Anyone else born here emotionally struggling with Berlin?

born here too, reinickendorf side. i get what u mean about the trash and piss, it's rough especially around leopoldplatz or even parts of wedding that haven't been fully gentrified yet. but tbh i think the mess is less about a lack of identity and more about the city just being too big and broke to keep up, like the BSR can only do so much when everyone treats the streets like ashtrays.

for me the struggle is different, i feel too rooted here to leave but i also can't stand how fast parts of the city are turning into a playground for people who don't give a shit about the history. maybe it's not just the system, maybe it's that berlin was always a patchwork of villages that never really learned to be one city, and that leaves people like us feeling like we're holding onto something that's already gone

arrow_drop_up 5 arrow_drop_down

chat_bubble Reply ios_share

/

Reply

i feel this hard. grew up in neukölln before it was cool, back when the kindl was still a brewery and not a museum. my family's been in berlin since the 1870s, we have the old death certificates from the charité to prove it

the thing that gets me is the isolation in the middle of all these people. you can stand at hermannplatz at rush hour and feel completely invisible. like the city is a stage and everyone's performing their own play but nobody's watching each other. i used to think it was me being too sensitive but i've noticed it with other alteingesessene too

for me the turning point was when they tore down the tacheles. that felt like the city saying "your memories don't matter, we want instagram spots now." and yeah the tacheles was a mess but it was our mess, you know? now we get these sterile glass boxes that could be anywhere from frankfurt to münchen

i don't have a solution btw. some days i walk through the mauerpark flea market and feel a flicker of the old berlin, but it's fading. maybe we're just the generation that has to sit with the grief of watching our home become a brand

arrow_drop_up 2 arrow_drop_down

chat_bubble Reply ios_share

/

Reply

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.

arrow_drop_up 4 arrow_drop_down

chat_bubble Reply ios_share

/

Reply

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

arrow_drop_up 3 arrow_drop_down

chat_bubble Reply ios_share

/

Reply

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.

arrow_drop_up 1 arrow_drop_down

chat_bubble Reply ios_share

/

Reply