U-Bahn
“All you have to do Robyn, is take the U to the S to the Bus.”
“Oh right. Ok. Do you think Berlin could have anymore letters I could memorize?”
“Ha. Don’t worry it gets easy once you try it.”
I didn’t believe them. I had just landed in Berlin and I was trying to figure-out how to wander from my Eco-lodge in the Grunewald Park that comes complete with wild pigs, to the centre of Berlin.
Even though I had only given myself three days in Berlin, I decided to try and redeem my flights with a stay in a solar-powered lodge. Bring on the environment! Just please leave behind the cold showers. No wonder this place closes in the winter. Only October and already I couldn’t get any hot water in the morning.
Nothing like an icicle shower to open my eyes to the alphabet soup that is Berlin’s transportation system. I don’t think I’ve been to a place that has quite so many names for a similar thing.
So what have we got in our Berlin soup?
There is the S-Bahn. What is it? It’s the Suburban metro railways and the S actually stands for ‘Stadtschnellbahn’ (meaning “urban rapid railway”) and it was introduced to Berlin in 1930. These are actually trains and are mostly above ground.
They criss cross (and make you wanna jump) around Berlin and into the surrounding state Brandenburg. It
U-Bahn in Berlin
also consists of 15 lines and is integrated with the next letter combo – the U-Bahn.
Got it?
So where U Bahn? Well you’ll have been negotiating 173 stations across nine lines and 147 kilometres of track on the U-Bahn in Berlin. They travel 132 million km (83 million mi), carrying 400 million passengers every year.
But it was not always so unified. Like the city it helps commute, the U-Bahn was severed during the East vs. West fight until 1989. Back together, the U-Bahn is now the most extensive underground system in Germany.
Even better? For the environmentalists out there in 2006 it was calculated that the use of the U-Bahn amounted to the equivalent of 122.2 million km (76 million mi) of car journeys!
What else does Berlin have? Buses. Night and Day. Just make sure you look for the N for the evening or you might get lost.
These are so convenient and all the drivers spoke some English when I got on. That made it a lot easier to buy my tickets for the day.
Well for the day, for a short trip, a week, a single trip, etc…take your pick! And you can. That’s the beauty of Alphabet soup. One ticket will take you on all of it.
All you have to worry about is making sure that you have the right zones. Yep.
Adding to the soup are the zones. A to B to C. Luckily most things to see in Berlin only require learning about A and B. C? That’s for the Schonefeld airport and Oranienburg where you can visit Sachsenhausen concentration camp.
Finally?! Trams. I never took one and I don’t think most tourists would, but if you do your ticket will still work. I love Berlin.
M…..is the last letter you need to learn in Berlin. Map – make sure you pick-up a free map from the various areas in Berlin! I had to pick-up two. It’s helpful with tips on how to get around and a well-used map.
Just make sure you go! Berlin is ridiculously interesting and filled with everything you could want. And even as directionally-challenged as I can be I figured it out!
Robyn's Wanderings 