Germany in a mess

So, I’ve come to live in Berlin for a while. I managed to time my arrival with the middle of a huge economic depression and the first German comedy election; one that no-one won but everyone said they’d won. Main entertainment value came from Schröder, who behaved in a way that you see politicians succumb to disappointingly seldom, i.e. losing the plot entirely due to exhaustion, alcohol, drugs or a combination of the above.

It’s strange here; nobody has a job, neither the Osties nor the Wessies. The only notable difference between them from my point of view is that the Osties don’t tend to speak English, which when your German is still limited to ordering a beer and saying ‘not big enough’ tends to be important. That, and the fact that it’s only the old Wessies who can’t stop banging on about how much better it was in the old days.

It’s not exactly like other European capitals. It’s one of the poorest cities in the country (with people having to move to Frankfurt or Hamburg to get a job), there are relatively few old buildings because it was flattened almost as successfully as Nagasaki by the end of the war, and it’s full of all this unused space.

However, there is a Berlin vibe. The anything goes vibe. They hold tenaciously to their tradition of freedom and tolerance and avant garde weirdness, passed down from the decadent 20s into the wild drug-sodden 70s and onward. This often seems to manifest itself in a need to be able to be naked at any time or place no matter the temperature, but is still undoubtedly a good thing.

Most people here bemoan Berlin’s current economic fate; others see it as a unique chance to exist in a place as yet relatively untainted by global capital’s smelly breath.