I am proud to have lived in this city
Our author lived in Berlin for more than 40 years, and now she is visiting the city again for the first time in a long time. Traveling through the eyes of a tourist, you can see the flaws around every corner. And yet she is proud to have lived here once.
DThese pink-colored district heating pipes over the streets are strange. Why aren’t they long gone? With the eyes of a tourist, I’m back in Berlin for the first time in about a year, where I’ve lived for more than 40 years. A special kind of test. It’s amazing how often I hear Allah in passing again! And now also Ukrainian. Mild breeze only when standing in the sun, but there is a gully stench in the shade. Construction sites everywhere, cranes, pneumatic drills. Everything gives the impression of permanent repair.
A dog poops near the Deutsche Oper, its owner looks impassively into the air. In the concert hall on the Gendarmenmarkt, completely scaffolded, violins are being tuned. The place is really nice, if it weren’t for the GDR prefabricated building trappings. Daffodils bloom on the medians of the streets. They thrive in trash and dirt. Wrecked bikes everywhere on the side of the road. The beggars as usual. More homeless.
The taxi drivers, as always, the biggest pessimists and racists. A large Ukrainian flag flies in front of the New National Gallery. Next to it another construction site. The State Library is also scaffolded. Then, on the way home to the hotel at Checkpoint Charlie, a hit and run. All that was missing was a bank robbery. Everything seems possible in this city. There is a catch to everything here. a flaw. a shadow.
Berlin has no rhythm, no structure
The few old cafés, the “Einstein” on Kurfürstenstraße or the “Literaturcafé” on Fasanenstraße, are as beautiful as ever. Almost out of time. In Kreuzberg, where wedding convoys race through Oranienstrasse honking their horns, the kebab tastes better than ever. Friedrichshain and Prenzlauer Berg are so idyllic in places that it hurts. Who came up with that?
A familiar sight in Berlin: rubbish is lying around on the streets in many places
Quelle: picture alliance / dpa
One often hears that Berlin is diversity, multiculturalism. There’s still a misconception that you can piece together things from a heap of leftovers and you’ll have a city. But this one has no rhythm, no structure. The city center is strangely porous. That shouldn’t really be a middle. But in Berlin people are happy about the memory.
Andrea Seibel
Source: Marlene Gawrisch / WORLD
Potsdamer Platz: a draughty ruin of modern times, its emptiness cries out to the heavens. At least on Friedrichstraße and Unter den Linden you can feel the effort to breathe tourist importance into the places. A poor Ukraine plaque and flowers opposite the Russian embassy. In front of the Brandenburg Gate, a dead cyclist is commemorated with much more attention to detail.
Why am I coming back? The mess, the imperfect is home for me. In the old hangout: all the waiters are still there, all the waiters, everyone. I come because of the fresh green in the parks, because of wide sidewalks, mysterious backyards that want to be brought to life and smell so musty that you get intoxicated with the breath of time. I come because of the smiling strangers and I like the many exciting experiences of indifference, thoughtlessness and lust for destruction.
I am proud to have lived in this city. And now she is visited every now and then like an aging mother to see if she can still cope on her own.
“I’m scared,” says the eight-year-old at the Berlin drug hotspot
Drug dealers between children on playgrounds, drug-related crime in a residential area in the green-dominated district of Berlin-Kreuzberg. WELT reporters Martin Heller and Alexander Dinger report where left-wing drug policy, misunderstood tolerance and multiculturalism are leading.
Source: WORLD / Alexander Dinger, Martin Heller