Just in time for the city to be flooded by rampaging World Cup football fans, Berlin is about to open a very large and shiny mega train station, planted squarely in the former no-man’s land between east and west. The new Berlin Hauptbahnhof will be Europe’s largest, with passenger traffic topping 300,000 a day, and replaces regional stations throughout the city as the main rail entry point. Of course, this means that the wild-West days of Inter-city train arrivals at Zoo Station are firmly a thing of the past (sorry, U2). According to a piece from the Observer, the Hauptbahnof is just one more sign of the happy, 21st-century Germany that’s emerging under the direction of new Chancellor Angela Merkel, even though it’s been in the works for 14 years. Now if they could just get down to building that international airport.
Elsewhere:
– “Germans pine over Zoo Station” (Christian Science Monitor)
– “Berlin Hauptbanhof” (Wikipedia)
– “Berlin International Airport Gets the Green Light” (Deutsche Welle)
Posted on May 16, 2006 11:25 AM by kristin
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