You know you’re a Berliner when…
by Guest Blogger
Let me start by saying, Berlin’s ego is big enough already. It’s like the goofy, nerdy girl from the rom-com who let her hair down and took her glasses off some time back in 2005 and everyone collectively gasped, “Berlin – you’re hot!” Once we found out she was also cheap, that really sealed the deal – and naturally many of us flocked here to try and make lives for ourselves, which makes the idea of being a “real Berliner” a particularly challenging proposition in a city of such constant reinvention.
With all that in mind, I’ve still done my best to collate a list of 11 signs you’ve become a Berliner, which I hope most of us, despite our greatly varying backgrounds, can agree on.
1. You only have two moods, winter (sad) and summer (happy).
It can be challenging navigating the spectrum of all possible human emotions. Quite time consuming even, all that working out how you’re really feeling. True Berliners have simplified down all that emotional complexity to just two basic binary moods – happy and sad. Sad occurs during the horrible, long Berlin winter, in which we all struggle to remember, why did we move here? Happy occurs during summer, when everything is just damn peachy.
2. You’ve viewed a flat with 60 other people.
I know someone who moved to Berlin seven years ago. He laughed, telling me how easy it was to get an apartment in Neukölln then. He said you went to a real estate agent, who gave you a big set of keys and a map before you took yourself round to look at the apartments. He even slept in some over-night, to check the neighbours and noise levels and all that good stuff. When I moved here with my girlfriend, some three years ago, it was already chaos. We never saw an apartment on our own, rarely with less than 40 other people. Everyone carried this big “please pick me” pack containing credit reports, references, employment contracts, begging letters, an essay they wrote when they were seven about a particularly enjoyable summer holiday – anything they thought might help. We didn’t even really look at the apartments – we fought our way up the stairs, barged through the door and with single-minded determination headed straight for the agent, laid the charm on thick, proclaimed our love for the place, told a joke or two, tried to be memorable, gave him the pack, shook hands, and left. Next Besichtigung. Hustle, hustle.
We viewed more than thirty apartments, said yes to twenty five, got offered one. Accepted it. I don’t even remember viewing it. I thought we were moving into another apartment, and when we arrived I was convinced they gave us the wrong one. Now, three years later, I don’t even want to imagine how bad flat hunting has got. I assume they just give you a piece of paper with an outline of the human body on it and you mark what organs you are willing to trade for a Zweiraumwohnung out in the ass end of nowhere, also known as the Ringbahn.
3. You’ve danced at a U-Bahn station.
I’ve never understood people having sex in toilets. I get that they are there and sort of semi-private. Or at least they have a door even if it doesn’t always reach to the floor. Yeah, I’m showing my age here, I know. But that’s a place in which people defecate and put up stickers promoting their startup. Presumably you have a bed. Go there.
So it’s with the same confusion that I disembark the U1 at Schlesi on my way home some weekend nights, only to be greeted by a popup club blocking all the exits. We have places for that already. With bars, designated dance floors, mood lighting, toilets (for sex)… Maybe I’ve just become too German over the years, but I now humbly suggest we just use for everything for the function it was intended. Oberbaumbrücke you’re no better! Shame on you! I liked you better when you were a bridge I could actually walk across at night, before you became Buskerhain.
4. You’ve whinged at the constant stream of foreigners infiltrating “your” city.
Remember when in Back to the Future Michael J. Fox had to be really careful about changing stuff in the past and causing a rip in the space time continuum? There was a lesson there about the fragile inter-connectivity of all things. Know that every time you stand outside your favourite cafe, angry at not being able to get a seat and bitterly complaining about all these new expats arriving and ruining your Kiez, just two years before, probably in exactly the same spot, someone else was standing there and saying exactly the same thing about you, then, two years before that, someone else about them and so on and so on. That repeats all the way back to the very first ape who climbed down from the trees and decided to walk upright, who was then copied by other apes, much to his annoyance, as everything was much better on the ground in the good old days before they came along. He probably then ran off to start spray painting “Schwabenape raus” everywhere.
5. You’ve gotten thoroughly, thoroughly lost.
I don’t mean geographically. That’s a given. I mean lost among the people and the possibilities on offer here. There’s a rather dazzling array of (mostly GDP negative) ways to spend your time. There’s not something here for everyone, there are 67 things. If it’s a Wednesday night and you decide you’re in the mood to perform Reiki on a midget, there’ll be a meetup for that.
Berlin nights begin at around 11pm, when you’ll innocently close your door to head out and see what’s happening, before bumping into some girls in a Hof, decide to join them to go meet this other guy, then that guy’s heard about this party from a dude he met juggling in the park. Which leads you somewhere, which leads somewhere… and before you know it its 4:30am on the following Tuesday and you’re in a club with no name, wearing someone else’s pants, dancing with people you just met, but love dearly, yet couldn’t name, and all-consumed with smug satisfaction at the joyous serendipity of life, or at least Berlin.
6. You’ve heard groups of people meeting in a mutual second language.
As far as I’m concerned the single most compelling reason to live in a city is friction, cultural friction. Cities force you out of your comfort zone. Small towns are great breeding grounds for ignorance and prejudices (hence the term “smalltown mindset”), because you’re not confronted every day by those people, on the metro, in parks, sharing your table in a full cafe. You’re not forced to see how ridiculously similar they are to you.
In a city like Berlin there’s a constant friction of different cultures meeting and trying, sometimes more successfully than others, to find ways to live together. It keeps you young and open minded. So some of my most endearing Berlin memories are eavesdropping on street conversations where a Spaniard, a Swede, a German and an Italian are all trying to have a conversation in beautifully broken, yet endlessly creative, English.
7. You hate the Zollamt.
As a general rule, if it contains the word “Amt”, you probably won’t enjoy going there (Burgeramt excluded). And the Zollamt is THE WORST. It’s a giant building of twisted, sadistic, reverse Santas who instead of giving out toys, steal them all and make you go all the way to Schöneberg to take a number, wait for an hour and beg, plead, cry and then dance like a Russian bear until you look so pathetic they take pity on you and finally let you have that new vinyl you ordered from the US, taxed at only double what you paid for it. Presumably, then, after a hard day’s work annoying the bejesus out of everyone they probably go home and do similarly evil things like leaving the toilet seat up or their dirty socks on the bathroom floor. I mean, I don’t know, I’m just speculating here. Nothing would surprise me.
8. You’ve redefined your expectations of customer service.
In general Berliners don’t have a reputation for being the warmest, softest, cute ickle bunnies. But where they really excel at failing is customer service. You may have heard it referred to as the Berliner Schnauze. In this city customer service is an abstract concept lost in the suggestion box of some Amt somewhere. It’s not that people are unfriendly as such, that implies that they make the effort to be hostile. Here it’s more a complete disinterest. Sometimes when being completely ignored by a heavily tattooed barkeeper at a hip basement bar I’ll actually pinch myself, just to check I have not become, inexplicably, invisible.
9. You’ve witnessed at least one daily act of crazy.
We all have an inner voice. It’s what keeps us company in the lonely hours. Mine likes to distract me by shouting things like “KILL THE DONKEY”, or “VOTE PEDRO” when I’m trying to concentrate on important tasks like eating chocolate or killing a donkey.
The inner voice is where our thoughts first manifest themselves. Think of the brain like a big production line, down which our earliest ideas travel. At the end is a filtering mechanism I imagine to be a big giant crusher ball on a chain, known as sanity. This swings back and forth crushing to a pulp all of our stupid thoughts before they can go anywhere dangerous. The best ideas get to dodge the crusher and come flying out of our mouths. But, should you walk the fine graffiti-strewn streets of Berlin you’ll see that there are a very high population of people here possessing no internal crusher. Anything can come out at any time. You’ll spot them easily; they’re the ones dressed as shabby neon pirates and wandering around muttering to themselves incoherently. Sometimes the muttering becomes loud SHOUTS of nonsense. Berlin has more than its fair share of crazies.
10. You can’t find a job.
I know several people who packed up old lives, moved here, never found work, were forced to pack up their lives again and move somewhere else. People, there are no jobs here! Don’t move here unless you already have a way to sustain yourself, even if you will need vastly less money than in other cities. €1k a month is enough to live reasonably well. So work online. Freelance. Do a startup. Take a year out and write that book. Do “projects”. THERE ARE NO JOBS HERE. At least not real jobs. Let’s just agree on that now, so no-one has the right to be annoyed later when they find that out. That’s part of the reason it’s cheap to live here in the first place. If it had industry, it’d be Munich. Do you want that? Do you?
11. You have regular Berlinergasms.
I don’t know the right word for it, so I’m coining “Berlinergasms”. I was on the tram recently and overheard an English guy turning to his two friends and saying loudly “I fucking love living in Berlin. I just love it. It’s just so fucking great”. What he possibly lacked in eloquence, he more than made up for in enthusiasm. He was having a Berlinergasm.
The reason we developed cities was the same reason we developed towns, was the same reason we developed outposts, was the same reason we developed something a little smaller than outposts but which I’m too lazy to research. Humans are best when we pool our resources. Everything gets more economical when it’s shared. Cities should make your life easier, not harder. Berlin does this very well (at least once you have an apartment). Firstly it’s not too densely populated and has incredible public transport that rarely closes. Because of its unique history as a divided city, I’d argue that Mitte has a far lower importance than most city centres (London, I’m looking at you in particular). So the major travel routes into the centre don’t clog up with people like they do in other cities. Berlin is more like six or seven large interconnected towns. You can bike everywhere with a minimal fear of death! What an arrogant luxury in a major European city.
So you’ll live here, and in the words of that Englishman “you’ll fucking love it.” You’ll be happier than you could ever be in whatever boring, little, stifling town you came from. Sometimes that happiness will feel hard to contain and will just sort of overflow into a wave of temporary euphoria of thanks; thanks that you escaped that town, thanks that here you’re free to reinvent yourself as you always wanted to be, just simple thanks that you get to live here. Berlinergasms.
So, how did you do? Can you think of any traits that all Berliners share? Feel free to share in the comments below. Tschüss!
[PS props to the following people for submitting pictures of Berlin Crazies: M R S P K R and Emma Johnson.]
Adam writes for several websites, if you want to know when follow him on Twitter.
[…] article originally appeared on UBerlin and is republished here with […]
FUCK THE ZOLLAMT IN THE ARSE! FUCK THEM IN THE EYE SOCKETS!!! THEN WIPE UP THE BLOOD WITH THEIR UGLY UGLY PUKE GREEN SHIRTS!!!!!
FUCK YOU ZOLLAMT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Hahaha, I am defenitely going to dance in the U-Bahn tonight. Great article guys, you made my day!
Glad you liked! See you on the party platform.
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Love the funny pics, especially the ‘don’t forget to go home’ one – the stamp which stayed ‘tatooed’ on my hand for a number daze. Hahaha. Are you guys gonna do any postcards? The article made me laugh, of course, as did the ensuing comments even though it got a bit toooo serious for comfort, at times. Fwor. Got a bit hot under the collar.
Thanks. Postcards is an amazing idea – noted!
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haha. hilarious! i think I had some Berlinergasms as well. now i know how to call them.
# 10. Generally I agree that it’s hard to fin a job in Berlin. But sometimes I got the impression that it’s even easier to find a job when you’re not from Germany, just one example
http://madvertise.com/en/company/career/ . but I certainly agree that my notice particularly concerns jobs in the new media-sector. if so wants a more “analogous” job there’s still the deposit bottle sector ????
[…] started grilling me about the “expat backlash” debate that’s engulfed our deceptively silly “You Know You’re A Berliner When…” post.2. I missed my TweepsEven though I kept my eye on the @uberlinblog timeline, I felt myself […]
[…] me about the “expat backlash” debate that’s engulfed our deceptively silly “You Know You’re A Berliner When…” […]
Adam Fletcher, i take my hat to you. Wait to capture Berlin’s drift
; )
way to*
Hi guys, I often read your blog, I don’t live in Berlin, but I’m often there for work, fun, and love. I love Berlin, I’m a european citizen, and I know very well the history of this city, the culture, the hard times that had to go through. But I mean, what’s going on, in here? I think that everyone should just take a little bit easy the all situation. “Guys that live in Berlin and can’t find a job, so don’t come here that there is no job”..do you know what is going on outside Berlin? Everywhere, in every european capital, more or less, the situation is crap. Everywhere. So, what we should everyone do? Start to say to everyone “ehy, just stop dreaming about a new experience, learning new language and discover a new culture, because there is no job here, and is only plenty oh crack-hipster-afterhourpeople that if they can’t find their “dream job” go away after gentrified Berlin.
Calm down! I live in Milan, right now, and the situation is the same. OK! yes! Milan is not Berlin, of course it is not. But the problem are the same here: student hipster everywhere that pay 400€ for a bed in a double room and accept to work for free making logos, web pages and whatever..but the situation is the same in Paris, Barcelona, London..Dublin..I mean, everywhere. But I would never say to someone “please, don’t come to Milan, we are busy at the moment, if you come, the flats will be more expensive for me that I live here since 5 years, and I’m more “milanese” than you”. no! Feel free to do what do you think it will make you happier! or at least, try to do it!”
Of course, for 100 people that move to berlin, 1 wil move to milan, ok..but..take it easy, it’s berlin time, than it will be..I don’t know, Belgrado time (very cool city, by the way)..and let’s try to start to build ourselves, at least, a concept of unified europe, without terrorizing people on why to move here and move there.
I don’t want to be polemic and aggressive, I hope my message was clear. I love your blog, and I love your attitude over Berlin and the expat scene..and I also found this article very funny and true..in every point. It’s the right thing to tell people how are the thing over there.
It’s just the opinion of a person that love Berlin and knows Berlin very well, and lives in another country and yes..is still thinking in making a move somewhere………:-)
Let’s keep the positive vibe alive, or the world will eat our ass off!
peace!
Thanks for the comment Matt.
It’s interesting that you feel we’re trying to put off people moving to Berlin, when most people criticise us for the exact opposite thing!
I can’t speak for Adam, who wrote this, but we find ourselves advising people on the work situation in Berlin a lot. When they ask, are there any jobs there in my industry? we tell them no (or: not many). But we never tell them not to come here because of that – we say, like Adam, “Don’t move here unless you already have a way to sustain yourself.”
People need to know that they won’t step out of their advertising job in London, into a new one in Berlin (especially if they don’t speak German), and that they need a different strategy to sustain themselves here. And that is what we’re interested in too – people moving here for good (or as long as possible), and surviving long-term. I’m all for people travelling, and experiencing new places and things – for which you don’t need a job, or even much money – but if you want to change your life for good you need the ability to work, or at least, to hustle.
However, we totally agree with this: “Feel free to do what do you think it will make you happier! or at least, try to do it!” That’s what we did, and our life is immeasurably better because of it (whatever our working situation!).
Hi James, thanks for the reply. I think you got my message..and I totally agree with you about everything you said about jobs and the ability to adapt to a new reality even without the perfect “corporate job”…I think is that, the point where we can see the real difference between the “artsy & party people with daddy’s cash” and the real people that want to change something in their lives, and truly believe in something..but this, happen in Berlin, in Frankfurt, Hamburg, Paris, Amsterdam..everywhere.
In some work-fields, find a good and well paid job, has become an utopia. In Berlin and outside Berlin.
“Don’t move here unless you already have a way to sustain yourself”: I think that this..could be apply to every city, in every time of history, for everyone. From Sidney, to New York..from Tokyo to Lisbon.
That was the point that make me think that this question is more deep than a simple attempt to worn people.. I’m not talking about your blog, or Adam, or about “true german berliner”..it’s a general impression that I’m getting in these last years..Probably because Berlin is one of the top destination in this time of our history..but I think that this approach, doesn’t help anyone!
Of course, Berlin is a precious gem and should be preserved..but I think that it will be. If Berlin is as it is now, in a moment where almost everywhere everything is messed up since years..there is a reason.
However, I don’t wanna get boring about this with a sort of anthropological review of migration during an economy world crisis..:-) but I think it’s interesting have the chance to exchange different point of views.
keep your good work on, and good luck to everyone!
Hello again! Thanks for the reply, this is getting really interesting.
I totally agree with you, but hope that we don’t appear to be trying to keep people away. There’s a fine line between wanting to “preserve” the “precious gem” of Berlin and becoming one of those people Adam parodies in point 3)
We’re open to new Berliners, and we believe that the “right” people will continue to move here for the “right” reasons… but it’s important that we keep talking and thinking about this issue.
Thanks for your input!
I thank God every day that Berlin is not Munich, amen!
Hell yeah!!!
I heard that.
Have just been tweeting to the writers about this. Didn’t mean to write a short essay, but…
I have only been to Berlin once. It was in 1990, before reunification. I found it to be a wonderful city filled with beautiful people…and by that, I mean people with wonderful hearts. These people would open their homes to visitors just to show off their city.
Some of the older people I met were wary of tourists – in many cases, rightly so. I personally witnessed foreigners chipping parts of the wall off so they could sell them to other tourists as souvenirs.
My experiences there were interesting. From meeting political refugees who couldn’t afford to eat anything other than apples, to artists and musicians who were eager to embrace everything from the west, Berlin as every other city offered varying degrees of satisfaction to different people.
The nightlife was incredible, with musicians from all over the world keen to showcase their talents in workshops, and Bohemian jazz bars like something out of the mid ’50s…it was all eye opening for a 21 year old girl from Brisbane. I even fell in love there…I could’ve stayed…
But I knew it couldn’t continue at that pace. So, when I hear from Berliners and others in Germany about what’s happening there, I must say many people agree with some of the above statements. That there are too many foreigners with too much time on their hands who do nothing to try to fit in with the locals. However, I’d have to visit again to experience it for myself to know if this is true. But you know…I’m not sure I want to…I’m probably a little too protective of the nostalgia I hold in my heart for that place at that time.
Love a good Berlinergasm!
And totally agree with a lot of the other points—especially that there are no “real” jobs in Berlin! It’s a big playground here.
No. It’s not! It’s a city where people need sleep and get up early the next day, just as anywhere else.
I swear I’m going to love the Berlin winter, or die trying: if it’s warmer than minus-30 outside, it might as well be tropical. All imagery, however beautiful or “dunkelgrau”, and the sheer will of “dabei sein” may induce a Berlinergasm that could last weeks. Me, I’d like to observe and to be thankful that there’s no other place I’d rather be.
People are continuing moving to Berlin because they heard it’s cool and cheap to live in Berlin. They really DON’T give a shit about the german language nor the social problems in the city. They just want to hang around with their fellow expat mates in pseudo-alternative bars created for them. As always, the hype killed the hype. Rents have risen dramatically, so called “berliner” clubs are full of hipsters on a sabbatical and pseudo artists from all over the world are putting huge pressure on the housing market by accepting rents of 15euro/square meters. The party is over guys,..
Thanks for this. Laughing so hard and recognise myself a lot. And I really do not get the strange comment by the German girl here – I am living in this city longer than in my home town now – and I find the real Berlins not open for meeting others. And I am German! So – sad that she is thinking that way. It is always easier to make other responsible for one’s own misfortune.
We’ve recently discovered we can relocate anywhere in Europe and Berlin has definitely come up as a possibility. I’m not sure if this post frightened me into crossing it off the list or excited me to the point of moving it to the top. That is, after I stopped laughing maniacally at the pictures. Thanks for the insight and the laughs!
Lovely article. Thanks!
As a regular Londonorgasmer I need to come to the defence of my city: the importance of the city centre isn’t as huge as you describe it. It’s actually quite similar to Berlin.
The City of London (as in the business district) is quite important but it’s only a small percentage of the city (London) who actually go there to work. Only about 300,000 people work in the Square Mile and most people are happy to stay in their suburbs (thousands of small villages merged together) and never come to the centre.
It’s mainly tourists combined with the poor infrastructure (narrow streets, tiny trains,…) that make the centre look so congested but most of the 8m people living here don’t regularly come there (if by centre you mean zone 1).
The lack of an actual centre is something Berlin & London have in common.
Ich schreibe dir als ein echter Berloiner, ein Ureinwohner, von denen es in Berlin nicht so viele gibt. Ich freue mich über Besuch. Touristen und Neuberliner bringen Geld in die Stadt. Aber ihr nehmt uns auch unsere Wohnungen und Jobs weg. Ihr sed jung, ihr arbeitet für wenig Geld. Ich bin nach 15 Jahre Berufsleben arbeitslos geworden, niemand stellt mich mehr ein, weil ich zu alt bin. Ihr meint, ihr könnt hier frei, kreativ, unbescholten, unängstlich sein. Eas ist mit den Gefühlen und Ängsten der Einwohner?
In der 80er Jahren war es in Berlin grau und trist. Die einzigen, die herzogen waren Abenteurer, Wehrdienstverweigerer und solche, die unbedingt an der FU studieren wollten. In den 90er war man immer noch weitesgehend unter sich. Die die kamen suchten die Herausforderung und wohnten in billigen Wohnungen in Moabit oder Neukölln, es war hart, aber man wurschtelete sich durch. Anfang des Jahrtausends hörte ich von Vielen: Berlin ist ja interessant, aber hier wohnen wollen, würde ich nie – zu laut, zu dreckig, zu groß. Dann plötzlich strömten ALLE hier her – stand etwas in einem hippen Reiseführer? Hatten Early Adapters, Trendsetter einen Hype losgetreten. Jetzt kann hier jeder sein, es ist nicht mehr hart.
Hier seid zu viele, wir Berliner kommen uns vor wie in einem Zoo. Kannst du dir vorstellen, wie sich eine Urlaubsinsel fühlt, wenn sie in der Saison überrannt wird? Danach sind die Einheimischen froh, wieder unter sich zu sein. Aber ihr Berlin-Zugezogenen geht leider nicht. Ihr nehmt die preiswerten Wohnungen, die Jobs. Ihr lernt noch nicht einmal die deutsche Sprache. Wir müssen Englisch sprechen. Das ist arrogant. Wie soll ein Zusammenleben funktionieren? Mein Rat: Macht euch die Mühe echte Berliner (Leute, die länger als 15 Jahre hier leben) kennen zu lernen, lernt Deutsch, macht ein Praktikum und verschwindet wieder. Es gibt ander hervorragende Städt auf der Welt: der nächste Hype ist TelAviv und Buenos Aires – aufregend, kreativ, lebendig, schnell, bunt, gastfreundlich.
Zieh doch einfach weg, wenn es dich nervt! Vielleicht ein wenig weiter in den Osten wo Fremdenfeindlichkeit zelebriert wird und man “unter sich” ist. Ich selbst bin Berliner und finde es toll wie Berlin ist: offen, kreativ, laut! Was mir auf den Sack geht sind Leute wie du. Krass wie salonfähig Ausländerhass in Berlin geworden ist.
As a newcomer to Berlin (I have lived here almost a year now) I am pleased to say that I have met some ‘real Berliners’ and thankful that they are more welcoming than you.
Three of my best friends in this city are native Berliners and I couldn’t have hoped to meet better people. They encourage me to learn the language and help me with my German but also understand my difficulties and accommodate me by speaking English.
Through them I have gained valuable insight into the changes the city has experienced in their lifetime and seen new parts of Berlin.
Thank you Bine, Gilly and Steffi.
I’m sorry to hear of your difficulties with work and understand your frustration at rising housing costs. I would also like to apologise for the arrogant English speakers (a minority I hope) who move to Berlin but make no effort to learn the language. But I don’t think this justifies your prejudice.
It is only when natives and immigrants both want integration that it can happen.
Es tut mir leid dass habe ich in Englisch geschrieben. Ich lerne Deutsch, aber mein Deutsch ist nicht so gut, dass kann ich mein ganzes Kommentar in Deutsch schreiben. (I hope that makes sense at least).
English below!
Ich finde die Berliner Einstellung etwas wie die englische. Irgendwie scheint die Stadt zu denken und sich zu wuenschen, von der Restwelt abgekoppelt zu sein, weil dann alles besser waere. Das ist natuerlich nostalgischer Unsinn.
Je offener und verknuepfter eine Person/Gesellschaft/Stadt ist, desto besser/reicher/selbstbewusster wird sie auch. Noch dazu ist Berlin/England auch extrem abhaengig von der Restwelt.
Es ist vielleicht diese Abhaengigkeit gepaart mit einem ideologischen Anspruchsdenken (Hauptstadt, „Ich bin ein Berliner“/Empire, Kolonialismus) die diese Ressentiments gegenueber „den Anderen“ erzeugt. Das bricht besonders durch, wenn „die Anderen“ auch noch reicher und selbstbewusster sind.
Nur weil man irgendwo geboren ist, hat man nicht mehr Rechte als die Leute, die die MUEHE auf sich nehmen in eine fremde Stadt zu ziehen und dort ein neues Leben aufzubauen. Eigentlich eher andersrum. Berlin muss das noch lernen. Und dann zieh ich auch hin.
This Berlin attitude reminds me of the English attitude. Somehow the city seems to think and hope to be disconnected from the rest of the world because everything would be better then. Of course, that’s nostalgic & idiotic.
The more open and interlinked a person/society/city is the better/richer/more confident it will become. Also, Berlin/England are extremely dependent of the rest of the world.
It’s probably this dependency combined with an ideological sense of entitlement (capital city, “Ich bin ein Berliner”/empire, colonialism) which is causing these resentments towards “the others”. They become particularly apparent when “the others” are even richer and more confident.
Just because you were born somewhere doesn’t mean you’ve got more rights than people who made the EFFORT to move to a different city to build up a new life there. Actually it should be the other way round. Berlin still has to learn that. And that’s when I’m moving there.
That last paragraph is a very valid point, Christian. Thanks for bringing that up. I drained my savings and uprooted my life–6,000 miles away–to move to Berlin. Not to take jobs and be noisy and drive up rents but to live somewhere new, gain cultural insight, improve my speaking, and more. I don’t speak perfect German but I have been studying the language for three years and imagine in a few more I will be ever better. And to be on the receiving end of this kind of unsubstantiated hatred is ridiculous.
As for the above claim that we are taking all the jobs AND not bothering to learn the language, if anyone is taking away your German jobs, perhaps it’s Germans from elsewhere. That’s because the people who DON’T learn the language aren’t getting the jobs. Certainly there are plenty of startups with funding from outside Germany and those are English-speaking jobs created often by English-speaking people. Regardless, we still pay taxes and health insurance. We still buy into the system and don’t merely extract the benefits of it for nothing. Additionally, anyone who wants to take a “German job” must also speak German. So we learn the language if we want to, and we pay the taxes, and isn’t that better than hanging out in a city and not making an effort to integrate?
The level of Thilo Sarrazin ideology that Berlingirl seems to be espousing makes me sad. We all have difficult moments in our lives, but searching for others to lay blame on does nothing to alleviate the problem. If anyone is the real culprit, it’s government, politics, economics–things much bigger than us–and not the people in Berlin or elsewhere trying to live fulfilling and honest lives.
There are always two sides of the same coin, right?
It’s very sad that some “Berliner” complain about “newcomers”. We don’t own this city, and we shouldn’t be stupid enough to wish everything would stay the same. Neukölln was a terrible area 10 years ago.
However, some “newcomers” also behave in a most unfortunate way. I guess it’s got something to do with the “Berlin narrative”, also described and thus fostered in this article. “Yeah, let’s all move to Berlin, it’s so f*** great there, we can party all week and hang out on the streets and drink and just make some cool projects because there’s no work anyway but hey it’s so cheap and we can just be super artsy and hip and then drink some more.” The Berlinergasm.
It’s just that, well, Berlin is not an amusement park where the biggest nuisance is having to go to the Zollamt to pick up one’s latest purchase from the US! It’s a city with severe financial problems, it’s a part of Germany (yes, there’s actually more than Berlin…), it’s a real place where people live, work, pay taxes, send their kids to school, pay their loans and grow old.
It’d be great if some “newcomers” were be a bit more aware of this and looked at Berlin not just as a place to party, be artsy and hip…
My sincere thanks for this.
LAST PICTURE!
Winter? Goddamn, I moved from Copenhagen and winter here gave me berlinergasms. Nobody has any right to complain about shitty winters unless it’s -40 with windchill and vikings are shoving needle sharp pukesicles into your eyes while you bike ride in a howling gale to some shitty cafe where they’ll charge you 10 euro for a lukewarm glass of glogg in the mid-day dim they call “hyggelig.” If I see a sad person this winter I’m going to kick their ass straight to Denmark.
Just: wow! Meegalolz!
I’m booking a flight immediately. I need to be part of this City. I will bring a tent as this will answer the accommodation problem.
Haha crymax / Fuck the BVG!
I can tell we’re going to have to crowdsource some additions to the list.
Thanks for the immediate, positive response guys!
“Sometimes that happiness will feel hard to contain and will just sort of overflow into a wave of temporary euphoria of thanks; thanks that you escaped that town, thanks that here you’re free to reinvent yourself as you always wanted to be, just simple thanks that you get to live here”
This just made me cry tears of joy. It evoked a Berlinergasm that was also a crymax. Brilliant.
PS I’m off to have some Berlinergasms!
#1: YES. YES. I daresay the reason the winter doesn’t impinge on my desire to live here is because everyone else is down in the winter, not just me.
#2: For my part, I moved West when I first got here and have never had to deal with the apartment hunt described. Not sure if it’s because I’m lucky or because when I tell people where I live, they’re like “Huh! …. I would never live there.”
#4: I used to whinge about young adult French kiddies moving to Berlin for the summer and going positively kuckoo about how awesome Berlin (read: Berlin when you don’t need to have an income) was, but then I decided to get over myself.
Also, the Berlinergasm definition is great! Thanks for coming up for a word for it (even though I can’t actually use that word in front of my parents.)
Loved this! Totally accurate, and even my Berlin born-and-raised boyfriend agrees with this… I would add that you also know you’re a Berliner when you have been a successful Schwarzfahrer 99% of the time but got that ticket that one time that makes you occasionally say things like “Fuck the BVG!”
Another überlin gem – I was definitely nodding knowingly to a few of these and funny that quite a few came up in our conversations yesterday. Most of all though, I love that the Flohmarkt Frogman made an appearance!