reflections from europe

I have two comments to make today.  

The first is pretty darn simple: I've added a few more images, my drawings, on the "projects" page of this website.  

Gare du Nord, ParisThe second is in response to a roundtable presentation/discussion at MPC, where I work as a "research assistant" (read "intern") twice a week.  Today's was about Berlin, namely the new, big, bold Hauptbanhof in the center of the city.  

I went to Berlin in the summer of 2006, nervous and anxious and excited about my first stint of solo travel, and I arrived at this train station early in the morning after an overnight train from Paris in a car full of snoring men.  I was too much a bundle of emotions and exhaustion to really look around, unfortunately, but the train station has come up in conversation many times since.  

The presentations today were a mixed bag - good stuff all around, but really I wished there was more time for everything, since three speakers (and intros before and questions afterwards) were all crammed into an hour-and-a-half lunch slot.  I came away with yet more reinforcement of the greatness that is European public transportation systems, their universality, ubiquity, simplicity, and technological innovation. It reminds me somewhat of the universal health care debate, or socialized education - why is it so hard for Americans to decide that health, education, and mobility should be accessible to everyone?  What is it that makes the European cultural values so different - that's as far as anyone got today, declaring that European transit is so far ahead of American transit systems because of different cultural values. That's all well and good, and certainly true, but how are the American systems ever going to improve, or be used and valued by more people, if we don't know why those European values are different.  Where did that precedent come from? An economic, functional necessity for good, universal public transit?  Or is it some underlying social value of community that we don't have in the US, where liberty and capitalism have won out over equality as the social values we hold most dear?  

Berlin Hauptbahnhof

Comments

[Katherine]

When I travelled to Japan this September I was so impressed by the great transportation systems. Everyone seems to have respect for the rules and each other. After you figure out how to adopt European values in America, please get on adopting the Japanese values too. ;)

Side note: I adore your drawings, photos, and musings! Finding your blog was a great way to start the day.