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The airport that took nine extra years
Germans will make a joke about BER within a minute of the subject of airports coming up, and it is worth understanding why. Berlin Brandenburg Airport was due to open in 2011 and finally opened in October 2020, nine years late and roughly three times over budget, after a catalog of failures including a fire-safety system that did not work, thousands of wrongly numbered rooms, and escalators built too short. For a country whose self-image rests on engineering competence, it became a national embarrassment and a permanent punchline. Elsewhere the picture is different: Frankfurt is one of the busiest airports in Europe and Munich is regularly rated among the best in the world. Two habits will strike you at any of them. Announcements are made in German first and then English, and the German version is noticeably more formal. And the security queue moves with a briskness that assumes you have already taken your laptop out — having your bag unpacked for you is treated as a small failure of preparation rather than bad luck.