The €9 Ticket

Since Corona, Germany noticed that many people were afraid to use public transportation and preferred to use their car. This caused a lot of traffic congestion and pollution-wise, is not what they want to encourage. In order to promote public transportation, they offered for €9 a month, for the months of June, July and August, access to all of the public transportation, with the exception of the fast intercity train.

As someone who likes public transportation, likes travelling, and likes virtually free stuff, I jumped on this opportunity to visit many places in Germany. The week before I used it to return from my bike trip to Frankfurt (Oder), and this week I used it even more.

I talked to many Germans about my plan to see the country with that ticket. The response from them was similar, they thought it was a good idea, and they regretted that I only told them about that plan now, 2 weeks from the end. I’m surprised that they didn’t think about it themselves, but hopefully Germany will do something similar to this another time.

On Sunday I simply worked, since most places are closed and public transportation is crowded. Since I had access to my office, I used that to save a vacation day (vacationing near my office lets me not waste a vacation day on a suboptimal day, but rather save it for the best days). Monday I did the final bits of shopping necessary to be ready for bike camping. The bike store that I shopped at was a former train station that was completely renovated to be a bike store / warehouse and the camping store was of similar size. So I had my choice of products. It was then that I learned that campers no longer need to carry a large sleeping map. Rather, newer technology exists to make a pocket sized item grow and fill of with air (without requiring to breath into it) and be just as large and comfortable as their bulky counterparts. Unfortunately, similar to how the technology increased, so do did the cost. One of those mats cost at least €100.

Tuesday

Rostock

Rostock is a port city on the north of Germany. It is a common destination in the summer for German tourists since there is a dock and a beach.

I went with my friend, and after looking at a lot of the sights and visiting the beach, my friend was starting to get tired. I still wanted to go for a bit of a swim, so he decided to find a place to rest while I continued my trip. The first nice, shady park that we found was a graveyard. So I let my friend rest in the graveyard while I enjoyed the beach. I’m not sure if this was a military cemetery, but many soldiers were buried here. All of the ones who died around 1938-1945 got a Swastika engraved on their tombstone. Most of them were presumably drafted by force, but it still felt weird to see that.

Waren (Müritz)

On our way back, in order to get another free vacation (remember my rule about free vacations?), we got of the train at Waren (Müritz) and toured the city. One of the first things we saw on our way from the train was a bike hotel. If I decide to do a similar bike tour, but rather than sleep in a tent, sleep in a hotel, I can go to a similar place. They offer a large place to store and repair your bike, but other than that it appears to me to be a normal hotel.

After that I went to a very beautiful city center. A heavily used word in Germany is Fußgängerzone. That means a pedestrian zone and those places are great. You can sit in the restaurant tables, cross the street without waiting for cars, and have conversations without being disturbed by the noisy and stinky cars. An added benefit is that since you are not driving through, if you see something interesting, you can stop and visit the store without worrying about where to park your car.

Wednesday

Potsdam

I decided to bike to Potsdam. That is a city near Berlin and hosts several universities. During the bike ride over, we bike through a very nice lake called Wannsee. There you can find a large villa, where the Nazis decided how to implement the final solution. Today the villa is a museum, and lake is a vacation destination.

While the city looks nice and the bike ride over was fun, but the city was full of cobblestone roads, the palace gardens were for pedestrians only, and the other big attraction was museums. This made it not so fun to be there with a bike. However, I did see a Brandenburg Gate. In Germany, it is common to name streets or gates that go to a specific city by the name of the city. So just like Jaffa street in Jerusalem goes to Jaffa, Brandenburg Gate in Berlin goes to Brandenburg. However, the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin was full of tourists taking selfies or other forms of photography of themselves in front of the gate. Since that area has been so heavily photographed, I did not take a picture of it. If you want to see pictures of it, the internet is full of it. However, in Potsdam there is also a Brandenburg Gate, so here is a picture with me and my friend in front of Brandenburg Gate.

Brandenburg

After travelling through Brandenburg gate we headed on a two hour bike ride to Brandenburg. It took me some time to understand the geography, but even though we were west of West Berlin, we were still in East Germany. Berlin was a West German island within East Germany. Since living in East Germany wasn’t that attractive to people once the wall fell, so the way was very pastoral and scenic. There were nice places to buy fresh flowers, berries and honey from the farmers along the way.

Brandenburg itself is even worse for bikes. The roads not only have cobblestones rattle your bike, but also tram tracks to catch your wheel. Yet I still saw lots of bikers. Although most of them were not in the city center, so they had more normal infrastructure.

The city isn’t that interesting, but it does have the location of another major part of the Holocaust, the Brandenburg Euthanasia Centre. This is where the Nazis first used gas chambers to kill disabled people.

Thursday

I like to be as efficient as possible, so I woke up early in the morning to start my trip. I prepared breakfast and got on the early train. On the train I was then able to eat and catch up on my sleep.

Schwerin

After exhausting my host, I travelled alone to Schwerin. Schwerin is a popular local tourist destination. It has castles, gardens, markets, and a beautiful old city. When I arrived, the first thing I did was go to the tourist information desk. I told the person there that I only had a few hours. She was very disappointed and said that that is not enough time. I said that I had the make the most of the €9 ticket, but that I plan to return to nice places. She then gave me a map and told me what she recommends based on my interests. She also suggested that I go on an Instagram tour. Basically, some Instagramers went to the city, and took selfies of themselves in front of famous places, possibly with the tongue out Instagram pose. I wasn’t really interested in that, but if you want to do a virtual tour of the city, and see pictures partly obstructed by someone’s tongue, you can find that on Instagram.

The view there was great and I think the best way of describing it is though some pictures, so enjoy. One thing is for sure, the person at the tourist information was right, a few hours is not enough to fully enjoy the city.

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Hamburg

While being the second largest city in Germany, I never visited it before. So I got on the next train and travelled to Hamburg. During the train ride I tried to figure out what to do there. As per a certain website, it looked like there was a place to get Kosher lunch. I then decided that I wanted to fulfil one of my life goals, to eat a Hamburger in Hamburg. However, upon arriving I realised that it was a Jewish school, and they can cater Kosher events, but they don’t offer meals to tourists.

As I had done before, I got off at the main station and headed to the tourist information center. In the main station I saw this painting:

Since I had yet to discover that the Jewish school doesn’t offer Kosher Hamburgers in Hamburg, I headed in that direction. On the was there I passed by the Hamburg University campus. It was a very nice campus with parks and historic buildings. Hamburg reminded me a lot of Munich and less so of Berlin. However, it was much more of a car friendly city than the others. Luckily I was able to avoid the roads for the most part by navigating my way through parks.

After being disappointed by the Jewish school I walked to the Kosher section in the nearby store. I was similarly disappointed by that, so I just made and ate some peanut butter and honey sandwiched (I have to use up all of the East German honey I bought) and I got some fruits to eat as well.

The next item on my list was to take the public transportation ferry. Since I had the €9 ticket, this was at no cost to me. As I someone suspected, there were a lot of tourists, but I guess I came at peak season, since it looked like everyone was a tourist. Although, I can’t blame them when the ferry looks like this:

After the trip around the river I got on the train back to Berlin.

Conclusion

I hope to start next week with Tag der offenen Tür (I’ll explain more about that next time) and then head to Ecotopia.

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