The U-Bahn and the spirit of a city

Nowhere can you sense the spirit of a city as acutely as in its subway. Its rythm and its crowdedness, its diversity, the general mood of its passengers and their pass-times will tell you almost everything you need to know about where you are.

Berlin' s U-Bahn is peaceful and quiet compared with its more vibrant, diverse and sometimes brutal counterparts belonging to real metropoles, such as New York, Paris or London. It transports much more simply dressed people than its namesakes in Hamburg, München and Frankfurt. This is a testimony to the economic misfortunes that isolation and the wall have brought to the city. Its beggars, its inofficial vendors of street magazines and its usually untalented musicians-by-necessity trying to appeal to co-passengers sometimes create scenes that seem reminiscent of the city's chaotic 1920s past.

Berlin passengers are more serene than in Paris where the standard state of mind sometimes seems to be anger about the length of their commute, the crowdedness, the crowd's smell and about the difficulty to find a decent jobs in other French cities with shorter commutes. But they are also more distant than in New York where perfect strangers are capable of telling you everything about their dreams and aspirations that have brought them to this city full of promises and of deceptions.

On the other hand, people have enough space to act in the Berlin U-Bahn, which they don't in some of the more cosmopolitan metropolitans. That can make for some interesting shows. Recently, I was sitting opposite a teenage girl who sported so many piercings that I couldn't help imagine the clinging sound she must make while walking. All the way from Alexanderplatz to Charlottenburg she kept reading to a friend on her mobile phone hard-to-believe pieces of news from a tabloid newspaper, like the one about the unknown Berliner who had cracked the jackpot but wouldn't report to the organisers to claim his prize.

Well, now I know why all the teenagers are drowning in debt as a result of sky-rocketing mobile phone bills. I hope the girl has a flatrate. For the phone that is, not for her drinks at night.

If you want to understand the current state of the world around you or explore a city, I cannot recommend the car.