Hauptbahnhof. It has to be my favorite German word.
Feeling adventurous, I decided to fly directly to Munich and check out the city before going to Bonn for an appointment. This meant a five hour train ride via the ICE, the express service which gets up to a thrilling 157 mph between Frankfurt and Cologne (the speed staved off the increasing jet lag and my need to nod off).
There are two places I check out in every town: the market, and the train station. Like so many German post-war stations, it was built in cheaply, quickly, in the International style. Supposedly it incorporates portions of the old 19th century station, but the only glimpse I saw of this was some glazed tile in a stairway leading to the basement a la Penn Station (see my posts on NYC Penn Station here and here). What I did notice was the good old rich railroad station atmosphere that we miss in so many American stations. A glassed in food hall offered counter service a la Fred Harvey and Harvey Houses (see my post here). A full restaurant sat in a vaulted space at the end of the corridor (perhaps an old portion of the station?). And there were old school lockers to stow your luggage while you saw the town.
Here’s a few visuals from my time at Munchen Hbf.
Munich train shed, waiting for the ICE to come in on Track 23. RL Fifield, 2012.
No, I don’t think so. RL Fifield, 2012
The bland front of the Munich Hbf today, like so many post-war stations. They say they are going to renovate… RL Fifield 2012.
Nice photo of the original hauptbahnhof in its original glory. Sadly, few photos remain of the original sheds torn down in ’49. I first visited the station enroute from Frankfurt to Garmisch when my father took our family as a combination bus.trip/family vacation. I’ll never forget the vast open area where the trains stopped. Sad. Do you know where I can find more on the web? Thanks
Thanks for your message – I’m sad to say I don’t know a central source for more information. I took this trip in winter 2012 and I probably scared up a few facts through a basic Google search to supplement my own musings and travel experiences. I have been enjoying rrpicturearchive.net, but I believe that site is primarily if not all American. If anyone creates large online visual collections of photos, it’s rail fans. When was your original trip? I love German train stations (well, all train stations – except NY Penn 😀 )
Becky, my apologies for not getting back sooner. Sometimes I just “roll through the bahnhof” and forget to have the brakes applied. I’ve only stopped in Munich once and that was in the mid fifties as my family was enroute to the Armed Forces Rec Ctr in Garmisch. My dad who was stationed in Casablanca at the time took my mom and their three young boys up to accompany him on a bus. trip to Wiesbaden, where we were stationed a decade later. I’ll never forget the vast expanse of the station from the southerly side over to the sub-station on Arnulf Str. and can still see the old brick side wall left standing. Must’ve been a beautifully huge station similar to Frankfurt’s and Leipzig’s, but it was a lot more ornate. I believe the old brick front facade was still standing but shortly afterwards, the city’s fathers “went modern” and replaced it with a very East German-like structure, albeit much cleaner. We went from Frankfurt which still amazes me with its huge sheds to Munich on a Hentzel diesel train (very streamlined) that was very sleek even for the mid fifties. It was owned by the Army and operated by the Germans. Given what we did to our trains, very smart decision! We later switched to a smaller electric locomotive-pulled train consisting of what I was told to be those old short n’ squat “thunder cars” built during the Third Reich or shortly afterwards. I’m 64 now and hardly naive, but I’ll be damned before anybody convinces me the Americans can’t rebuild their railroads and stations and put class back into their system. The worst, very worst, stations I’ve seen in my life are the ones the East Germans let go to seed after WWII and Boston’s North/South stations and Springfield, MA’s former NYC that I took from Dayton before moving to Germany in the fall of ’62. You can imagine my shock to find Wiesbaden’s relatively medium sized glass-shedded station in full operation, clean as a whistle and bristling with pride . . . less than 20 years after we beat Germany. At home, we only beat ourselves by tax breaks for the lazy and indolent rich welfarites who allowed our once proud passenger systems to rot. Again, sorry for my delay.
Hi Steve – Nice to hear from you! I haven’t been so active on the blog since my son was born and I started my own business, but I love to hear from readers. And I agree with you – why should I have to make a private purchase of an automobile in order to use highways and bridges I build through my tax dollars? I’m a Gen X-er, but the Millennial generation, for all the things they are or aren’t, have been shown to have a greater interest and desire for mass transit options, including rail. I love writing on the train. I think as a country we are squandering our energy and attention and personal funds on commuting by car. So I’m with you – we can do it again. It sucks that we let ourselves be duped by the Streetcar scandal. That we let our interurbans go. That we let things like cheap overnight accommodations in Slumbercoaches (just learned about these! like on the B&O) go. People would adore traveling that way again. I’ve been in Springfield’s Amtrash box of a station – horror. I was going to wait there for the Lake Shore Limited to Worcester, but it was 5 hours away. I sold my remaining Amtrak portion and walked down the street to the Greyhound bus. I checked into my hotel, went to dinner, came back and then heard my original train coming in. Some exciting things are going on in the NE at least. The 2nd track between New Haven and Springfield, and the renovation of Springfield Station, even though they took down the freight building for a new bus station. Place matters. Good to hear from you.