Berlin’s new Hauptbahnhof

When Berlin’s new Hauptbahnhof (Hbf, or main train station) was inaugurated on May 26 this year with a free public party, eardrum-splitting music, a hip stage show, a choreographed light show and an open house (read: station) until 3 a.m., the crowd packed itself so tightly that it took two hours for ambulances to make their way through the multitude.

On May 27, free regional trains shuttled every 20 minutes along a 5.5-mile travel corridor on new surface rails and through the new 2-mile-long tunnel below the Federal Chancellor’s Office, the Tiergarten Park and Potsdamer Platz to the four new train stations: Gesundbrunnen, Hbf, Potsdamer Platz and Siidkreuz, with parties in every station.

The tunnel reduces travel times as much as 40 minutes on major southbound routes leading to Munich via Leipzig and Prague via Dresden.

While the tunnel was being built, engineers moved a 660-foot stretch of the Spree River 230 feet north because the riverbed is only three feet above the new tunnel, making the tunnel impossible to dig from below. The station required 650,000 cubic yards of concrete and 85,000 tons of reinforcing steel and provides employment for 800 personnel in shops, pubs and restaurants on three levels.

New timetable

When trains began running according to the new timetable on May 28, Hauptbahnhof became the largest train junction in Europe. Daily, 300,000 travelers ride 54 escalators to platforms 50 feet below ground on the north-south traffic route,

Platforms rising 30 feet over the street carry mainline, regional and S-Bahn (rapid transit) trains in the renovated east-west direction. You can change there between 1,600 InterCity trains, Regional trains and S-Bahnen.

Built over the last 10 years in the geographical center of the city at a cost of €700 million ($890 million), the new Hbf is the key to GermanRail’s (DB’s) improved train service into and out of Berlin on both long-distance and regional lines, and it was the last major effort of the German Reunification Program combining West and East Germanys.

After most rail service shifted to the new Hauptbahnhof, DB reorganized services through Berlin’s other stations. InterCity trains now call at only Hauptbahnhof, Spandau and Ost train stations. Zoo train station, the traditional terminus of all train traffic from the West, has been relegated to a regional train station together with Alexanderplatz and Friedrichstrasse stations. These three regional stations are connected to Hauptbahnhof by short Regional-train and S-Bahn trips. Berlin Lichtenburg Station continues to be used for night train services into East Europe.

On Sept. 9, 1998, the first sod was cut on the site of the new station. Mainline trains from the Ruhr and regional east-west trains began rolling beneath the 2002, soaring 1,050-foot glass roof (fitted with solar cells yielding 160,000 kilowatt-hours per year) over the station’s new tracks on June 21, 2002. S-Bahn trains began calling there on July 4. 2002. New exits lead to the new Chancellor’s offices and Invalidenstrasse.

New stations

It is hard to imagine that far below DaimlerChrysler’s highrise structures, the Potsdamer Platz Train Station, completed in 2001, now rushes passengers on three levels. Entry is at street level through two simple iron-and-glass pavilions. At the same time the Hauptbahnhof opened for north-south train traffic, underground Potsdamer Platz station began service in the new city center.

In the south of Berlin, midway between Schoneberg and Tempelhof districts, the new Sudkreuz Station opened its new Ringbahnhalle (“ring railroad hall”) on April 4, 2005. This was the precursor of the inauguration of Berlin’s second-largest mainline-, regional- and S-Bahn train station. The glass net structure of the major railroad hall contrasts with the stacked arch motif of multistory car parking buildings. Two small towers above the access ramps mark the railroad station’s forecourt.

The train traffic of Sudkruez Station meshes with private vehicular traffic creating a kind of drive-in train station. Some 200,000 travelers daily use the South Gate train station to transfer between the important Ring S-Bahn Line and the new north-south line emerging from Hauptbahnhof and Potsdamer Platz train stations.

Life after the World (soccer) Cup

• Liebermann Villa — A significant highlight of Berlin’s 2006 cultural calendar was the reopening on April 30 of the simple summerhouse and gardens of painter Max Liebermann’s Villa am Grossen Wannsee (Colomierstr. 3; phone +49 [0] 30-80 58 38 30 or visit www.max-liebermann.de). Entry costs €6 (near $8), and it is open 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Wednesday-Monday and till 8 p.m. on Thursday, except in November-March when it is open Wednesday-Monday to 5 p.m.

Take bus No. 114 from Wannsee S-Bahn station to Colomeierstr. stop (direction Krankenhaus Heckeshom), where you find tranquility. Songbirds are cheeping, swallows are swooping, and freshly painted white benches line a long green stretch to the blue, lapping Wannsee (lake). You can feel the slender white birch trees growing. It is impossible to believe you are sitting within a burgeoning metropolis.

The villa served as the studio and residence of the foremost German impressionist and honorary citizen of the city of Berlin from 1910 until his death in 1935. The gardens, which he designed, inspired Liebermann in more than 200 paintings.

• House of the Wannsee Conference — On the other hand, only the second bus stop farther and a startling change of pace, like light into darkness, you see through neatly trimmed hedges the ominous Haus der Wannsee-Konferenz (Am Grossen Wannsee 56-58; phone +49 [0] 80 50 01-0, www.ghwk.de). It’s open daily 10-6, and admission is free.

On Jan. 20, 1992, officials and rabbis first opened Germany’s first permanent memorial to the six million Jews who were put to death. Newly reorganized and expanded, the exhibition “The Wannsee Conference and the Genocide of European Jews” was reopened Jan. 20, 2006.

The museum houses photographs of mass graves and quotations describing the calculated roundups and systematic murders of the Final Solution. Titled in English, the photos are eloquent and powerfully arranged, but the texts are in German only. English-language brochures are free.

Jews were persecuted from the start of the Hitler government in 1933. Nazi leaders repeated for more than a decade their intention to annihilate the Jews, but the bureaucratic decisions establishing the deportation systems and organizing the death camps were not approved until the Wannsee meeting on Jan. 20, 1942. It was a 90-minute session in the dining room that concluded with pleasant chatter and a round of cognac.

In 1947, the minutes of the conference, recorded by SS Commander Adolf Eichmann, were found in the files of the German Foreign Office and now are available for viewing.

• Bode Museum — Extensive renovations of the Bode Museum on Berlin’s Museum Island (www.smb.museum) are finally being completed in October 2006, and the eagerly awaited museum will once again open its doors with permanent exhibitions featuring Byzantine art, Germany’s largest sculpture exhibit, ancient coin collections and a children’s gallery.

Originally built 1897-1904, the neo-baroque museum was heavily damaged during WWII; it was reopened by the East German government but badly neglected. After reunification, renovations began in 1997 as part of the larger €150-million restoration of Museum Island, which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Many thanks

The German National Tourist Office (www.cometogermany.com) sponsored my trip to Berlin aboard Lufthansa and an ICE train from Düsseldorf. The Berlin Tourist Office (818/385-0631, www.berlin-tourist-information.com) arranged sightseeing and accommodation at the NH Berlin-Mitte Hotel (phone +49 [0] 30 20 376-0, www.nh-hotels.com), which is a business hotel within convenient walking distance of many of Berlin’s important attractions.