People who walk around Berlin barefoot, why?

lived here 12 years and i think it's partly a berlin thing, partly a sensory thing. some people genuinely hate the feeling of shoes, like their feet overheat or feel claustrophobic. i had a coworker who did it year-round, even in winter, said his feet just adapted after a while. he swore by cleaning them with desinfektionsmittel from the rossmann near hermannplatz after walking through the u-bahn.

tbh the risk is real but i think most barefoot folks know the gross spots and avoid them. like they'll walk on the grass strip along the landwehrkanal instead of the sidewalk. it's not about being dirty, it's about picking your battles. and yeah some of them are just showing off, like "look how tough i am stepping on broken glass" but most are just normal people who find shoes uncomfortable.

i wouldn't do it myself but i get why someone would. berlin's already grimy in a way that makes you stop caring about a little dirt.

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honestly i get it more than i want to admit. been here 8 years and i tried it once on a dare after a party near Boxhagener Platz. the ground feels completely different when you're not filtering it through rubber and foam, like you actually notice the texture of cobblestone vs asphalt. but yeah the U8 is a nightmare, i stepped on a wet cigarette near Kottbusser Tor and that was it for me. i think for some people it's less about spirituality and more about just rebelling against the whole "you must wear shoes" thing, like a small act of freedom in a city that's already pretty chaotic.

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I've got a friend who does it and he says it's just about feeling the ground and being more connected to the city. He's not a hippie or anything, just says shoes make his feet feel trapped after a while. Honestly, I'd be too scared of stepping on a Spritzkuchen wrapper or something sharp near the U-Bahn.

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Worth noting that Berlin street names have official umlaut and ß rules that trip people up, so a sign showing "Strasse" versus "Straße" is not actually a spelling error, just an older transcription. Same with "ue" versus "ü" (e.g. "Kantstrasse" vs "Kantstraße"), both are considered valid renderings and you'll see the ß version on the blue Schilder and the ss version on older plaques or in databases that predate Unicode. If the difference you're seeing is between those two forms, there's nothing to fix and both are technically correct.

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if the signs u mean are the old enamel ones on the house facades those are often protected as Baudenkmal so nobody's allowed to correct them even if the spelling is outdated. the binding version is whatever is in the Berliner Strassenverzeichnis plus the entry in the Liegenschaftskataster, so if u tell me the street i can point u to the right Bezirksamt Mitte or Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf page. tbh the merged district thing is real but the facade signs are a separate story, theyre basically museum pieces at this point

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honestly thats super common in Charlottenburg, the district offices were merged from older Bezirke and nobody ever fixed all the Schilder. if its a real street you can check the official strassenverzeichnis on berlin.de, that list is what the Burgeramt actually goes by. which street is it? some of the Kaiserdamm / Kantstrasse signs are notorious for this.

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