--- In BoundaryPoint@y..., "David Birch" <dbirch@c...> wrote:
> However the main reason why I've posted the map is to draw
attention
> to the strange bus route "E" from Wannsee to the motorway junction
at
> Drewitz. I've still got the West Berlin bus timetable from my 1977
> visit and I've uploaded a scan of the page here:
>
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/BoundaryPoint/files/etimetable.jpg
>
> Why did the bus terminate in the middle of nowhere? (Was it an
> interchange point for GDR buses to places like Potsdam?) And why
was
> the service more frequent at weekends?
It is not really the middle of nowhere. It is at the edge of the
Potsdam city quarter Am Stern. Anyway, I think that the main purpose
of letting a bus service end here was to give good connections to the
GDR public transport buses. The street that crosses the motorway at
junction Potsdam-Babelsberg (for this is the one we're talking about)
is an important one with buses going into Potsdam, and towards
Stahnsdorf.
Why the service was more frequent at weekends? Maybe because of West
Berlin daytrippers, but possibly also to give them the opportunity of
visiting the large cemeteries. This was always a problem in Cold War
Berlin: many people had relatives that were buried on cemeteries
outside of West Berlin. A big one is the Wilmersdorf Waldfriedhof,
combined with the Suedwestkirchhof der Berliner Synode, very near the
motorway exit (in fact, only the Wueste Mark lies in between). If you
look at the site I mailed earlier on, there was even a special
railway built to this cemetery, running from West Berlin (which was
subsequently put out of business by the East Germans, of course). I
wouldn't be surprised if line E was allowed only that much inside the
GDR to give connection to another (GDR) bus service, so that the
travelers would have to pay once more for a bus, but now to the East
Germans...
Peter S.