A few days ago I went back to the office. With parental leave and the pandemic I spent most of the last three years working from (or staying at) home. I expected to get back into the office on a regular basis but that is not how it turned out. My employer seemed to have made good experiences with letting people work flexibly from home and they now offer several remote working arrangements. My boss already picked me (and some of my coworkers) to work most of the time from home. I won’t have a fixed desk at the office anymore and commuting to work will no longer be a regular occurrence for me.

This is actually great news because my commute was a little over 2 hours per day. Valuable time saved I can spend with the people I love. And incidentally now every time I go into the office it will be a small adventure. A little trip to Berlin. And I plan on using these days for photographic excursions. With that in mind here are some gritty images from my first commute of 2022.

Waiting and looking at phones. An ubiquitous scene on every train station nowadays. At least no one really notices me taking pictures.

There are some really nice train stations but for the most part they are ugly. This one is part of the circle line where most stations are lined with industrial buildings, highways or other urban wastelands. I wrote about this topic here in more detail.

Some people have their summer cottages right next to the station. An auditory nightmare but maybe the garden gnomes like it.

A view from the door. Train, platform and highway right next to each other. The circle line has mostly been constructed with transport efficiency in mind. The stations are horrible places to be except for the ones going through the dense and gentrified neighborhoods in East Berlin. Still most stations there are still ugly and dirty but once you emerge you are greeted by shops, cafés and hip people.

Up and away. These people have arrived at their destination: A day of work presumably. Although the woman on the right opted for a more healthy approach to this morning.

And we have arrived. Well this is not really my office but we will accept it as a symbolic representation. Look at it, no wonder more and more people enjoy working from home instead. Working from or near one’s own home was actually quite the norm for most of settled human history. Only the industrialization and the machine’s demands forced us to go somewhere to work for a day and then return home. But with so many things working from home is also a privilege for those having the education and job to do so. I try not to forget how thankful I should be.

If you like these kind of photographs I do offer a nicely printed magazine here.