Berlin Brandenburg Airport to Alexanderplatz

Step off the train at Alexanderplatz and the first thing you feel is the sheer openness of the place — a great grey expanse of paving that never quite fills up, no matter how many trams grind across it. Above you leans the Fernsehturm, that concrete needle with the disco ball halfway up, still the tallest thing for miles and still, to my East-Berlin heart, the honest centre of the city. This was the socialist showpiece square, and it never lost its nerve. Coming in from BER, you are landing yourself right in the middle of it, roughly 20 km of track and about half an hour from touchdown to the foot of the tower.

Riding the rails under the tower

Here is the beautiful thing about Alex, and the reason locals will always steer you onto the train: the regional lines come to you. The RE8 and its cousin the RB23, both run by DB Regio, roll out of the station beneath Terminal 1 and go direct to Alexanderplatz by way of Ostbahnhof, with the RE8 doing the run in a brisk 22 minutes or so. Between them they turn up around twice an hour. If you have wrestled a suitcase through Ostbahnhof before, you will appreciate that these trains actually stop at Alex itself — no fiddly change, no dragging bags up and over a footbridge.

The one figure worth burning into your memory is the fare: a single ABC ticket costs €5.00, and that same slip of paper covers the whole journey from the airport into the zone-A heart of the city. Buy it before you board — the machines are on the platform beneath Terminal 1, and a ticket unstamped or unbought is the one mistake an inspector will not forgive. It is the same €5.00 whichever of these trains you catch, so there is nothing to calculate. Grab whatever is leaving first.

The slow scenic cousin

If the regional train is the express, the S9 S-Bahn is the ambling local that shows you the city's ribcage on the way in. It leaves from the same station under Terminal 1, runs every 20 minutes, and threads its way to Alexanderplatz via Ostkreuz — that huge, handsomely rebuilt junction where half of eastern Berlin seems to change trains at once. Being an all-stops service it takes its time, call it 35 minutes rather than the RE8's 22, and it costs the identical €5.00 ABC ticket.

I rather like the S9 for a first arrival. You surface from the tunnel, the yellow carriages clatter along the viaduct, and you get the city delivered to you in slices — backyards, canal bridges, the graffiti that is practically municipal signage out east. If you are not in a hurry and you want to feel Berlin rather than merely be transported through it, this is your train. If you are, take the RE8 and save the sightseeing for later.

When you'd rather not carry the bags

Sometimes the rails are not the answer. Late arrival, too much luggage, small children melting down — that is when the taxi rank outside Terminal 1 arrivals earns its keep. Berlin's licensed cabs are metered and run around the clock, so what you pay depends on traffic, but plan on somewhere between €58 and €72 for the roughly 40-minute drive, with the flat €1.50 BER surcharge tacked on at the airport end. Only ever take the official rank; the fellow who approaches you inside the terminal is not your friend.

For a price you know before you leave home, a pre-booked private transfer is the tidier option. Outfits like Welcome Pickups or Blacklane have a driver waiting to take the bags off you and lead you straight to the car, which when you are worn out feels like a small mercy. The door-to-door run works out at roughly €55 to €78, paid upfront and fixed, so there is no meter ticking while you crawl through the evening traffic. It costs much the same as the taxi in practice, but you trade the uncertainty for a set price and a car already waiting to load.

My honest counsel, though, having watched this square change from GDR parade ground to shopping magnet? Take the train. Five euros, roll your case straight off the platform, and let the Fernsehturm mark the spot. There is no better introduction to the East than arriving on the same tracks the city has always used, and stepping out into all that glorious, defiant open space.