Strike!

Berlin has 3 major modes of public transportation: buses, the U-Bahn (subway), and the S-Bahn (street train). Since August or so, the S-Bahn has been trying to gain a completely new contract, and did so by asking for a 30-something% raise, which they knew they wouldn't get but thought it would force people to draft a new one. So there were many days over many weeks when it wasn't running. And other than having all of the buses and U-Bahns delayed because of traffic overload (Berlin is a city of 3.5 million), it didn't matter to me much personally that this was happening. Although, many people just don't ever use their cars because it's easier to take public transportation or because of the environment (they actually care about that over here :-P). So having this traffic-insanity just causes a lot of accidents.

However. Today both the bus and the U-Bahn workers decided to also go on strike. And I rely almost entirely on their services. The S-Bahn is running, but it's a 20 minute walk to the nearest station, and even then it doesn't get me anywhere close to the church office.

The amazing thing in all of this is that, while it makes life substantially more difficult for the vast majority of Berliners, no one seems incredibly upset about it. The general opinion is that this is something that the transportation workers need to fight for, and so they will fight with them. They will drive their cars for a while or find alternate routes to work or some such thing. This is great; it shows solidarity, pressing for workers' rights and fair wages, which theoretically helps the economy (and Berlin, as a city, is completely bankrupt), etc., etc. But it's hard to be excited about that when, in an effort to help their work situation, I can't even get to mine. Well, I can. I just have to ride my bike. And riding a bike in Berlin is just a whole other story for a whole other time...