When I arrived on Rügen, one of the first places that I went to was the island’s capital, Bergen.

Bergen auf Rügen somehow felt familiar, even though I had never been there before.  It reminded me of other places that I had visited on the North Sea coast, even though it is actually located some way inland.  I think this was a mixture of the architecture and the layout of the town, of maybe it is something that many towns along the coast have in common.

The market square and a car park is located at the centre of the town, although – perhaps confusingly – the signs to the free car park called “Zentrum” actually take you in a different direction.  From that car park it is a 10 minute walk to market square along a tree-covered road.

The market square

Once there, the most noticeable building is the Benedix House, named after the family that used to live there, it is considered to be the oldest residential house on the island of Rügen and was apparently built in 1538.  It currently houses the tourist information office. (more…)

For the past few years the stations along the U3 line from Frankfurt to Oberursel have one-by-one been re-built.

The main reasons for this have been modernisation.  The station at the end of the line had been just a provisional platform due to the line being shortened, and new signalling and information displays were installed.

Another was to add more capacity to the system, as many of the older stations had a maximum length of 50m, which equates to four carriages.  Now all platforms are 75m long for the six-carriage trains that run on weekdays.

But one of the most important reasons in my opinion was to make all of the stations “barrierefrei”, ie. to make the platform the same height as the floor of the train. (more…)

A big thank you to whoever stuck this note onto our local ticket machine yesterday, and saving me a repeat of my previous experience!

Scheineinzug defekt