Friday 30th October marked the second anniversary
of my move to Berlin. To celebrate I
thought I would do something a little different on the blog. Usually my posts are eulogies to the city I
love, the things we’ve done here and the places and events we’ve been to.
Today, for a change, I thought I’d share some of my least favourite things
about life here. I have not dwelt on
large political themes such as the erasing of socialism from the city’s past,
most manifest in the construction of the pointless new Schloss on the site of
the Palast der Republik. Nor is this a
catalogue of hate, rather a wry look at certain aspects of life in the city that
I have found exasperating, so here is my top five of Berlin gripes:
1: People
not looking where they are going
If I were forced to choose a pet hate about living here it
would be that nobody EVER looks where they are going. It’s no exaggeration to
say that I have at least one collision every time I leave the flat. I either
get barrelled into by someone coming out of a building and not bothering to
check if the pavement is clear, or I clatter straight into people who have just
decided to stop dead in front of me or cut across my path, again without taking
the simple precaution of glancing up the street first. Having said that, there
have been plenty of occasions when people have seen me but still walked into me
anyway. I also regularly get run or
cycled into by children whose accompanying adults haven’t the slightest
intention of encouraging their offspring to look out for other pavement users. Just the other day I was walking along
Dunckerstrasse and a small child walked backwards straight into me. Rather than alerting him to the fact that I
was there, his mother glared at me as though I shouldn’t have been. I haven’t worked out whether this is down to
a lack of spatial awareness or just not giving a shit but it’s very, very
annoying.
2:
Supermarket checkouts
My second bugbear is the apparent city wide shortage of
supermarket checkout staff. At any time
of the day or evening there will be only one till open even if the queue is stretching
back down the aisles. If a second till
is opened there will be an undignified stampede by people determined to get to
it first. Also, if I’m standing with a
single item nobody will let me in front of them no matter how full their
trolley is. When I do finally get to pay
for my purchases I invariably incur the wrath of the checkout operative because
I’ve either paid with a fifty euro note which seems to be the only denomination
the ATM machines contain or I’ve handed them the correct amount of change which
they then grumble ostentatiously about having to check.
3: Hipster
hangouts
In third place is the proliferation of establishments such
as juice bars and third wave coffee shops run by ex-pat hipsters and frequented
by the city’s ‘beautiful people’. Every
week a new place with naked lights dangling from the ceiling, rosemary plants
in tins, and furniture made from pallets appears. Blackboards and exposed brick walls complete
the look whether it’s a craft beer bar or a burger joint and no opportunity to
use quinoa or to put bacon into ‘craft’ cocktails is missed. It’s not that I object to these places –
their commitment to sustainably-sourced, quality ingredients is admirable – but
often they have sprung up on the site of a former favourite bar or café and I
would much prefer it if they were there in addition to it rather than in place
of it.
4: Ex-pat
‘creatives’
A recent Guardian
article highlighted the ‘plight’ of the ‘creative Brits’ who are currently colonising
areas such as Neukölln in a bid to escape extortionate London rents. They constitute the client base for the types
of places referred to above and are drawn to street food events where they eat
pulled pork sandwiches and drink cocktails from jam jars. At weekends they frequent the flea markets where
they spend a lot of money on crates and tin pails because it’s cool to look as
though you can’t afford proper furniture.
During working hours they get down to being creative in cafés and co-working
spaces (communal offices where people go to stare earnestly at computer screens
on a sort of time-share basis), power smoothies to hand. I very much doubt that any of these people
are starving artists driven to seek cheaper neighbourhoods. Rather they have come to exploit Berlin’s
relatively low rents, in the process contributing to the city’s ongoing
gentrification problem.
Which brings me to my final gripe. I have often taken my
laptop to a bar or a café to do some work but I’ve always endeavoured to occupy
an obscure corner and respect the fact that it is a public place. Sometimes however, I walk into a café and
it’s full of individuals who have settled in for the day at tables that might
seat three other people, justifying their occupation by having bought a single
cup of coffee hours earlier. Fine if business is slow but not when potential
customers are leaving because there’s nowhere to sit. If it really is necessary
to spread paperwork all over the table then renting a desk at a co-working
space (or even staying at home) would be a more appropriate option. It would
also allow cafés to function as social spaces rather than offices. A couple of months ago I was in a café and a
friend I’d not seen for a while came in so we started to chat, to the obvious
displeasure of a woman with a laptop who was sitting nearby. Eventually she closed
her machine and left, taking pains to make us aware that our discreetly-volumed
and entirely inoffensive conversation had driven her away. I hope she found her way to a more conducive
working environment (such as St Oberholz, which is not so much a café as a co-working
space with a bar) where she could do whatever it was she was doing without
being disturbed by people selfishly socialising.
Now I’ve reached the end of my list I realise how grouchy,
old-fashioned and even downright misanthropic I sound, despite my attempt to
keep it light-hearted. It’s also clear that some of the points address aspects
of the same phenomenon, namely the changing face of the city through
gentrification. I don’t write too much
about this because I would just be repeating the familiar arguments but it is a
genuine issue and if, as that Guardian
piece seems to suggest, half the population of Dalston now lives in Neukölln, it’s
something to be very concerned about.
I’m now going to go back to writing about the things I love
in Berlin, while studiously avoiding kale juice and cold brew coffee.
