June is busted up all over.

It's summer in the city, and the construction drills are out. There's various work being done on lots of busy streets, and especially on rail lines. Two of the quickest routes from my apartment to the city center - one with the U-Bahn and one with the street tram - have at least part of their routes replaced by buses, so I see a lot of sour-faced commuters packed into buses in the neighborhood just to the south of mine.

Luckily, since Berlin has a really good transit network, I have a third train option - walking a few blocks and taking the S-Bahn. Over the weekend, though, that too was only working sporatically, with southbound passengers having to get off and switch trains at least twice. This situation caused some consternation among the citizenry. At the station where we had to switch for the second time, I was standing on the platform and waiting for the next train when I saw two tiny old women scolding the transit representative. Actually, what they were doing was probably beyond scolding; they were shaking their canes in the air and shouting about the "scheisse BVG [the city trasit authority]." The representative was taking it pretty calmly, as you probably learn to do when your job requires you to wear a uniform topped by a red beret.