
Our Own Private Germany - zvanness
https://medium.com/matter/our-own-private-germany-6ce44ac93a7b
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phillc73
I first went to Berlin in December 2000. I was not even one week off the plane
from Australia, and it was cold. Very cold. The wind ripped through my
inadequate jacket and chilled me to the core. I remember very clearly
venturing into the East. Along Unter den Linden, through Mitte and into
Alexanderplatz. Even then, ten years after re-unification, it was grey but it
was interesting. There were still buildings that didn't appear to have been
touched for 50 years. Crumbling, battle scarred buildings that were evocative
of everything I'd been taught as a school child.

Over the next five or six years, I must have traveled to Berlin around a dozen
times. On each occasion I stayed in the same Mitte hotel, ate breakfast at the
same cafe and tried to absorb an atmosphere that was completely different to
my very rural upbringing in Australia.

My last visit to Berlin was in 2012, on business. Mitte was nothing like I
remembered it. I couldn't find the old hotel, or the cafe, or the bars. The
Spree was still there, and the Pergamon museum. Yet, something had certainly
changed and I lost feeling for the city. Maybe it was a case of being older,
perhaps just being there with different people, under different circumstances.

In 1989 and the early 1990s, I wasted a lot of time. Stoned or drunk, or just
being an idiot. The majority of my late teens and early twenties were spent
not particularly productively.

I spent a year in South Africa in 1992, before the first free elections in
1994. I treasure the time and friends I made. Yet, I spent my time in very
rarefied circumstances, protected and cossetted from a lot of reality. If I
look back on that time, I'm grateful for it, as my young immature self would
have probably otherwise ended up dead in a gutter somewhere.

The people in this article probably wasted just as much time, stoned and drunk
(maybe). Yet, looking back they were part of something. Part of a moment that
turned modern Europe, and perhaps Western society, in a different direction.
There was no real comment in the article about how they felt about that. At
the time, they may not have been so consciously aware of their involvement in
a fulcrum, but surely in retrospect they can look at their 1990s youth and
appreciate how fortunate they were to be involved in that page of history.

During the last fourteen years, I've spent quite a lot of time in Eastern
Europe, mostly Latvia and Ukraine. There is a smell. It's not a bad smell,
it's just the smell of clocks running a little slower than in London, or New
York, or Los Angeles, or indeed now in Berlin.

~~~
kleiba
For years after the reunification, Berlin was known to offer incredibly low
cost of living, especially in terms of rent. Possibly the best conditions of
any capital in Europe.

In recent years, though, it has been hit by gentrification with full force.
Traditional everyman's quarters are being turned into "luxury living spaces".
Property prices have skyrocketed since rich investors (apparently prominently
of Russian origin, but also others) discovered the city. It seems trendy to
buy out apartments only to leave them empty most of the year, and only really
use them for the occasional visit.

In some cases, long-time tenants are actively "encouraged" to give up their
apartments so that the owners can either renovate them to a higher standard
(which the same tenants couldn't afford to pay for) or to tear down the
building altogether and build new upscale build complexes.

It's not surprising that you find Berlin a lot different now than when you
first visited.

~~~
drinchev
Yeah I confirm that. It happened to talk about the rent price with some of my
german friends and some of them claim that there is a upper rent-price limit
set by Berlin government that keeps the right of poor people to still live in
the city center.

Isn't this amazing? It's the greatest social state ever!

------
goodJobWalrus
I find it interesting how many people mentioned smells when describing their
first impression.

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freshflowers
And just like in so many places, these people will become the establishment
and will hold on to their position so tightly that a new generation will have
to find somewhere else to go.

Except that in the West, we're now running out of places to go.

~~~
eru
Those people are in their 40s now. Other people have become the establishment
around them. (Though they did have a lawyer amongst the interviewed.)

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ddorian43
I don't get it. They have just occupied a building ?

~~~
groby_b
Pretty much. There's a strong anarchist culture in Berlin. And while I'm sure
the people described in the article are very nice indeed, there are areas
where _any_ police intervention is very unhealthy for the police.

It sounds like for this particular story, people actually signed a (very
cheap) lease with the owners after the fact, but there are quite a few
buildings that are simply occupied.

(Keep in mind that a lot of buildings also have rather unclear ownership
records. And if there's no clear owner, there's much less incentive to evict
squatters. Why risk it when it then might turn out it's not even yours?)

~~~
HarryHirsch
Especially in case of unclear title it's a good thing to have the building
occupied as a squat. It prevents further detoriation of the building and urban
blight in general - the occupants will see that the roof is tight and that the
windows remain whole. Whoever owner there is may lose out on the real estate,
but an abandoned building isn't worth much to begin with, and the city
benefits at the end of the day.

~~~
thomasz
Actually, it can make a lot of sense to let a house rot until it's beyond
repair.

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fakeanon
NSFW.

~~~
eru
There's one picture of naked Germans. Not pornographic or anything.

