Exberliner Issue 167, January 2018

TRAINS
DATING
Underground love
The BVG wants to help you find your U-Bahn crush, but
re-connecting with that sexy subway stranger isn’t as
simple as it seems. By Alexander Durie. Illustration by Agata Sasiuk
Nicole*, a 33-year-old Berliner, was
riding the U6 on a Thursday night
when she saw him. A man in a blue
jacket, about 1.8 metres tall, brown hair and
piercing blue eyes, sitting in the seat diagonal
to hers. As the train hurtled toward her stop,
their eyes locked, and Nicole felt an instant
connection. Should she talk to him? She
hesitated for just a second... but soon enough,
the doors opened, and she tore her gaze away
and headed out. She’d missed her chance.
But maybe not! Arriving home, she
headed to the BVG website and logged onto
Meine Augenblicke.
The “missed connection” conundrum
has existed for as long as public transit has,
and by now we have plenty of tools at our
disposal for finding that cute fellow rider we
were too shy to chat up in person. Americans
use Craigslist, Parisians check out
“Croisé dans le Métro” and Londoners can find
their “Rush Hour Crush” in the Metro paper.
But the first city in Europe to invent such a
platform was Berlin, back in 2006. You can
find the Meine Augenblicke page on the BVG’s
website under “My BVG” and although you
need to create an account and username to
submit your own “moment”, you don’t need
to log in to see if one of the thousands of
Meine Augenblicke users is looking for you.
Some of the “moments” are lustful, such
as a post from a user called “boner” that
begins with “We were both waiting for the
subway at Eberswalder and creeping around
each other like tigers.” Others verge on
stalkerish, like one from August 2014 where
a user called “Looking for blonde angels”
obsesses over a woman he glimpsed in 2003.
“Help, I cannot forget you despite the long
time... Please just give me the chance to tell
you what I saw in your eyes then.”
Petra Reetz, the BVG’s head of press and
Meine Augenblicke’s initiator, insists that “we
are not a dating site.” Unlike Craigslist, Meine
Augenblicke has a “red card” option that lets
you block any messages or users that seem
offensive. “Our idea was just to be nice,” says
Reetz, who came up with the idea after a man
called her around Christmas 2006 looking for
the dream girl he’d spotted on the U6. Still, it’s
difficult not to think of the (married) spokeswoman
as a matchmaker as she asserts: “Write
your name, write your station, and if you’re
lucky, I will bring your moment back to you!”
But does it actually work? Reetz has no idea.
“We are not sneaking around in your lives. For
that reason, we never ask if people ever meet
up, so we have no statistics of success rates.
It’s up to people to use it.” All she knows is
that the site receives some 30,000 visitors
per month, although only 20,000 people have
posted “moments” in the 11 years since it was
created. “There are more people looking than
posting… perhaps waiting to be found.”
For Martin, a 40-year-old man who’s been
living in Berlin for 20 years, the wait for
a reply on Meine Augenblicke can be long
and lonely. On November 19, he spotted a
“blonde French girl with a bike and pump on
the luggage rack who was accompanied by
a friend”. Martin acknowledges: “Since she
was French I doubt she knows about Meine
Augenblicke. But of course, hope should
never die, so why not give it a shot?”
Would it be easier to find her on Tinder?
Reetz reflects: “Meine Augenblicke
was a great idea 10 years ago, but now
that young people are using all of these
digital platforms, maybe you don’t need it
anymore.” But Martin remains undaunted.
“In comparison to all the swiping left-right
apps, these moments are meaningful and
come from a very personal and intimate
experience in real life,” he tells us. “I
gained much more from my moment with
the French girl than I ever had with any
dates from dating apps.”
And sometimes, you might be better off
sticking with the idealised version of an
encounter. Take Nicole’s handsome brunette.
She posted an ad on Meine Augenblicke
shortly after their intense few seconds of eye
contact, and to her surprise, just a few days
later, she received an answer from a man
named Peter. “He gave some details that
only someone who has really seen me would
know, and he knew at which stop I got out,
which I hadn’t pointed out before.”
After a week of email correspondence, they
agreed to meet up. With butterflies in her
stomach, she waited for Peter outside a Mitte
coffee shop until finally, she was approached
by a man who asked, “Hi, are you Nicole? I’m
the guy from Meine Augenblicke.”
There was just one problem. This ‘Peter’
was nearing his fifties, and grey hair
had replaced any trace of brown.
Seeing her visible confusion, the
man backpedalled and told her
he too was expecting a different
woman... but hey, now that they
were both here, did Nicole want
to go out for a drink with him
anyway? Still shocked, Nicole
refused and went home.
Despite her disappointment, Nicole
remains positive – “At least I
had half a moment!” – but advises
future users not to exchange anything
private. Would she ever use
the platform again? She laughs. “If
I have another moment, I hope I
will be courageous enough to grab
it when it happens.” n
*Name changed
EXBERLINER 167
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