{"id":1734,"date":"2011-02-26T11:41:36","date_gmt":"2011-02-26T19:41:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.ups.edu\/studyingabroad\/?p=1734"},"modified":"2011-02-26T11:41:36","modified_gmt":"2011-02-26T19:41:36","slug":"attempting-the-seemingly-impossible","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/studyingabroad\/2011\/02\/26\/attempting-the-seemingly-impossible\/","title":{"rendered":"Attempting the Seemingly Impossible"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The new U-bahn station at Brandenburger Tor<\/em> on Line U55.<\/p>\n

So…a friend of mine, D, proposed this crazy idea at the beginning of the year. He wanted to ride all of the U- and S-bahn lines in Berlin. He had wanted to do this in Boston when he was an undergrad there, but didn’t get around to it. The next best thing? Berlin.<\/p>\n

The only problem is that there are 305 stops altogether. Yikes…how do we conquer that? There were two others involved whose aliases are L and V (V’s name starts with an “I” but after re-reading this post, a friend and I realized it was just too confusing). The four of us set a date and decided to plan our mode of attack the evening before.<\/p>\n

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V, D and me in front of the Olympic Stadium built for the 1936 Olympics. Olympiastadion<\/em> is the western end station of the U2.<\/p>\n

The planning consisted of figuring out which connections were most efficient based on the time tables (frequency of trains coming to specific stops). D had memorized the entire U- and S-bahn system (as in all the stops and which respective lines they were on) in preparation for our crazy adventure. We set a time limit: 24 hours. My requests? Bathroom breaks and snacks. The others readily agreed.<\/p>\n

We all met at Alexanderplatz<\/em> at 6:11 AM on a Saturday morning (I know, I know…we’re ridiculous). We took the 6:21 U5 train to its other end station, H\u00f6now. We all had our own reservations about riding the entire U- and S-bahn network with three other people for the entire day. Would we tire of each other? Surprisingly enough, we held various conversations the entire day and had a wonderful time together.<\/p>\n

Long story short: We did not manage to conquer the entire network. However, we’ve proven that it CAN be done. We unfortunately missed 6 S-bahn lines. We came to the conclusion that if we were to attempt it again, we would take on the S-bahn lines before the U-bahn lines as the S-bahn lines run infrequently after a certain time.<\/p>\n

So, how many stops did we, in fact, conquer? V left early due to feeling ill three-quarters of the way through, and D and I parted ways with L late into the night. D labeled all the stops we were at and in which order. He came up with this number for him and me: 246. That’s right. D and I conquered 246 stops out of 305 in a 22-and-a-half-hour period.<\/p>\n

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“Jill I want”. (or “I want Jill”. It rhymes in German.)\u00a0 The others found this on a random bench at the end station, Rathaus Spandau<\/em>, on the U7 line.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The new U-bahn station at Brandenburger Tor on Line U55. So…a friend of mine, D, proposed this crazy idea at the beginning of the year. He wanted to ride all of the U- and S-bahn lines in Berlin. He had … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":71,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[76,200],"class_list":["post-1734","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fall-2010-spring-2011-jill-nguyen-10-fulbright-to-germany","tag-a-real-adventure","tag-public-transportation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/studyingabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1734","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/studyingabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/studyingabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/studyingabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/71"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/studyingabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1734"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/studyingabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1734\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/studyingabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1734"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/studyingabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1734"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/studyingabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1734"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}