It’s been 1 month since I moved to Berlin. Overall I think it’s a great place and I can see myself staying here for a while, which is strange cause there are many things that when reviewed separately seem quite negative. It all kind of works together tho.
One of the first things I noticed was the amount of litter in the streets and parks. I'd say the worst areas are on par with Marrakesh or NYC as the most dirty cities I've seen. There are parts of Kreuzberg that almost pull off the trashy look as it fits with the run down graffitied streets, but seeing so much litter blow around the parks is a shame. Attempts to encourage recycling seem less effective when the streets of the city are so bad. The extra charge on bottles/cans is annoying since you only get the refund if you taken them to one of the central recycling centres in a big supermarket. Recycling them in bins on the street means I end up paying more than I should for most drinks.
I haven’t seen the darker months of winter so maybe I don’t fully appreciate this yet, but the streets are noticeably open and bright. It’s a nice feeling when cycling around since many pavements have space for a cycle lane, pedestrians, and terraces in front of cafes. Looking into it more showed that strict building laws which were written in 1853 make it difficult to build anything over 22m. For some reason they decided to maintain those limits when rebuilding Berlin after the war, resulting in a layout that’s nice in the residential areas, but limiting the development of any sort of recognisable skyline.
The tallest ‘building’ in Berlin was built in 1969, and it’s really more of a TV tower than an actual building. Seems crazy for the capital of the 4th largest economy in the world to have never made an effort to build anything tall - second place is 125m and was also built in 1969. Frankfurt have all 10 of the tallest buildings in Germany, then cities like Cologne and Munich start to have a couple, but Berlin, for its much larger population, is mostly left out. Wether its bad management or difficulties from the reunification in the 90s, Berlin seems like a historical capital that didn't really really keep up with the rest of the country. It's now an old report and I couldn't get newer figures, but in 2016 Berlin was the only capital city in Europe that if removed, would result in an increase in the GDP of it's country.
Another way it seems Berlin is stuck in the 60s is the amount of shops/cafes that take only cash. It’s surprising, and not something I’ve noticed in any other EU city. A mix of things, from lingering paranoia caused by crazy currency devaluations in the 1920s and 1940s, to social stigma around debt get the blame, but whatever it is, it could be the right environment to test better crypto payments. Especially for the smaller retailers who often set high minimum spends on card to save on fees taken by banks. There’s at least one cafe taking payments in USDC and given the number of dedicated web3 coworking spots, that'll hopefully increase.
Ethereum's early development was centred in Berlin and some of the first projects like Gnosis/Safe are still based here. The messiness and lack of drive at the state level seems to leave room for communities to form and get on with their own thing. Since it looks like the place is falling apart, you get the feeling that if everything was to go to shit that many people here would just keep going with what they’re doing. Maybe this is what gives the other lacking parts a positive take. I've enjoyed working at a few coworks (finally settling on Betahaus) and there is a bigger tech ecosystem than in Barcelona, with pretty much daily meetups for things related to work or not. (Fun daily chess meetup in Prenzlauer Berg)
I was lucky to catch the end of summer since apparently the winter is quite brutal, but I’m pretty excited to see what it’s like. Looking forward to meet more people working in crypto and explore wider tech events too.
