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Did people get nicer after you learned German?
I.e. less rudeness, conflict-seeking, negativity etc. In a nu… For those who have arrived in Berlin not speaking the language, and stayed long enough to learn it: did locals start treating you better?
I.e. less rudeness, conflict-seeking, negativity etc. In a nutshell: are you less likely to feel bad/get negative energy from a situation if you can handle it in German?
(this is not a thread to debate whether Germans are nice or rude, let's use one of the other 10,000 threads for that)
honestly the biggest shift was in service settings. like at a späti or a döner place if you just point and say that one they're fine but once you can say bitte mit alles und scharf they actually joke with you a little. at the bürgeramt it didn't make them nicer exactly but they stopped treating me like i was wasting their time because i could follow the process without needing an interpreter. i'd say 60% of the perceived rudeness in berlin is just people being direct and tired of english tourists tbh
for me the shift was most noticeable in the checkout line at lidl. when i could only nod and smile the cashiers would just stare through me while i fumbled with my wallet. now i can say "hallo, wie geht's" and sometimes they even respond before scanning my stuff. it's not deep friendship but that tiny bit of mutual recognition changes the whole vibe of your errands
the biggest change for me was at work. my colleagues were polite enough in english but there was this invisible wall where no one would include me in the inside jokes or the quick side conversations. once i could follow the smalltalk about someone's krankmeldung or the new cafe on torstraße they started treating me like a person instead of a project they had to manage. it's not that they got nicer exactly, they just stopped seeing me as a temporary foreigner who'd leave in six months
i'd say skip the big names and look at studiowest in prenzlauer berg, they do amazing japanese style but the waitlist is like 6 months. if u want something quicker, the artists at bitterlich tattoo in mitte are super underrated, especially for fine line. and honestly, walk past the instagram hype, go to a shop in person and ask to see their portfolio book, that's where the real stuff is.
The Berlin tattoo scene is pretty spread out, so it depends on what style you're after. For fine line and minimalist work, I'd look at A Fine Line in Kreuzberg, they're booked out weeks in advance for a reason. If you want bold traditional, check out Die Wilde Ecke in Neukölln, they've been around forever and the artists there are solid. Honestly, your best bet is to scroll through Instagram and find someone whose healed work you like, not just the fresh photos, because that's where the real skill shows.
One thing nobody's mentioned yet is the tattoo convention at Arena Berlin, usually in early summer. It's a good way to see a bunch of styles in one afternoon and talk to artists face to face without committing to a shop. I found my guy there three years ago, he works out of a tiny studio near Boxhagener Platz and does amazing neo-traditional, but he rarely posts on Instagram so you'd never discover him otherwise. Bring cash if you go, a lot of the booths only take that on the day.