Same Time Train

Developed as part of Mammalian Droppings in collaboration with Humboldt Forum and Junges Tanzhaus Berlin, Same Time Train is a guided tour of a part of Berlin, but not the kind of tour you’d expect. There are no monuments, no historic landmarks, no famous facades. Instead, this tour takes you to completely ordinary places and things whose beauty is hidden or underappreciated, and tries to share that beauty with you.

The project grows out of two seeds. The first is a conversation with a young man named Paolo in Milan, a poet who takes inspiration from people he sees on the train, watching strangers, noticing details, finding something worth writing about everyday. The second is the figure of a young person who rides Berlin’s trains without a fixed destination, drifting through the city and really looking: at the ordinary, the overlooked, the accidentally beautiful.

Same Time Train combines these impulses into an experience. A small group boards public transit and is guided through a series of stops, each one chosen not for what’s remarkable about it, but for what’s quietly, easily missed about it. The tour is an invitation to slow down, to pay attention, and to find beauty in places no one thought to look.