10 Types of Berliner You’ll Meet On The U-Bahn

We’re travelling at the moment, so as promised, here’s your guide to some of the major fauna infesting Berlin’s public transport in this week’s special Killer List! Enjoy!

---

1. The Zehlendorfers

Occurrence: Late evening/Early night.

Friends from their university days are visiting Berlin. This blast from the past has made them frisky, so they decide to leave the car at home and “slum” it to a show (perhaps at the Wintergarten, or the Friedrichstadtpalast). Now they are on their way back home.

In their fifties, Herr Zehlendorf is still tall, but needs a slightly bigger belt. Frau Zehlendorf has let her long hair go grey.

They appear relaxed as they sit beside each other holding hands, but Frau Zehlendorf sits closer to her husband than usual and Herr Zehlendorf is sitting very straight, despite the discomfort to his spine after having sat for so long already.

Careful to avoid catching anyone’s eye, they radiate alertness as they count the remaining stops until they are safely back home.

2. The Mohawk from Madrid.

Occurrence: Irregular/Any time

A lot of Spanish people live in Berlin, the most colourful type of which is the Spanish punk.

It’s easy to see why they like Berlin, where their appearance (mohawks, piercings, facial tattoos) blends in perfectly with Berlin’s “original” punks who haven’t changed (except for getting older, and, perhaps, their t-shirts) since their first visit to Kreuzberg’s SO36 in 1978.

3. The Sweet Homeless Man.

Occurrence: Constant/Mornings to late evenings

Begging and busking are not allowed on the trains of Berlin’s U-Bahn, but the rule is seldom enforced (see also no. 10. The Real Musician), and a steady stream of hopefuls travel up and down most lines every day.

The Sweet Homeless Man has been a fixture on the U8 for years, accompanied by a pungently sweet smell as he staggers through the moving carriage on crutches. One foot is encased in a massive grimy cast.

The musky smell is thicker and sweeter than honey and causes noses to wrinkle involuntarily, but, after all, it can only be a richly sweaty sock, and one day the cast will come off and he can wash it.

Until one day he reveals that the smell comes from the gangrene eating his toes, and for years passengers have therefore been inhaling the particles of his rotting feet.

4. Mister Berlin.

Occurrence: Constant/Any time

Mister Berlin (not Herr Berlin, not Mr Berlin) views everything and everyone on the U-Bahn with a look of tolerant disdain, which stems from the fact that he was born in Berlin. The U-Bahn is therefore his by birthright and it amuses him to let others use it.

Anyone foolish enough to engage the red-faced and leisure-weared Mister Berlin in conversation will discover that his voice has one setting: loud.

He offers his opinions freely, though only passengers skilled in cutting through the thick vegetation of Berlin’s buzz saw accent will understand their meaning.

5. Schulietta Mädchen.

Occurrence: Irregular/Early mornings

Morning commutes in Berlin are always at risk of being interrupted by marauding packs of ten-year-olds on a school outing. U-Bahn carriages, which were previously full of the strained silence of people strenuously ignoring each other, suddenly morph into noisy fried food-smelling commuter cages.

Berliners rarely like children (until they grow old enough to hold a useful picket at demonstrations), but nobody has told the children this.

In their happy ignorance, they kick other passengers’ knees as they jump up and down, or swap seats with each other.They pick their noses or block the doors with psychedelically coloured backpacks more suitable for the Love Parade.

But as bad as they are, these are normal children.

Then Schulietta sits down.

Alone among her fellows, she is quiet. She sits properly in her seat and does not require the teacher to keep explaining why Paul is wearing a green jacket, when he usually wears a blue one.

(Paul is wearing a green jacket because he lost his blue one at the museum, although he didn’t tell anyone at the time. He simply took a blue one, which he found. When the teacher asked, he confessed to not being able to remember what colour jacket he had put on that morning until they made it onto the train, at which point his classmates’ questions reminded him.)

While everyone else is staring and pointing at Paul and his new green jacket, Schulietta is only interested in you.

For the distance of five solid stops, she stares at you without blinking, then starts turning her head slowly to the window, but without releasing your blushing face from her gaze, hoping you will be tricked into acknowledging her.

Her stare gives you a headache on the top of your head as you attempt to continue reading. The need to move your head from under it, together with the reasonable conviction that surely her eyes can’t be as big as they feel, are almost too much to resist.

She smells of chewing gum, unless it’s her shampoo, and the synthetic smell is creeping up your nostrils, pushing the headache down into your back teeth.

What is wrong with your face, that she keeps staring at it like this? Did you cut yourself while shaving? Perhaps you sliced right through your jugular and are dead.

After several stops, you wonder if Schulietta is dead. Perhaps the school’s classroom was built on an old grave Prussian grave?

Perhaps the green jacket belonged to Schulietta, and Paul killed her to get it.

None of the other children pay her any attention, and your attempts to catch the teacher’s eye have earned you nothing more than suspicious glares.

Just don’t look at her, you tell yourself. Don’t look or she’ll bore through your eyes and dig into your brain.

You clench your fists hard enough to draw blood from your palms as the force of her black hole stare presses on your scalp.

You want nothing more than to get off the train, but somehow know that if you leave before the class does, then she’ll belong to you.

6. Herr Wurst.

Occurrence: Rare/Afternoons

You continue reading your book as the seat across the aisle from you is taken. It is Herr Wurst, but you do not yet realise this.

Out of the corner of your eye, you noticed bobbed red hair and a short leather skirt, with a grey face and a chunky woollen yellow sweater between them.

Ah, you think. A woman has sat down opposite me. Fine.

As soon as the train starts moving, the person spreads their legs.

Their skirt is short, and they are sitting opposite you, and your eye is drawn inexorably to some incongruous detail.

Turning the page of your book—and knowing full well you shouldn’t—you risk the tiniest glance. In that infinitesimal moment, Frau Wurst turns into Herr Wurst, as that most telltale detail has slipped out from behind Herr Wurst’s panties to wink rakishly at you with its good eye.

7. Frau Alt-Schmidt.

Occurrence: Constant/Early morning to mid-evening.

In fact, you will most likely not see Frau Alt-Schmidt, as she has discovered a way to make herself invisible while in transit.

On occasion, she can be spotted at the exit to the U-Bahn, making her slow and painful progress up the stairs to the exit, at which point you remember she exists.

8. Alan Party-Ridge.

Occurrence: Regular/Late evenings

Alan is English, here to party, and doesn’t care who knows it.

Hey, he didn’t lose a war!

Used to the UK’s licencing hours, he’s conspicuously nursing that first beer on his way to the awful club he’s chosen for the night.

What makes him most conspicuous, however, is how ridiculously underdressed he is. Even in the middle of winter, he won’t put on a jacket in case it creases his favourite Top Shop shirt.

9. The Lonely Goth.

Occurrence: Irregular/Night time.

Standing in the corner furthest away from Alan is the carriage’s only goth.

Painfully introverted, the lonely goth has found the least judgmental piece of panelling in the entire carriage and is trying not to stare too hard at it, in case it starts staring back.

The intensity of the goth’s self-consciousness snags everyone’s attention, most of whom are wondering if the goth is truly unaware that black just isn’t his colour, and if there’s a good reason why his hair has to be so greasy and limp.

But nobody will tell this to the goth, who—like the vampires he admires—cannot look in mirrors and it is only the thought that he will soon be back in a pitch-black club, or bedroom, that is keeping him going.

10. The Real Musician.

Occurrence: Daily/All day.

A species of busker who wants you to know they are not in it for the money.

They do this by playing an entire song (bloody “Hallelujah” with an extra helping of yearning, if you’re really unlucky) rather than only playing until the next stop, despite the fact that everyone knows buskers are paid to go away, and perfectly good, proper music is being wasted on dozens of headphones while The Real Musician wrings every bit of juice out of each Hallelujah.

(If you are in this situation, just remember that it only lasts four minutes—or six for the “full Buckley.” It only feels like forever.)