#383: No May Day mayday, Joe's out, Water main break (again)
Go ahead -- hyphenate your last name
Dear 20 Percent,
We’ve been reminding you to do your shopping the day before a workday holiday since before we started this newsletter but over the past two years I’ve been thinking it isn’t as imperative as it used to be. And yesterday I realized why.
It’s because Berlin (German?) grocery stores acknowledged customer service (gasp!). They — 1— started staying open longer and — 2 — started constantly restocking shelves the day before a holiday.
When I moved to Frankfurt am Main in 1998, grocery stores closed at 6pm, with the exception of the grocery store in the basement of the Kaufhof department store downtown. Anyone with a job had to stock up there after work on the day before Himmelfahrt or the Tag der deutschen Einheit and it felt like shopping among a herd of buffalo.
And even then all but the most expensive versions of whatever you wanted were sold out — and often even that was gone. It wasn’t any different when I relocated to Berlin.
But lately stores — even Aldi and Lidl — have been giving themselves makeovers to resemble Sydney coffeehouses or London markets … and staying open later. When they first started staying open late you ran the risk of not getting what you wanted but now those annoying stocking people block the aisles with fresh wares until late in the night — you can get whatever you want for Easter before meeting your friends for a holiday beer or, in some cases, even after.
Our What’s-Open-When-Nothing’s-Open page still seems important but no longer imperative. And, anyway, if you forget to do the shopping and discover all the stores are closed, it’s like the universe giving you permission to just have two (vegan) döners that day.
The weekend started yesterday so enjoy your second weekend this week.
Andrew
PS: Thanks to those that came out to the show last night. It was admittedly an odd one.
A nice day off with a protest
Maybe it’s the relaxed atmosphere of the pre-holiday shopping but even the super-leftist taz newspaper says May 1, once a day set aside for violent clashes between protestors and police, is now just a fun, non-violent protest with little police presence. The cops say 10,000 marched in the Revolutionary May 1 Demonstration in Kreuzberg-Friedrichshain. Organizers say a record 30,000. The truth is somewhere in between. The Israel-Hamas war only played a subordinate role as a sub-demonstration of the main protest, according to taz. No better way to celebrate the rights workers have won than a memorable protest to remind us of how capitalism is eroding everyone’s freedom and how much more work is needed to make the workplace — and the world — better. And thanks to those that marched on April 30 in the FLINTA Take Back the Night protest — also peaceful and also unfortunately an important demonstration.
Bad year to be named ‘Joe’
If you happen to be a politician named Joe, holiday shopping is no longer an issue because you’ve likely got lots of time on your hands — Berlin culture minister Joe Chialo (CDU) Friday turned in his resignation. He has been maligned by Berlin’s cultural scene as the face of brutal budget cuts — about €130 million less in annual subsidies, or 12% of the total cultural budget — this year and was supposed to get a high-falootin job in the federal culture ministry but that fell through. Instead, he’s taking his ball and going home. The former heavy metal band member and record exec said he thinks the budget cuts will do irreparable damage to Berlin’s culture scene but it also sounds like he wants to do some verbal damage to a Berlin government led by the party (the conservative CDU) that denied him a spot in the big leagues.
Hyphenated-names are-OK
I can’t find any news articles about how German grocery stores have gotten friendlier but one thing German news outlets love are HERE’S WHAT’S NEW THIS MONTH articles about legal changes or new water policies that are so fiddly as to be insignificant but this month something happened that actually matters — starting May 1 people can now have hyphenated last names in Germany (details at RBB24). I didn’t used to be able, for example, to just add my wife’s family name to mine and become Andrew Bulkeley-Heipl, nor could my kids use that last name (the excuse was always that after generations you’d just have endless hyphenated names). But now you can. Even better — if parents aren’t married they can give their kids both their last names. Apparently, several national/cultural traditions were locked out by the practice — but now they get to be themselves in Germany.
No water for you!
Tuesday night I briefly cursed German grocery stores for closing so early — 11 pm — because around midnight our water suddenly went out and I needed to brush my teeth. Turns out a century-old water main at Platz der Vereinten Nationen in F-Hain burst, leaving most of northeastern Berlin dry, according to RBB24. It’s the second such liquid disaster this year — a similar main burst in Wedding on New Years — and will take months to repair. Water resumed just a few hours later but part of Mollstr. will be closed while the pipe is replaced.
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Factoid
€1.6 billion in cash once held by the SED, the East German communist party, as well as youth organization Freie Deutsche Jugend, or FDJ, was seized after East Germany crumbled and has since been used to fund social projects in the former country. 8% of the €555,736 distributed this year went to Berlin: the Tierpark is using it to buy new refrigerators, the Sportforum in Weissensee is buying some cars and techno club RSO in Treptow is updating its toilets, according to RBB24. Today is also the day West and East Germany in 1990 agreed to an exchange rate on their two currencies. It was basically 1:1 with a few caveats so complex only a German could understand.
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We were allowed to give our sons hyphenated surnames before this rule-change because Germany also accepts the rules of a foreign parent's home country and in Denmark they have no issues with hyphenated names.
Having a hard time taking the May 1 summary seriously tbh. Anyone there would have seen the excessive number of paddywagons and riot cops lining the entire route to Südstern, plus the sheer volume of keffiyehs everywhere was something to behold (hardly a marginal issue). Admittedly the vibe was overall less intense than usual, but idk, maybe cancel the taz subscription and actually see what it's like on the ground? I unsubscribed last year as I felt you did not take the violence enacted by the police at the Dyke March seriously and did another "some say, others say" job on that one too. Maybe I'm misremembering and being unfair, I'm just sick of the discourse in this country 🤷♀️