.) Some of those below were taken during the official opening of the station, where a huge crowd showed up, including politicians and one crazy 16-year-old who stabbed 41 people in the confusion before he was caught.

Berlin Hauptbahnhof (Main Railway Station)

The controversies about the new station include more than just its price. It has local connections only to S-Bahn lines, but none at all to the U-Bahn. If you want to switch to the U-Bahn, as I did, you can go one station east, to Friedrichstraße, which gives access to the U6 U-Bahn line. Originally a new U-Bahn line was planned to go a few hundred meters to the Bundestag (German Congress), and then on to the Unter den Linden station. However, on Friday, 20 October 2006 (while I was there in Berlin) a German court ruled against Berlin's attempt to get money from the other German states. The first casualty of that decision was this silly little U-Bahn line, even though work on it was in progress.

There have been other controversies with this train station: the architect didn't get the full building that he had designed. They shortened the covered areas to save money, leaving some passengers out in the weather, and they redesigned the ceiling on the lower level. He has strenuously objected to these changes.

On 18 January 2007, one of Europe's powerful winter storms (called der Orkan in German) blew across northern Europe, perhaps the most powerful storm in a century. Germany had a billion Euros in damage, 25 million trees felled, and 47 deaths, but also damage to the new station, requiring its closure on and off for a week. It seems that 1-ton decorative beams were not attached to the exterior. During the storm 2 of them fell, thankfully with no injuries and relatively little damage.

On my first trip to John's apartment I took the U6 line from Friedrichstraße south to Mehringdamm, and rather than switching to the U7 line (to go one stop to Gneisenaustraße), I just walked to his place on Zossener Straße. I didn't stay with him at his apartment (too chaotic), but instead stayed at a Jugendgästehaus (youth hostel) near the Hallesches Tor station on the U6 line.

The German transportation uses an "honors system with teeth", meaning that you have to have a valid ticket when you get on a train or bus, but normally no one on a train checks the ticket, and buses just glance at it. However, every now and then a "controller" comes through checking for tickets, and it's a 40 Euro fine if your are traveling schwartz ("black", that is, cheating). I was controlled once by a person I had noticed before he announced himself: he was huge, so tall he had trouble standing in the car. He also had a sidekick with him. Fortunately, on the first day John told me to get my 7-day ticket stamped with a time stamp, to start it up. You can use the pass any time, but you have to commit to a starting time. I didn't realize this, though I should have known, and it even says so on the ticket in English.

When I was all done with my visit, I left very early (6 in the morning), and took the U7 line from Gneisenaustraße all the way to Jakob-Kaiser-Platz, and from there took the 109 bus to Tegel airport (after trying to take the 109 in the opposite direction and getting help from a young lady waiting for the bus). During the U-Bahn trip that morning, I looked up carefully when the train got to the Richard-Wagner-Platz station (my namesake) to see the bizarre and weird tilework shown at the top left in the pictures below. The next two stops were equally strange, as shown on the first row, the right two pictures. As it turns out, I had not noticed when the train went through an earlier weird station: Wilmersdorfer Straße, shown at the left on the second row. The final pictures show two other crazy stations beyond my stop, ones I didn't get to. The Paulsternstraße station has turned columns into trees with giant flowers at the top. At the time I wished I'd gotten pictures of these, but all the pictures below (and huge numbers of others) are at: http://www.untergrundbahn.de/.

Richard-Wagner-Platz			Mierendorffplatz			Jungfernheide
Wilmersdorfer Straße				Rohrdamm
Paulsternstraße
Weird U-bahn Stations on U-Bahn Line U7

Many windows on trains have been scratched by vandals. One time I saw a transparent sign pasted on a window, in German slang, presumably to appeal to the type of person who would scratch a window.