Berlin Transit Questions
 

My hubby and I will be in Berlin this weekend, May 3 – 5, and I am a bit confused about transit passes. I can get a Welcome Card for 24 euro each for the 3 days, which provides unlimited travel through zones ABC. We will be doing a 4 hour city tour on the Sat afternoon and will be using transit. We can buy a ticket from our guide for about 2 euros each. On Sunday we are doing an all day tour to Sachsenhausen where we can again purchase a transit ticket from the guide for 2.60 euros each.

We normally don’t use a lot of transit in cities like Paris, Bruges, and Amsterdam and prefer to walk as much as possible. However, I have never been to Berlin and I have no idea how walkable it is. We are not museum people so the discounts for the Welcome Berlin card won’t do us much good.

Is it better to get one off tickets as we need it (keeping in mind we prefer to walk) or are the sights so spread out that we will find ourselves using transit quite a lot?

Thank you so much!!

We just spent five days in Berlin and we bought 7 day metro passes for zones AB (it worked out cheaper than buying individual day passes). It was something I debated but it was definitely the right choice because Berlin is very large and spread out and it just enabled us to go wherever we wanted without worrying about buying individual tickets etc. We are also big walkers and have visited Paris and Amsterdam without using transit at all but you'd be limiting yourself a lot in Berlin if you only relied on your feet. You can purchase day passes for 6.10 Euro (zones AB) or 6.50 (zones ABC) so this would be cheaper than the Welcome pass (we also weren't interested in any of the attractions offered with the Welcome pass).

Berlin is NOT Bruges, for certain, and is MUCH MUCH more spread out than perhaps what you've experienced in the past.

I would definitely go with the transit idea and then you get to try to figure out the subway map which is like a million twisted ribbons of colored spaghetti but WORTH THE EFFORT.

Thank you so much! We will definitely go with transit passes!!

Each time we've been we've bought one day travel cards each day - €5.80 each when we went last year - and got good use out of them. It's a big city and the sights are quite spread out, so we thought it was worth using the underground whenever possible so as not to get too tired.

2 days is not very long - there's lots to see in the centre, so I wouldn't do any day trips.

Link to my trip reports, in case they are useful - http://www.fodors.com/forums/threads...p;tid=34614269

hi jamikins,


i 2nd/third/fourth/ the transit pass route. you'll still get to walk a lot, but just in the places you want to explore, not in between.

one aspect that we liked is that some of the lines are very shallow -so instead of the long underground hikes that you get in london and paris, you just nip down one flight of stairs and there you are.

have a great trip,

regards, ann

jamikins, I bought the welcome card for my first visit to Berlin and it really was not worth it. The daily transit cards are fine - you can buy all 3 at one time, and just validate one at the beginning of each day (on the subway platform or a little box on the bus). They go from midnight to midnight, rather than being 24 hours from your validation, so if you have any partial days, plan accordingly.

You may need ABC for the Sachsenhausen day (I haven't checked). You will need ABC if you go to Potsdam, but that same transit card will work for the transit in Potsdam.

For the benefit of other visitors who are interested in the museums, the 3 day museum pass is a great value.

Berlin is huge, area-wise. I think I read somewhere that it is 5 times the area of Paris, but I have no idea what was actually being compared... I guess it depends what you will be doing/seeing, but transit is pretty much necessary to explore the riches of Berlin. Also, it's nice to just hop on the 100 or 200 bus to go from one end of Unter den Linden to the other. It may not help you (unless you see one for sale in Berlin) but the Red Map of Berlin makes the transportation system painless, at least for the most central parts. http://www.redmaps.com/

Sorry, just reread my own trip report & I misremembered. The first time we got 72 hour City Pass cards & didn't feel we got the most out of them. The second time we got 1 day travelcards which is what I'd do again.

You guys are awesome! Definitely sounds like day passes are the way to go! Super excited, its a city I've always wanted to go to!!! Will post back with a trip report next week!

Hope you have a great time - we love it !