Berlin Thru Transit
Back in July, I spent 2 weeks in Berlin. I didn't have any specific agenda other than that everyone I knew who had visited the city had told me they really loved it.
I really loved the fact that I never once had to get into a car the entire time I was in the city - train from the airport, the U/S-bahn took me anywhere I needed to go, and it was delightful to bike around as well. There was such an abundance of transit options, I didn't even take any of the many busses or trams either.
The city also felt actually inhabited by people living their lives and not just living to work. I saw adults and teenagers hanging out in the world, on the train and in the streets. When I slowly rode my bike along the ever-present bike lanes, I would regularly be passed by a pregnant woman on one side and an ancient man on the other (he seriously seemed so old, idk how he was riding that bike lol, it was great). Regular people rode bikes for regular every day things - biking wasn't just for the spandex-kitted daredevils running the gauntlet through auto-infested streets. Maybe I'm a friendly-looking person, but I also found myself regularly getting into random conversations with strangers - something I find rare in Seattle.
This bridge spanned some rail tracks with a nice view of the city skyline in the distance. Each evening, people would gather on the west-facing side of the bridge with a bottle of beer or wine and hang out looking over the sunset. It was a very chill vibe with occasional bikes riding by over the bridge. I don’t remember a single car crossing the bridge in the time I sat there, which I really appreciated.
If you look closely in the middle left of this pic, you can see a strange color artifact in the scan. I’m not sure the cause of that, maybe something to do with color clippings or insufficient washing of the film, but it’s something I’ve started noticing when using the Epson V600 to scan that I didn’t notice with the Plustek Opticfilm 8100. With one experiment, I tried wiping the spot on the film with a clean microfiber cloth and it seemed to lessen the artifact, so maybe it’s some sort of oily sheen on the film that’s being picked up differently.
This was the east-facing view from the Modersohnbruecke looking out at the Ostkreuz S-Bahn station. I enjoyed watching the trains pass by.
Overlooking a bike lane over by the Technikmuseum. The bike lanes were abundant and generally safe feeling - not once did I find myself spit out onto a treacherous bike line threading through trucks with no barrier protection (something common back home).