Why are there so many people missing limbs on the u-bahn?

There's also a specific demographic you might be seeing: Berlin has a high number of people who've had amputations due to sarcoma and other bone cancers. The Charite does a lot of that work and people often recover well enough to use public transit. The cold definitely makes phantom limb pain worse for them, which is why you'll see people limping more in winter. If you ever want to learn more, the Berliner Behindertenverband near Mehringdamm has good info on local support groups.

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honestly it's not that crazy once you realize Berlin has a lot of older people who lived through the war or grew up in east germany with shitty healthcare. diabetes and vascular disease are huge here too, especially in the older crowd. plus a lot of people just don't take care of their feet and it goes bad fast. the cold doesn't help but it's not the main cause

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you're not imagining it, it's a real thing. a lot of it is tied to diabetes and peripheral artery disease, which are super common here, especially among older east berliners who grew up on heavy diets and limited healthcare. the cold definitely makes circulation issues worse but it's more about long-term neglect and smoking, tons of people smoke here still. also, berlin has a big community of people from war zones or refugee backgrounds who may have lost limbs from conflict or lack of medical access, so it's a mix.

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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the house facades those are often protected as Baudenkmal so nobody's allowed to correct them even if the spelling is outdated.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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