Before coming to Germany I had very few encounters with public transportation. I have always loved traveling. Airports, train stations, everything. But, I never really had to deal with transportation on a local level. I was born in New York City, but when I was 8 we moved to Kennett Square, Pennsylvania: a mile by mile town in the middle of horse country. Whenever I did travel to bigger cities and needed to use public transportation, i always had a local with me for me to follow around. When I first arrived In Berlin Tegel Airport on August 6th, I knew that I needed to find a bus. I didn't know what it was called, what it looked like, or if I needed to buy a ticket, but I knew that I had to get to the Berlin Hauptbanhof. After asking many locals for directions and help lifting my insanely heavy luggage, I finally made it to Leipzig. Without data on my phone, making it to Lumumbastraße 4 might have been the most tumultuous half an hour of my life. Without a fellow student who completed the program the month before me telling me which tram to take, I might never have made it. After about a week I finally became semi comfortable with the public transportation, but without this practice in Leipzig, I have no idea how I would have navigated Berlin.
In Berlin, I and my peers all agree that BVG is God. Berliner Verkehrsbetriebe Gesellschaft, or BVG, is the company in charge of all of the public transportation in Berlin, except the S-Bahn. As a Berliner, using public transportation or a bike are the only sensibly ways to get around. Germans really do not like waste or not being eco friendly, so the cars you see on the road are mostly taxi's and Ubers. Due to everyone's dependence on the u-bahn, trams, and buses, many of us have deemed BVG as God and that if God is in our favor, the train will come right when we need it and will not make us wait.
The train system in Berlin is very straightforward, especially with apps like Citymapper and Moovit, but, just looking at the map, it can be very scary. Each line has a different color, some stations have elevators and others do not, so many lines cross over and stations have both u-bahn's, s-bahn's and buses right outside, so how can we tell what is what? After 2 weeks in Berlin, I think I finally understood everything. I could get to school without going on an app, and officially found the fastest way to the bar we all liked to go to. Looking at the map, all I see are colors. My favorite shade of pink next to a muted yellow. The light blue that is the color of my u-bahn line to go home, and the purple that is the sign for a bus.
The u-bahn and s-bahn trains go all over the city. While the u signifies underground and the s is a surface train, both cross these borders. On the u-bahn, when you get to Kreuzberg, stations like Prinzenstraße or Hallesches Tor have above and below ground u-bahns. When taking the s-bahn from above ground Yorckstraße to below ground Oranienburgerstraße show that like its people, Berlin's trains can do anything. All of these trains go in two different directions, and some trains, like the Ring bahn, go all around the city in a circle. Many people say that Berlin is like New York City and that Berlin too is the concrete jungle and a city that never sleeps, but I think that Berlin is much than that. Its people are punctual, but have a patience that is unmatched. Berlin public transportation is usually great, but sometimes it can leave you waiting or 20 minuets when you were supposed to only be waiting 3. While Germans love being on time, the lack of control regarding public transportation is something everyone understands. While you may need to wait a long amount of time for a bus, it is just around the corner. Eventually, you will get home and the trains will stop for you to get on.
In the poem below I explore what Berlin public transportation means and looks like for myself and other Berliners. The photo below is actually a GIF, but unfortunately this website does not support those. I took the gif on the way home from school In the GIF you can see a tram passing, a man climbing up the stairs from the u-bahn, graffiti and street art, and the blue sign, this one reading "U Oranienburger Tor," that Berliners search for to find a train to go home. Not a day in Berlin went by without me using some form of public transportation, so this short poem about my time and relationship with it feels important while I am in my final week with this great city. Thanks for reading!
