I tend to judge a town by the quality of its public transport. A city could have the world’s best cuisine, culture and nightlife, but if its subway system is scruffy, it will lose a lot of points in Hampo’s Travel Guide.
First impressions of Berlin’s transit network were, in fact, not good. We wanted to use the train to get into the city centre, but Schönefeld Airport station is an absolute dump. This could be excused because they were expecting the airport and its station to be closed from the beginning of June. However, there’s no excuse for the complete lack of information to guide incoming passengers. We had a vague idea that there was a “RegionalExpress” train into Berlin city centre, but we couldn’t find its departure platform amidst the jumble of destinations on the departure board and missed it.
We ended up instead on an ambling S-Bahn train. These suburban trains are great, but stopping at every little wayside station meant it took forever. Also, the train terminated at Sudkreuz, some way short of our intended destination. We had to change to another S-Bahn line, then transfer to the U-Bahn to reach the station nearest to our hotel. It took a lot longer than we thought it would.
Fortunately our later experiences cancelled out this initial trouble, and I’m pleased to report that – from this tourist’s point of view at least – Berlin’s transport is generally quite good.