berlin public transport system - today: the subway
Created | Updated Jan 28, 2002
there are three ways to get around in berlin. the probably most important, and by the way, most irritating one is the subway. in a way it reminds of europe's darkest years - the middle ages. it's not the permanent creating of lasting delays in its schedule, but by the strange variety of its passengers. in case of using it you'll observe a real terrible crew of people who couldn't stand three whole seconds in the bright stinging light of the sun. they would turn into the dust they are made of immediately. for these people the berlin subway was invented.
first thing you get confronted with is the smell of the underworld! yes, there is a hell and down there you get the impression of its nose-blasting odour. this aroma is mixed by the scents of millions of hairy armpits, a sweetly note of womit and a greenish granulated stuff they use to clean the floor with, although this effort is totally useless. but the freaks down there love it. they simply can't get enough of it. This make them coming back each day as a part of gods forgotten family.
the main portion of passengers are the so-called ignorers. they don't do anything else than ignoring the whole situation while hiding behind their so-called news-papers. this particular paper is mainly made of huge headlines and enormous photographs which make the few hidden information difficult to discover for the so-called readers. but their first intention is not reading it but hiding behind. if there are any people threatened by shorthaired goons with baseball bats, they're ignoring it. if there are any women raped by a dozen of lunatic and wild moaning teenagers - they're ignoring it. and if there's a wino suffocating by the contents of his stomach stucked in his throat on the bench opposite to them - they're ignoring it as well. they're doing a pretty good job in what they're used to do. why bother – next day they'll read it in the paper anyway.
the second group are the wild but not innocent ones. usually people with no jobs and no brains – last point as a result of the first. their only use lies in irritating other passengers by speaking to themselves. some of them are simply mumbling obscure and strange things in direction of their shoes. These are the less dangerous ones. others use to talk like the living messiahs to spread the message about the approaching end of the world and a third fraction is able to distract just by their wild looks. these fellows are the most scary ones!
and there is a lot of music, too. almost every third station the artists and the performances are changing. most likely are guitars and small percussion instruments accompanied by vocals often performed by only one person at the same time in a gigantic effort to top the squeaky sounds of the subway wheels. a couple of years ago it was a habit of the berlin subway to give place for thousands and thousands of musicians from south-america, especially all the folk bands from peru. I've never heard so many variations of "el condor pasa" again for all my life. this actually stopped the very moment when those guys where unable to carry their steady growing pa-equipment with them, especially into the tube. nowadays they've swapped places so you only find them in front of shopping mall areas where the ground is made of steel-concrete, avoiding a break-through in a different sense than jim morrison meant.
the short breaks between these melodic performances are giving the homeless a chance to kick in. it always starts with the same adress: "hi, I'm peter/paul/mary and I ain't got a job. since five years I'm suffering aids/lung cancer/brain tumour and since selling magazines is better than stealing I'm hoping that you'll be kind enough to buy the latest issue. thank you and have a nice day anyway". at least these people work for their money and this is not the easiest way to earn it. so these blokes are o.k. – if they would change their stories from time to time. this would make the whole thing a bit more entertaining.
Other decline not only working but the whole sucking, man-eating society. probably nobody in the remaining world is still knowing about punks. punk's dead, at least in great britain, the good old u.s. of a and all the other countries (except the eastern part of europe where they believe punk is the latest scream) – but we still have got the last living creatures of this specie. some individuals with torn leather jackets, saying "anarchie", "u.k. subs" or "f**k off", dogs bigger than the chrysler building, beer cans in one hand and usually in small groups of three or four. they hate society but they want to get their share of its income. if you refuse to hand it over you'll be blamed as an ignorant and money-addicted pile of s**t being part of the sucking system of the bloody world's capitalism. since these fellows aren't able to effort a ticket, they usually wait for you in front of the subway entrances.
Now you'll get the impression of a typical ride on the berlin tube. i didn't even stress the point about the seats. mostly the benches are ripped or at least smeared with modern adolescent hieroglyphs. so are the windows, doors and walls of the cars (nobody has thought about the floors and ceilings, yet). usually you won't get a seat anyway because the trains are heavily packed at almost every hour of the day. it's not as bad as in tokio, though. at least you get in touch with a lot of people while riding through the sub-zero level of berlin and this really doesn't cost the world. actually it's much cheaper than a night out clubbing but it is almost as hot and cosy as a crowded dancefloor in a dark-wave disco.
yes, as I told you in the beginning, it is like the middle ages: small hot rooms, beggars, liars, thieves, lepers, mud in every place you can put your feet, a lot of darkness, terrible scents by heaps of people, strange addresses and ignorance, ignorance, ignorance…
next time you'll learn about the other two important parts of the public transport system: the busses and the city-train.
