No Planes, Trains, or (for us) Automobiles

This is the winter of our discontent

Today’s newsletter was supposed to be about Berlin’s plan to convert the former Tegel airport to a landscape park - not to be confused with Tempelhofer Feld, the large city park on the site of the former Tempelhof Airport (and that also starts with a ‘T’).

But that is a story for another day.

This morning, the German train driver’s union, GDL, announced yet another strike of Deutsche Bahn, starting tomorrow morning at 2 a.m. continuing until Wednesday at the same time. (Is this Round 5 or Round 6? I’ve lost count.)

This comes just three days after their last strike, which ended this past Friday.

This affects us for two reasons: Deutsche Bahn operates the Berlin S-Bahn. And, it controls most of the regional and long-distance rail traffic in Germany.

And last week’s strike was preceded the week before by a strike of local transit companies, including the BVG, by their drivers’ union, Verdi. I wrote about the transit strikes previously here - but that was before we even had the first BVG stri…