Let's Ride ... The Wuppertal Schwebebahn 

Tom's been, Tim Traveller has been, DadRail has been ... yes! it was about time :-)

Einmal im leben.... .... oben Wuppertal schweben! @@geofftech2 (Sorry if my German isn't entirely grammatically correct)

That was my thought too!

Doing that would have been a case of 'climb it, count it, say it, sorted'

I was waiting for information about the car parks ;-)

That is so interesting. Really, no sarcasm. 👍

Sounds like a regional variant von "über den Jordan gehen" (to go over the Jordan) as slang for dying.

@@roerd I think it kind of has leaked into general colloquial German, at least I've heard several people use it before that definitely aren't from Wuppertal

@@leDespicableI'm neither, although my brother moved there and told the background story. However, we both knew that phrase already before, when we lived at our parents' about 150 km away from Wuppertal.

​@@leDespicableI've absolutely never heard it in my life, and I'm even from NRW 😂

It's brilliant using the tight river sections like this

I remember seeing the braiding machines through windows in Barmen from the Schwebebahn in 1973. I worked for an English braiding company at the time.

I have also noticed this phenomenom myself. While not from Wupeprtal, rather Franconia, I never was that impressed by being surrounded by 500m "mountains", having 800+ year old castles in every village, etc etc. but I can see why there are tourists coming here, many of them from America

I don’t think he would be the only person to misunderstand it and think it’s sort it rather than sorted (I mean the person misunderstanding I know it’s actually sorted)

I'd suggest "Kumma, samma, hamma." as in "Kumma da! Samma wat! Hamma jeklärt."

Or the post office mantra see it, squash it, sort it 😅

Dutch: Zie iets, Zeg iets, Opgelost

Another possible translation could be "Gesehen. Gesagt. Geklärt.". Of course this is just a translation that transfers the meaning, not the exact translation for the words in English.

Nitpicking here: I would translate to "glide" in the context but that is debatable of course. Thanks for reminding me on this advertisment slogan.

@@LasseGreiner hover or levitate through wuppertal. gliding is for wings without engine - like para gliders or sailplanes

@@bedri1 In airplane context yes, but gliding is a word outside that context too. Gliding can be powered, e.g. a gondola in Venice

I was recently in Bremen riding their trams (Strassenbahn) amd they have their very own Bremen pattern! I'm sure Geoff would love this detail too.

Too bad! You can ride the Schwebebahn using the same NRW day ticket that works in Cologne

@@icecranberry2148 whats so special about bremer straßenbahn?

@@erik_griswold or the same day ticket that works in düsseldorf, then its a vrr-ticket. cologne would be vrs (local transport cooperations)

@@michaelz.7140 But I thought the VRS (Köln/Bonn) and the VRR (Wuppertal and Düsseldorf) tickets are different?

uh, you should note that Wuppertal was the last city that lost it's tram ... before they stopped doing that, since there are still many left

@@enisra_bowman Yes and its increasing. For example west Berlin did not have trams anymore before unification and the tramlines from East Berlin were extended and former old tram lines are being resurected. Also several cities like Aachen regret getting rid of their tramsystem now.

Abolishing a perfectly working and useful tram network was one of the great losses due to car fetishism. They have regretted it.

​@@obelic71did any other East German City's have trams I know the Eastern block and socialist politics values public transport ie trams

​​@@enisra_bowmani hope its better now

Sadly there had been a tragic accident in 1999. A train collidet with a construction site, derailed and crashed into the river killing 5 and severely woundet another 47 people.

This is a quite interesting recollection, especially because it's held by a lot of people. Yes the Schwebebahn is very safe, but it has had incidents and accidents. Most notably a tragically fallen Train in 1999. But for some reason people seem to forget that happened, I've had professors tell me the same thing in lectures that you just did.

Well it wasnt really an accident, the elephant jumped out of the carriage during a pr stunt in the year 1950 into the (quite shallow) river because she panicked. She wasnt really injured tho, and still lived with the circus for another 39 years until 1989. However there has actually been ONE fatal accident with the Schwebebahn in 1999 with 5 casulties and 47 injured because a construction piece was left on the track which the first train of the day hit and then completely fell into the river. The only other probably notable incident happened in 2018 where a part of the electrified rail (which would be the “third rail“ on some conventional train/metro lines) fell down onto a stopped car on a bridge below and hit the rear. Luckily neither the driver of the car nor anyone else was hurt.

My mum, too, has been to Wuppertal.

Also there have been a couple of incidents where unfamiliar drivers or operators of cranes and cherry pickers on the street underneath the line didn't pay attention and struck moving trains with their equipment.

The word came to German and English from Latin, which had borrowed it from Greek.

I lived in Germany and Italy when I was young. It took me about a year to learn German. It took me two years to learn Italian. It took a lot longer to learn both languages in depth but Italian was definitely harder. Forty-odd years later I'm equally as fluent in both languages as I am in English, but I still feel more at home in German (even though my wife is Italian).

It's a very English thing to do, assuming it came from the English language and ignore the total mongrel of a language that English is itself, with all these borrowed words :)

Except for the three genders, the declined nouns, the conjugated verbs, the 'verb 2' rule, the adjectival agreements, the word order and rules for subclauses, the pushing together of verbs and conjunctions, and compound nouns....yes, they are very similar. Hammer's German grammar is a very thick book.

You could see the brief, well, pause on his face where he seemed to be considering explaining all that or just go "yeah sure lets go with that"

Austrian buses have "Kaffeepause" on the front when laying over. (Austrian buses have to be very wide to fit such displays on)

I'd say pause is originally French.

I know of Solingen from the scissor manufacturers - we ordered a pair of hairdressing scissors from them a few years ago.

I was here to comment the same.

Instantly thought about Tuffi too and asked myself if they told him the story 😂

​@@atroposmoira5285 I think the logo on the souvenir socks 1:20 might be elephant inspired. All in all I bet the story has not escaped Geoff's attention, but he wasn't going to repeat it on air because cliche. And guaranteed engagement. 😁

Same here, and in fact neither did Tim, which is even more surprising. Wikipedia article: Tuffi

this specific usage comes from French :)

@@JudgeHill nice :-)

And is there a bin bag blowing in the breeze.

I weep. Once upon a time in Tyne & Wear we had an English version of a Verkehrsverbund. Then along came Mrs Thatcher who thought buses were for losers, and privatised them, breaking the integration with the Metro and local mainline trains. There is some through ticketing, but it's more expensive and less flexible than the old system.

just wanted to mention this. how can public transport nerds in Germany not have one

@@PG-nf9wx I entirely agree. Had I been Chris or Nicole, I would have been waving my Deutschland Ticket right in front of Geoff's camera!

Good for you. I once drag my friends with me to Wuppertal especially for this train. They hated me. But I didn’t care

Interesting fact about the Neanderthal - Thal is German for valley but the river in the Neanderthal is the Dussel, tyhe valley is named after Joachim Newmann who, in the fashion of the 17th century, translated his surname into Greek: Ne-ander (compare Gottlieb aka Theophilus aka Amadeus). It was entirely fortuitous that the fossil of a new human species wuld be discovered there 200 years later.

@@MrJimheeren Funny thing, once, when I was in Dusseldorf, I dragged a friend of mine, who had lived and worked in Dusseldorf for many years, to Wuppertal as he'd never been on this before. 🙂

I too love you random geography-happy youtuber!

QQ: Is Solingen the steel making city?

​@@graemecatty9921Yes 😊

@@graemecatty9921 Sheffield is the 'English Solingen' or vice versa ...both well known for excellent cutlery products.

I rode it back in the 80s, when I was small. And I came back a year or two ago. (Although to be fair, I regularly ride the Utrecht to Amsterdam line which started in the 1860s.)

I think that it is the only useful monorail in the world.

I suspect that if it were a German word it would be Dangelbahn.

They're all new cars - they started coming into service at the end of 2016.

@@benespectionAnd broke shortly after introduction.

Not really a twin, except in symbolic/PR sense. It isn't dangling, the rail there is an actual guideway preventing dangling, as far as I can tell.

@@u1zhaIt is a pretty bumpy ride though since it has some rather steep sections and goes fast for a monorail.

You spelled it correctly

In Helsinki, Finland, there is a special tram that runs on the city network that is simply a "pub tram." Seating 24, one can get drinks on the SparaKoff and give oneself a cheap tour of the city. Here is the Wiki on this fabulous concept, which should be replicated on every subway and tram network in the world: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sp%C3%A5raKoff

@@letsplaypetrus4802 danke schön :)