U8 Subway – In A Berlin Minute (Week 24) from Luci Westphal on Vimeo.



This week brought a few bigger decisions – some still need to be made. One of the easier ones was to change the name of my weekly one-minute videos from “German New Yorker in Berlin” to “In A Berlin Minute”. It seemed helpful to make it apparent immediately that this is just a one-minute video – and that there’s a reason why I don’t go into all the details of a location or event that I filmed. 

The aspect that the observations come from a German New Yorker in Berlin probably don’t come into play in the videos so much anyway – that’s more part of the writing that goes along with it.

The title “In A Berlin Minute” derives from the expression “In A New York Minute”, which actually, according to the Urban dictionary, refers to “an instant. Or as Johnny Carson once said, it’s the interval between a Manhattan traffic light turning green and the guy behind you honking his horn. It appears to have originated in Texas around 1967. It is a reference to the frenzied and hectic pace of New Yorkers’ lives. A New Yorker does in an instant what a Texan would take a minute to do.” 

Of course, Germans are considered to be very accurate, which would mean a Berlin minute by contrast to the New York minute is exactly 60 seconds… like my weekly videos.

This week’s video gives you a quick glimpse into the U8 subway line and its rollercoaster-style twists and turns. In the 24 weeks I’ve been in Berlin, I’ve lived in 3 apartments – in three different districts – but all of them were on the U8 line. It was time I honored my favorite train. Now I just need to figure out if the next apartment is on the same train line or if I’m actually returning to New York before then. That’s the biggest decision left… 



U8 Subway – U-Bahn

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