Tram and City Bus

These transportations are the most common within each city. It’s so reliable which can make you don’t need a car for traveling within the city.

The only problem for me so far is that when I have to buy big things like a knock-down cabinet from IKEA. It’s not easy to bring those slices of wood in a bus or tram.

As a consequences of well infrastructure, the schedule of these transportations are 99,9% on time. Only rare occasion that they are late, like 1 in 1.000 chances. However, if they ever miss the time, most likely it’s because they come earlier than the schedule!

As a person who comes from a country where time is flexible, it’s a bit challenge for me to always come on time at the tram or bus stop. Most of the time, I’ll end up running for about 20 m to the stop as I see the tram or the bus already reach there. In this situation, usually the drivers will kindly waiting for me to get inside.

For driving quality, I find out not much different than bus drivers in Jakarta. Although these drivers don’t cross-cutting other cars as they have a specific line, but still they hit the gas and brake unsympathetically.

In Bremen, only these two types of transportations are provided. Other cities have City Train (S-Bahn) and Underground Train (U-Bahn), but Bremen doesn’t have it. So it’s easy for me to travel in Bremen as these two lines are not so complicated to follow. However, I might end up in a complicated situation if I have to travel within big city as I haven’t mastered that kind of transportation.

For the ticket, in Germany there’re what so called daily ticket, 2-days ticket and even monthly ticket. With these tickets, we can use all public transportation within the city in the given period. For me, having the monthly ticket is very useful. I can just jump in to a tram or buss without having to care about where to buy tickets or prepare small money for it.

Yeah I know, Indonesian must be start thinking to challenge the rule. How if we don’t have any ticket at all. If you’re lucky, well you can travel within the city without paying at all. My Portuguese friend has tried this. For about 1 month, he keeps traveling within the city for free!

However, if he gets busted, the fine isn’t cheap. Someone told me that the fine for free riding is € 40! It’s even more expensive than the monthly ticket which is € 30.50!!!

Ticket check is conducted randomly and the officers don’t wear any uniform. I have experiencing 2 times of ticket check. So it’s seems like a normal guy step into the tram but when the tram starts moving, he shows his badge and announces that he’s an officer who’ll do a ticket check. I never see anyone got busted, though :(

Semester Ticket

There’s a ticket called semester ticket for students. With this ticket, students can take any tram and bus freely within the city for the whole semester. Of course we have to pay it in advance, but it’s relatively cheap and you don’t have to be bothered in buying any tickets. And what makes it even better this ticket also applies for traveling using slow train to nearby cities! In this case, my semester ticket allows me to travel free to Hamburg and Hanover.