WC2006: Training Wheels

ON A TRAIN FROM BERLIN (10:18am local time) -- One pervasive aspect of this trip has been the reliance on trains. After four nights in Berlin, I think I had mostly gotten the hand of the subway (U-Bahn) and elevated (S-Bahn) train system, although I still typically had to consult a map to figure out which side of the platform I should be on.

These trains work on a sort of honor system. You buy your ticket - one-way, daily, weekly, whatever - validate it, and then just walk in and out of stations and onto the trains. There are no turnstiles, no systematic method to check that fares are collected. My Berlin host told me there are spot checks, and failure to produce a valid ticket yields a 40 € fine, but I don't think I saw any of these checks while I was there.

Obviously, this would never, ever work in a big American city.

One other byproduct of the ticket validation process is that tickets are good for a fixed period of time, so you could conceivably "sell off" the balance of your ticket once you've reached your destination. Or so the fragrant and dissheveled gentleman told me the first time I headed out from the apartment in Berlin, for the bargain price of 1 €.

Another thing that took some getting used to was the lack of automatic doors. It's not really that they're not automatic, it's that you have to press a button or pull a lever for the door to open. So I guess it's semi-automatic. But open your own subway door? That would never work in the States, either.

The ICE (InterCity Express) trains are another matter entirely. What I found out the hard way this morning is that its reserved seating, with my reservation indicating the train car, the seat, and in this case, the actual train I need to be on, as this train is actually two hitched together that will be separating around Cologne.

Can you guess whether or not I got on the right train this morning? If you're still not sure, I didn't sleep well and haven't yet had any coffee.

So once a train car full of 14-year olds alerted me to my error, I had to hump my luggage up several cars, then off the one train and on to the next. And here I was, so happy the weather had cooled and I wouldn't sweat so much.

Oh well. And I've now noticed that above my proper seat is an LED display that shows where I got on and where I'm getting off. Neat.

Only about an hour before I switch trains in Hannover, so not really enough time for a nap without the risk of missing my stop. Good thing I brought this goddamn travel pillow.