I’ve made a day trip to Wuppertal, specifically for the purpose of taking this train. I grew up on the other side of the planet in a completely different culture, but in my youth I saw a “telescreen article” during some film matinee pause, about this “quaint, German thing” and as I grew older and found myself actually living in Germany, one of my first thoughts was “I wonder if that thing still exists” .. so I was very happy to learn it was still in operation, indeed.

Germany is a land full of beautiful little towns and cities and settlements which deserve to be explored with the proper tempo. On a particularly sunny day I drove to Wuppertal from the village I’d moved to in the Rühr, in my beat up Citroën (that’s another quaint European device worthy of a story), deciding to eschew the autobahn and instead take the older country roads where I could, and for an hour or so I was transported back to another Germany, the pre-war late 19th century land of much promise, whose roads and paths were set, seemingly, with a far greater sense of aesthetics than the speedy efficiency-worshipping channels of the highways. So many little roads and lanes which ‘felt’ as if the original architects were bovine in nature, or perhaps based on an ancient feeding route of deer and boar.

When I arrived in Wuppertal, I was immediately impressed with this technological marvel that had been suspended in the space above 700-year old houses and buildings from another time. It felt so futuristic and hopeful, and it was futuristic and hopeful - and more important to the Germans, useful as a device for getting around the serpentine Wuppertal construct. I parked the Citroën in the lower part of the town, watching it deflate itself like some Lucas’ian landracer, walked up to the nearest Schweberbahn station, and took the thing all the way up and down the Wupper. It was delightful, at first, seeming to be so whimsical and expensive, but as we reached the end of the line, I was struck by how suddenly mundane the experience had become.

It was normal to fly over the river, suspended, above the height of a regular commute, curving through the spaces between buildings rather than under them, and I was delighted to recognize the buildings - now a hundred years older - that I had seen in the original film, still in place yet somehow cleaner than I’d remembered. Even still, in a matter of an hour, I’d experienced that whiplash of “this is the future (of the past) ..” straight to “this is normal now (yet weird) ..” so many of us technologists endure — but in this case, it was with a device from an entirely different century. It was archaic futurist whiplash, not at all entirely like the modern kind, but similar somehow.

I took it back down to my Citroën, noting the gravity change along the way, and found I had a new form of respect for even that vehicles’ weird, quaint, suspension. (That particular model raised and lowered itself according to speed, you see..)

That trip to Wuppertal was one of the very first events in my life in Germany which gave me so much more respect for the German people than the post-war indoctrination and cultural distrust I’d experienced as a kid growing up in a state that was once at war with the place.

If you ever get a chance to visit Germany, a day trip outside the realm of the autobahn is highly recommended.

Simply get lost in the place.

Because of Wuppertal I became finely tuned to appreciate the German instinct for preservation of older things, while also somehow managing to integrate technological progress which doesn’t just supplant the surroundings, but eventually enhances them.