When I grew up, Berlin was this famous city surrounded by the GDR (“DDR”). There had been the stories about the Berlin airlift, when there was no supply for food and other critical things. And when you wanted to get there, you had to pass a “transit highway” through the GDR, that you were not allowed to leave.
Later in my life I lived in Berlin for a year. The wall was down for a long time and Berlin was this city that had the glamour from the west, but the eastern influence made the entire city vibrant and kind of exciting.
At the same time, in Berlin everything is kind of different than in any other city I know…taxi drivers can be super charming or truly unfriendly; the infrastructure is a disaster; cycling in the city is kind of suicide and politics never got the city under control or even developed the city.
What happened for sure was, that people made a lot of money out of this kind of unstructured melting place.
Yesterday, the city wanted to constitute the new government and the mayor in the parliament. A coalition was negotiated beforehand between the parties and the new government should be put in place in this democratic formal act. Typical Berlin, it took the parties three (!!!) voting rounds to institute the new government. Although there is an agreement, some parts of the political parties just wanted to express their unhappiness…In the third round all was back to normal. Just another lousy start of a government in Berlin…
It is true that you either love this place or you look at it and wonder…and keep wondering. I am the later. Although this city has all it takes to become a wonderful place where people and society can thrive and develop in the right direction. At the end, it all comes down to the people and their behavior and their voting – but the majority of the people in Berlin claim, that there isn’t the right alternative to vote for. Well, then the city should start an build one.
