Notes ➤
My mom is visiting from Canada for the second time. On her last visit she got a taste of Berlin. Now she gets a taste of Europe.
It’s fascinating to watch an uninitiated person navigate the world. I got to watch how the way we design our systems fails people.
A fractal of systems
For my mom, the struggle started at the airport. In order to get from the airport to Berlin, she had to figure out…
- Where the trains are
- Which ticket to buy
- Where the ticket machines are
- Which ticket to buy
- What tariff zones are
- Which trains she can use with a regular ticket
- How to use her Canadian credit card, which required an SMS activation code
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How to get to my apartment
- How German addresses are formatted
- Why Berlin has multiple streets with the same name
- How German addresses are formatted
-
Potsdamer Platz is a train station, and Potsdam is a city
- Pasewalker Straße (my street) is not the same as (the city of) Pasewalk.
She confused train names, line directions and station names. I can’t blame her. Which ticket to buy? What’s a tariff zone? Where do I stamp my ticket? What’s the difference between the U-Bahn, the S-Bahn, and RB/IC/ICE trains? Why do so many stations have similar names? How do you even pronounce these names?
After a over decade in Germany, navigating those systems has become second nature, but they make zero sense to a weary newcomer. Even when they function as expected, without detours and outages, they are completely illegible.
The vibe of things
There was also a different kind of wisdom honed by years of travelling:
- How much trip planning is necessary
- How much downtime is necessary to enjoy a trip