What is it with the lack of bus etiquette?

honestly i think part of it is that a lot of folks here grew up with the old east german "jeder für sich" mentality, especially on the outer lines. the S-Bahn ring is way worse than the U-Bahn in my experience, like on the S41 you'll see three young guys spread out over a four-seater while an Oma with a rollator just stands there. it's nuts.

what's worked for me is not even bothering with eye contact first. just walk up to the person sitting and say "Entschuldigung, können Sie bitte aufstehen?" in a calm but firm voice, no pointing at the elderly person, just direct. it catches them off guard because they expect you to be passive. and if they give you shit, just say "na dann ruf doch die BVG an" and walk away, not worth the energy.

also pro tip: sit in the front section near the driver on buses. that's the designated area for people with disabilities, and the driver actually makes announcements sometimes. feels like a tiny pocket of order in the chaos.

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The seat thing is genuinely infuriating, and I get why you were ready to swing. But I think part of it is that Berliners treat the BVG like a shared gym, not a social contract. People zone out hard with their headphones and phone, and the "I'll get up when I feel like it" attitude is basically a personality trait here.

A trick I've picked up: don't just stand up and point, make eye contact with the elderly person first and say "Bitte, setzen Sie sich" while gesturing. It forces the seat-stealer to see who it's for, and usually they'll slink off before you have to escalate. Still shouldn't be necessary, but it saves you the rage.

Also, the U-Bahn is worse than the tram or bus, in my experience. On the M10 or the 100, people are more tourists or older folks who actually chat, so they're a bit more aware. If you're on the U7 during rush hour, expect full on Lord of the Flies behavior.

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What you ran into is the classic Berlin double whammy: half the people here genuinely don't see the seat as anyone else's business, and the other half are too deep in their own bubble to notice anything beyond their phone screen. The person who sat down before the older person could get there wasn't being malicious, they just saw an empty seat and their brain went "mine now" with zero extra processing.

One thing that helps that nobody's mentioned yet: sit in the Bereich near the back door on buses, the one with the fold-up seats. It's right by the exit so you're more aware of who's getting on and off, and you can catch the elderly person's eye as they board instead of trying to flag them down from across the aisle. It also gives you a natural excuse to stand up early and just hover near the door, which makes it obvious you're vacating the seat without having to perform a whole ceremony.

And if you want to avoid the fight entirely, take the M29 or M48 instead of the U7. The bus routes that run through residential areas have a totally different vibe, way more people who actually look up and register their surroundings. The U7 is basically a washing machine of human indifference, I've seen people pretend to fall asleep the second an Oma boards.

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Worth noting that Berlin street names have official umlaut and ß rules that trip people up, so a sign showing "Strasse" versus "Straße" is not actually a spelling error, just an older transcription. Same with "ue" versus "ü" (e.g. "Kantstrasse" vs "Kantstraße"), both are considered valid renderings and you'll see the ß version on the blue Schilder and the ss version on older plaques or in databases that predate Unicode. If the difference you're seeing is between those two forms, there's nothing to fix and both are technically correct.

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if the signs u mean are the old enamel ones on the house facades those are often protected as Baudenkmal so nobody's allowed to correct them even if the spelling is outdated. the binding version is whatever is in the Berliner Strassenverzeichnis plus the entry in the Liegenschaftskataster, so if u tell me the street i can point u to the right Bezirksamt Mitte or Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf page. tbh the merged district thing is real but the facade signs are a separate story, theyre basically museum pieces at this point

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honestly thats super common in Charlottenburg, the district offices were merged from older Bezirke and nobody ever fixed all the Schilder. if its a real street you can check the official strassenverzeichnis on berlin.de, that list is what the Burgeramt actually goes by. which street is it? some of the Kaiserdamm / Kantstrasse signs are notorious for this.

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