#399: Poisonous caterpillars, Nazi douchebaggery, Copper Claudia
Plus an adventure at the Lost and Found
Hey 20 Percent!
Thanks to social media and the New York Times’ fascination with Berlin, very few secret tips exist here. But I stumbled into one last week that I still think about: The Lost and Found office just to the right of the old terminal at Tempelhof airport.
It’s like a Kaurismaki film IRL.
My son lost his wallet at the Billie Eilish concert and he got a notice that they had it, which meant I had to go get it. When you walk in, you discover that German bureaucratic inefficiency has sucked all the architectural elements from one of Berlin’s most historic buildings and given it a beige patina. It’s immediately clear: This is going to take awhile.
But the employees are (shock!) friendly and helpful — when it’s finally your turn — and everything in the office is familiarly opaque, confusing and unnecessarily inefficient. Like in any good Kaurismaki film, you’ll want to drink a vodka in silence with one of the employees after your visit.
I recommend losing something at least once in Berlin. It’s worth the €10 fee and something few tourists will ever get to experience.
Enjoy the weekend — it’s supposed to be in the 30s. And it’s my favorite street fest: Fête de la Musique, where seemingly every block becomes a musical stage.
Andrew
Furry, cute and poisonous
A place you don’t want to visit right now is Spandau or, more specifically, the area around the Wilhelm-von-Siemens Park, according to Tagesspiegel. The area for years has suffered from a plague of oak processionary moths which release tiny, poisonous hairs as they transform from egg to caterpillar to moth, kicking off allergic reactions in many. All 128 of the trees in the park have the ominous-sounding Eichenprozessionsspinner but Spandau says it’s not really interested in doing much about it. How bad is it? So bad that Strandbad Jungfernheide is closed until further notice to protect swimmers from the hairs. I would make a joke about how no one wants to go to Spandau anyway but I was on my way there yesterday until I realized the shop I wanted to visit was closed (because they have dumb opening hours, not poisonous moths).
Suspect in Nazi attack
At least one small town Brandenburg neo-Nazi thinks the insider tip for him is assaulting people at diversity and LGTBQ+ events, according to RBB24. Police are investigating one solid suspect as well as up to 15 additional douchebags for an attack on a diversity festival Sunday in Bad Freienwalde northeast of Berlin in Brandenburg. He’s known to police because if you’re a Nazi douchebag in a small town and Nazi douchebaggery happens, it’s not very difficult to figure out who was doing the douchebagging. A group of up to 15 masked assailants stormed the Bad Freienwalde ist Bunt (Bad Freienwalde is colorful) festival and left two with minor injuries. The suspect belongs to the far right wing III. Weg political party and was among a group of thugs who planned to attack last year’s Christopher Street Day Parade in Berlin. I have an insider tip for the suspect: prison. Side note: The town’s CDU mayor, Ralf Lehmann, labeled the attack as a garden-level “disturbance” and hinted that the masked men were just defending themselves when they punched one of the attendees.
Bureaucratic ping pong no more?
And here’s some news that could make Berlin better for us and not tourists: The Berlin senate next week is expected to approve a change to the Berlin constitution that will assign specific tasks to specific departments and end a decades-long bureaucratic ping pong, according to taz. Often in Berlin it’s unclear whether the city or one of the 12 boroughs is responsible for something — abandoned boats in the Spree, for example — and, instead, they spend their time volleying the responsibility back and forth. The reform is a key tenet of Kai Wegner’s (CDU) mayorship and one of the few things he’s doing right. The reform includes a wide-ranging catalog of duties as well as the appointment of a committee who will determine who does what if something is missing from the listing.
🍺 🥨 Germany-wide news 🥨 🍺
👩⚖️ Syrian doctor sentenced to life for war crimes
👩⚖️ Germany dinged for response to Gaza protests
👩⚖️ German footie clubs are protected from corporate raiders
👩⚖️ 25% of immigrants in Germany thinks the place sucks
Factoid
I guess they’re like wine tasters but with eyes rather than palates? The Berlin police have created a new department with five officers they call “Super Recognizers”, according to T-Online. They supposedly have super-human recognition skills and can quickly identify wanted or dangerous suspects in large groups of people. Think artificial intelligence but without the “artificial” — they’re supposedly even more capable than AI. One of the officers — code name “Claudia” — is allowed to appear at press conferences but not in media reports in case the bad guys have super recognizers too (joke stolen from a Polizei spokesman).
🔗 🔗 🔗 Useful links 🔗 🔗
Can’t open that link to ‘25% of new immigrants to Germany don’t like it here’…would love to read it, as, well…ha-ha!