For better or worse, living in a big city means being around a whole smorgasbord of humanity. Every subculture, style, and design has its adherents, and where better to see it than buses, trams, and subways?
The “Berlin Subway Creatures” Instagram account is dedicated to sharing the most interesting passengers on the city's public transport and not, unfortunately, found footage of actual underground creatures. So get comfortable as you look through, perhaps on your commute, and be sure to upvote your favorites.
More info: Instagram
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While “Berlin Subway Creatures” uses the very American term “subway,” Europeans might call this type of transportation a metro. Or, since the subjects of this list are from Berlin, it might be more proper to use the German term, U-Bahn. Since being opened in 1902, the Berlin U-Bahn runs trains to 175 stations across the city and its outskirts.
So it’s little wonder that you can really find a full cross-section of the city's demographics strewn across metro seats. In 2019, the U-Bahn helped transport 596 million passengers, although that number has actually dropped since the COVID-19 lockdowns of 2020. With remote work still going strong, fewer people need to travel every day.
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Since 2020, many of the trains in the Berlin U-Bahn are BVG Class IK models. With 72-80 seats and a capacity for over 200 people standing, you can practically see a cross-section of entire neighborhoods as you travel. Currently, this model services half of Berlin’s ten metro lines, with plans to expand it to others in the future.
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While most people-watching content focuses on fashion or mocking the people pictured (think “the people of Walmart”), “Berlin Subway Creatures” avoids these specific lines by covering all sorts of people. In general, out of boredom or genuine interest, many of us enjoy people-watching.
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After all, it can be a fun little game to try and see what stories you can concoct about random strangers, just based on their appearance and movement. But, if you have lived in a dense urban area long enough, you tend to already, in broad strokes, know the sort of people you will encounter in any given area.
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But on public transport, particularly a cross-city line, the sky's the limit. While the time of day does tend to determine what you might come across, it’s worth noting that in big cities, which Berlin absolutely qualifies as there are all sorts of happenings at every hour. As a result, the tedium of sitting on the subway for a few minutes a day can, instead, become a sort of people-watching lottery.
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Indeed, given the eccentricity of the outfits, one might be able to start theory-crafting not just details about the person’s life, but the event, party, or who knows what else they might be going to. Of course, there is a reasonable chance, given the realities of living in Berlin, that this is just the actual normal daywear of this particular person.
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