Berlin - Berlin's bus Line 100 is one of the great tourist bargains of Germany's capital: a half-hour ride on a double-decker bus that takes passengers past many of Berlin's chief landmarks and only costs small change.
The 100 is a regular city transport line, believed to be the first bus line to have reconnected the eastern and western parts of Berlin after German reunification in 1990.
Some hotels give guests a “WelcomeCard” for free that includes use of all public transport. If they don't, a ticket from the driver costing only 2.70 euros (about R40) takes you right through central Berlin.
The bus runs from Bahnhof Zoo, a main-line railway station in the western part of the city to the landmark Alexanderplatz square where a huge television tower rises up over the eastern part. And vice versa.
Lots of Berliners ride the route to work or the shops, but the yellow bus is also a magnet for tourists. As soon as the driver opens the doors of the bus, people cram their way forward, trying to be the first to the two winding stairways to the upper deck.
Then, quickly find a seat before the bus, already in motion, is passing the first landmark, the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church.
“The bus is always full,” says driver Auguste Ferber. Word has gotten around that for relatively little money one can see the same sights as on an expensive sightseeing bus-tour - but of course without any tour guide commenting on the sights.
You can tell which passengers on the upper level are tourists as they page through their maps and guide books. The more internet-savvy travellers are using their smartphones to read about the landmarks.
Even better is having a friend who lives in the city and who can point everything out - here, the Tiergarten park, there, the roundabout at the Victory Column, and then on past the Brandenburg Gate and down the tree-lined Unter den Linden boulevard toward Berlin's historic royal centre.
One such friend recently was Andra Lucentini, an Italian who works in Berlin. Normally, he says, he doesn't ride the 100 very often, but on this day he was showing visitors from Italy the sights of the German capital. The bus line is perfect for such a tour, he says.
Stefan Ostblom, a tourist from Sweden, is thrilled by just sitting back in the double-decker and taking in all the sights. Apparently he is not alone in this view. According to the Berlin transportation authority BVG, Line 100 carries around 15 000 passengers every day, a great portion of them tourists.
This makes the public transport bus a serious competitor for the private city sightseeing operators. Andreas Keuchel, business manager of Top Tour Sightseeing, charges that BVG, by operating along a main tourism route, is overstepping the bounds of its corporate purpose of simply transporting people.
Keuchel does not regard the 100 as a direct competitor, however, but rather regards it as complementing the overall experience for tourists to the city. “I think that anything that boosts the attractiveness of Berlin is good,” he says.
There is no question that Berlin is becoming more and more attractive to tourists. By official count, around 11.9 million people visited last year, and the chances that the growth trend will continue are not bad, if you ask Klaus Wiegmann, a visitor from Lower Saxony.
Sitting in the upper deck of the 100 and taking in the sights, he says delightedly: “Berlin is getting prettier and prettier all the time.”
DPA