{"id":2707,"date":"2021-04-14T06:41:13","date_gmt":"2021-04-14T06:41:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/uberlin.co.uk\/is-berlin-over-uberlinuberlin\/"},"modified":"2021-04-14T06:41:13","modified_gmt":"2021-04-14T06:41:13","slug":"is-berlin-over-uberlinuberlin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/uberlin.co.uk\/is-berlin-over-uberlinuberlin\/","title":{"rendered":"Is Berlin over? : \u00fcberlin\u00fcberlin"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Is Berlin over?<\/h3>\n

by Guest Blogger<\/span><\/h4>\n
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\"Media<\/p>\n

by Paola Moretti.<\/strong><\/p>\n

My father is one of those men who are terrible at choosing presents for women. I\u2019m not sure whether his insistence on giving me perfume, dresses and cute necklaces is a hint\u00a0that I should be a little more feminine, or if he simply has no clue about what I actually like. This year, he gave me a glittery nail polish which I liked only because I have a taste for tacky\u00a0stuff. Two years ago, he bought me a style guide written by Angelika Taschen, The\u00a0Berliner<\/em>, where one can find such observations as, \u201c For the Berliner the quest for the perfect purse is more important than the quest for the right man. The metropolitan animal needs to bring its stuff always with it, so the bag needs to be a proper one.\u201d Let\u2019s just say that my father has a peculiar sense of humour as well.<\/p>\n

When I read the book’s subtitle, \u201cThe guide to the alternative chic\u201d, I thought: this is the end. If Berlin was about to become a Mecca for style, when just a while ago I could walk around completely unnoticed in neon-yellow leggings, matching rubber kitchen gloves and a bright blue dress, it meant that something was changing. Indeed, the running joke about Prenzlauer Berg’s Latte Macchiato mums was over. At that moment, the press focused on the hatred of\u00a0tourists which, expressed through stickers and graffiti, telling\u00a0them that they were no longer welcome. It had become a local pastime\u00a0to pick on the new representatives of categories such as the \u201cClub Mate generation\u201d, \u201cNew York artist\u201d, \u201cSouth European student\u201d, or anyone else suspected of feeding the ravenous beast of gentrification by paying above-average rents, occupying hitherto-neglected neighbourhoods, or opening upmarket\u00a0bars.<\/p>\n

Berlin became the place to be. Old-school Berliners were bewildered and, I must admit, I didn’t join in the\u00a0raging aggressiveness towards every single change, I was a bit worried. The city, at least to me, had been a stargate to a utopian dimension. You could feel that history had had taken another course here. Its environment and inhabitants hadn\u2019t been infected by the fever of globalisation and consumeristic craving. The German capital was a small loophole in the West’s capitalist system. Things I had only heard about from my older friends, such as underground movements – which in Italy were long-time dead, or had been\u00a0absorbed by a fashion industry\u00a0which repackaged\u00a0them and tossed them to the masses – here were still thiriving in their original forms. Berlin was cool because\u00a0\u201cshe\u201d\u00a0was the anti-cool. Then,\u00a0she\u00a0became glamorous and lost some of\u00a0her\u00a0charm.\u00a0Gradually, she became less unique, less radical. She was slowly letting herself be undermined by imported trends, swayed by a progress which didn’t always mean improvement.<\/p>\n

Just like when in junior high you fall in love with your desk mate: a bony girl with no breasts and protruding shoulder blades, but nice and sweet. Everybody laughs at you because you like her, but you don\u2019t care. In high school, she becomes a hottie, a real heartbreaker who forgets what kindness means. And then you feel that mix of bitterness and pride: you\u2019re proud because you foresaw her potential back when no one else could, but you feel sad because she is no longer who she used to be. She stops using her cousin\u2019s hand-me-down sweaters, in which she looked like a potato sack, and starts wearing tight tops. She learned how to use tweezers on her eyebrows, and now she has highlights in her hair, the original copper-like colour of which was naturally\u00a0beautiful.<\/p>\n

So it is with Berlin: she is young, a 25 year-old girl who not so long ago was disfigured by a wall. She has just found herself sexy and wants to party, to take advantage of any situation. Thus, Kneipes close and cocktail bars open; currywurst booths disappear while burger joints\u00a0pop up everywhere. Sandals with socks remain, but just because they seem to be fashionable now.<\/p>\n

But it’s just when you get used to the tables full of Macbooks\u00a0in cafes; when you are no longer surprised by salespeople\u00a0not understanding German in your local vintage shop; when you basically take for granted the availability of various pieces of the world patch-worked together in one city; when you finally understand that you can find whatever you like, even those things which are not cool anymore and never again will be – well, then, the media announces: \u201cBerlin is over\u201d<\/a>. In 2014, the Tagespiegel<\/em> said that \u201cBerlin isn\u2019t the coolest city in the world anymore\u201d, just after Rolling Stone<\/em>\u00a0called\u00a0Berghain “a club full of tourists\u201d . Each time I hear these utterances, I imagine Manzoni\u2019s characters with their bells, ruefully wandering through the village picking up the dead bodies left by the plague. What I never understand is whether the pandemic is Berlin being cool or not cool anymore.<\/p>\n

Many local newspapers greeted the news happily; club owners worried right away about their future incomes; some sighed with relief, others felt mocked: they had just found a WG! Most readers probably simply shrugged. I insist, like the devoted classmate who tenderly looks at the sharp bones coming out of his childhood love’s back, or like my father, who next year will give me a bracelet with pendants for my birthday, that I will keep looking for those things which make Berlin my city. Because love is resistance and the first love is never outmoded.<\/p>\n

Originally published in Italian on Il Mitte<\/a>.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

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