Searching for locations from Run Lola Run

Do you remember the movie Run Lola Run, a hugely successful German movie from 1998 directed by Tom Tykwer and with Franka Potente as a leading character? The story follows a girl (Lola) who needs to get 100,000 German marks in 20 minutes to save her boyfriend Manni’s life.

She starts her quest at her apartment and hurries to the Deutsche Transfer Bank, run by her father. Her aim is to get the cash and hand it to Manni, who lost the bag with mob’s money on an U-bahn train.

Some filming locations from Run Lola Run

Since Run Lola Run is more than 25 years old, it has somewhat lost its appeal, so there are no Run Lola tours in Berlin. However, I’ve watched it before my visit to Berlin and checked some locations from the movie. I didn’t have the time to find Lola’s apartment or the crossroad where Manni was waiting for her, so I only took the photos at the Oberbaum bridge and the nearby location where U-Bahn (underground) train overpass the road.

Google map of selected locations

With the help of Google Maps I’ve also put some locations from the movie on a map and tried to get the shortest route between each location. To simplify the task I only took 4 locations:

• Lola’s apartment which is located at 13-14 Albrechtstrasse
• Oberbaum bridge
• Deutsche Transfer Bank, where Lola tried to get the money from her dad – located at Behrenstrasse 37, near the Opera
• Supermarket, where Manni waits for Lola – located at the south-west corner of the intersection of Osnabrücker Strasse and Tauroggener Strasse.

Well, to get a rough feeling of Lola’s journey, I’ve checked distances with Google Maps. Her run starts at her home and continues on Oberbaum bridge, which is a massive detour to her next destination: Deutsche Transfer Bank. Lola finishes her journey near the supermarket in Charlottenburg.

Google calculated that the total distance from the start to the finish is 16.6 kilometers (by foot) or 20 kilometers (by car). If you decide to walk this tour, you would need almost 4 hours; otherwise a card drive would take you to the supermarket in 50 minutes.

The most interesting outcome of this little fun project was the speed of Lola’s running. In order to run from her apartment, on the Oberbaum bridge, to the bank and then to the supermarket in 20 minutes, she would have to run with the speed of 49.2 kilometers per hour. That is spectacular! Just a quick comparison: Usain Bolt, the reigning world record holder in 100 meters, needed 9.58 seconds to cover that distance. He was running with the speed of 37.58 kilometers per hour.

Bolt was fast, but Lola was out of this world 🙂

The original version of this article was first published on BrandsAndFilms.com in September, 2011.