#271: Spargel, marijuana amnesty, yet another WWII bomb

Don't park your bike in Alt-Treptow or Wrangelkiez: it won't be there when you get back

Dune 2? No! The white asparagus known as Spargel. Photo: Stadt Beelitz

Hey 20 Percent!

The joke my father always made was: “I spent a month in [INSERT LOCATION] last week”. This is how I feel about the past two weeks I’ve spent here in Denver, Colorado. I had to speed here because of a situation with him at the end of last month, which didn’t end the way we’d all hoped.

The expat/immigrant life can be tough in emergency situations when family is so far away but, thanks to modern air travel and the internet, it isn’t as bad as it seems — it only took me a couple more hours to get here than if I had lived in New York or Portland, Oregon, the only other places I can imagine living in the US.

But I discovered that even though I no longer have to be far away from a family emergency, I now feel very far away from my actual life in Berlin. Whenever I try to do anything related to professional or personal me in the Hauptstadt, I have to think about time zones, currencies and how to get it done without being there personally.

But I’m very grateful to my various Berlin ventures that allow me to be somewhere else for a week or two and not have to worry about paying my rent — including 20 Percent and its Patreon donors, paid subscribers and, of course, our sponsors (thank you all).

I’ll finally get back to Berlin next week, and then I’ll once again feel distance between me and my extended family — but intimate with my personal life.

Have a good non-holiday weekend!

Andrew

(PS: Please consider becoming one of those donors or subscribers if you already haven’t.)

PSS: Shout out to today’s partners, Kietzee and Get The Flat. More from them below.

The Spargel is coming early this year

While my life may be getting back to normal, asparagus farmers in the über-Spargel village of Beelitz are enjoying a new reality this year with asparagus season starting a week earlier because of a record-warm March, according to the Gartenbauverband Berlin-Brandenburg. The season of the pee-scenting vegetable kicked off April 4, with an asparagus harvest featuring this year’s anachronistic asparagus queen in Beelitz, the region’s official asparagus capital southeast of Berlin. For the next month, the first question seemingly every business will ask you will be: “Wollen Sie unsere Spargelkarte sehen?” (“Do you want to see our asparagus menu?”) And my answer will always be: NO, well, actually, yes.

The weed law includes amnesty

Up to 6,000 people in Berlin may be able to get back to their normal lives as well after facing charges for marijuana possession. Prosecutors in the capital have to review that many cases for potential amnesty following the legalization of cannabis possession in Germany, according to RBB24. The new law includes provisions that says anyone who is under investigation or who was sentenced for a crime that would no longer be a crime under the new law has to have the charges dismissed and their record expunged. Officials in Brandenburg — that leafy state that surrounds us — say they’ll have to review about 4,000 cases. Because this is Germany, lawyers are considering even more complex issues such as sentences that considered a combination of factors, only one of which was a possession charge that would no longer be allowed. The sentence must somehow be shortened — but how?

Another dud WWII bomb discovered

Speaking of normal life in Berlin — the cops said they disarmed a 100kg WWII bomb in Schmargendorf (a southern neighborhood in the western district of Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf) Thursday. The bomb was found during construction Wednesday and the defusing required the evacuation of 6,700 residents. The A100 autobahn as well as the Ringbahn were halted as experts removed the trigger of the bomb and then transported the once-malicious munition away. I always feel like the bomb-makers owe the Brits or the Americans a refund.

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Factoid

You don’t get your bike stolen in Berlin, you just lose your turn. Photo: Bjoern Schwarz via Creative Commons

What could be more normal life than a record €30 million worth of bikes being stolen in Berlin last year? Tagesspiegel says that’s just counting the thefts that were reported to police. Most people who lose a bike to thieves don’t even bother calling the boys in blue, they just wonder where they, too, can get their hands on a cheap, geklautes (stolen) bike. The cops only solved 4.5% of bike thefts last year, a slight improvement over 2022.

Top 5 hotspots for bike theft last year (number of stolen bikes):

1. Alt-Treptow (318)

2. Wrangelkiez (305)

3. Charitéviertel (231)

4. Urbanstraße (215)

5. Humboldthain Nordwest (214)

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Lisa (co-founder of Kietzee and parent of 2)