Has anyone been on a ghost train station tour in Berlin? I have never been to Berlin, but I know this used to be a thing from listening to podcasts. I can’t seem to find a tour operator though after searching for awhile.
Can anyone tell me if this tour is still offered and recommend a good tour guide for this? Thank you!
I don't know about guided tours, but I was there about a year ago and went to that station. There are many informational boards with pictures and commentary in English. Between what was in the RS guidebook and the information posted in the station, I feel like I got a good sense of the history of the place. So if you are unable to find a guided tour, be sure to go check it out!!
As far as I'm aware for institutions, Stiftung Berliner Mauer (Berlin Wall Foundation) offers a guided tour only in German:
You can also visit the foundation's own exhibit inside the operating Nordbahnhof S-Bahn station, which is situated next to the foundation's memorial site at Bernauer Strasse.
Berlin Insider tours appears to cover ghost stations in their Cold War tour https://insidertour.com/tours/cold-war/ as does The Berlin Expert in similarly named tour https://www.theberlinexpert.com/#Berlin-Tours. I can only speak for the first outfit, I took a great orientation tour with them.
For some reason I didn’t see that you can go into the station alone, so thank you for that information!
I will reach out to Berlin Insider Tours though to see what they have available.
Thank you all!
I think you're getting overexcited - the "ghost stations" were U-Bahn and S-Bahn stations that were closed during the Berlin Wall era, as they were on lines that were mainly in West Berlin but briefly passed through East Berlin, so the trains would run through them without stopping. All of them were re-opened and renovated fairly soon after the Wall fell. So the tour will be about the history, but you won't be going anywhere that isn't accessible to the general public nowadays.
As Henry said, there is a historical exhibit in part of Nordbahnhof S-Bahn station. As I remember it's just some text panels on the walls, but it's interestingly in-depth and I think it's bilingual English and German.
I road the subways just before the wall went up and remember soldiers coming onto the trains and hauling people off just before it left the east zone and went into the west zones. It was fairly terrifying to watch; I particularly remember a little old lady with a chicken in her lap (to eat with feet sticking from top of bag) who was pulled off the train.
