Shoutout to the confused tourist at the train station in Berlin

I was there last month and saw a guy staring at a huge digital map for a solid ten minutes. He finally turned to me and said, 'The lines are all the same color, but the names are in tiny gray text on a black background.' We both just laughed at how you needed a flashlight to read your own ticket. Has anyone else found a transit map that was more art than help?

2 comments

2 Comments

aaron_kim461mo ago

Honestly, take a picture of the map with your phone. Zoom in on the part you need. Tbh I did that in Tokyo because the station signs were a wall of tiny kanji. Another move is to just ask someone who looks local, they usually know the one weird line that actually gets you there. Ngl some of these maps feel like they were made to look cool in a design magazine, not to help people get home.

river_wright1mo ago

Remember getting lost in Rome because the tourist map had all these fancy drawings of ruins but the street names were in a font you needed a magnifying glass to read. Totally feel you @aaron_kim46, sometimes asking a person is the only way. I once spent twenty minutes circling a block because the "you are here" dot was on a picture of a statue, not the actual street grid. Design over function is a real problem.