Dear 20 Percent,
Huge thanks to everyone who came out for the comedy night last night (as well as the performers). I had a blast. We’re going to start doing it monthly — next time we’ll aim for a little less dark humor and I’ll MC. Die Göre (The Brat) isn’t the best-named club for English comedy but it’s a great club, for the audience and performers. More soon.
And with that milestone out of the way comes Milestone #2: As soon as I’m done with this newsletter, I’ll be filing my application for German citizenship. My accountant dropped off the necessary audit yesterday afternoon — on paper. I’ll have to scan it in.
I’ll keep you abreast of the developments — I’ve usually had good luck with the Ausländerbehörde. I’ve had such pleasant experiences that I sometimes even wonder if we all go to the same Ausländerbehörde — yours has free champagne and a Maitre’d too, right?
I’m hoping it will translate to a quick processing time on my applications.
Both the comedy night and the application make me nervous and giddy. Hopefully the application will go off as well as the comedy.
Have a good, cooler weekend. I don’t mind the cooler temps but I hate that it now gets dark at 8pm.
Andrew
Thanks to today’s main sponsor, Hypofriend!
Power outage as protest
The longest power outage in Berlin since WWII is now history. Stromnetz Berlin, the power network operator, said all 45,000 customers in Treptow-Köpenick affected by the blackout were reconnected by Thursday afternoon, according to Tagesspiegel. However, some reports suggested isolated cases of customers who remain without power Friday. Left-wing terrorists allegedly set a high-voltage tower and lines in Johannisthal alight late Monday to protest defense-related technology companies in Technologiepark Adlershof. Some of those affected also had no hot water because a nearby power plant that supplied the water was also hit by the cut power line. The 60-hour outage eclipsed a 30-hour blackout in 2019 that affected 30,000 residences and commerical customers.
New subway cars
And in other returning-to-normal service news: BVG this week put the first of 140 new small-profile subway trains into service on the U2, which BVG CEO Henrik Falk says will help make his public transportation company more reliable. All 140 should be rolling by the end of the year on lines U1 to U4 and will become part of a fleet that is an average of 30-years old and 20% of which are always out for repairs, according to RBB24. The trains — as well as larger models that will go in service next year on lines U5 to U9 — don’t have air con. Like a true German, CEO Falk said opening the window was more effective.
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A100 do over
And hence we arrive at Oh-So-German story No. 2: Extending an Autobahn to relieve congestion only to create more congestion — anyone who’s dealt with German bureaucracy will be familiar the procedure. Berlin traffic senator Ute Bonde (CDU) will remove one of three left-turn lanes at the end of the new A100 extension at Treptower Park and extend a temporary bus lane on Elsenstraße, according to RBB24. The pol hopes the moves will relieve traffic jams that have often blocked the intersection at Am Treptower Park and Elsenstraße since the extension opened August 27 and flooded the residential neighborhood with highway traffic. If not, she says she’ll think of something else — one wonders why traffic experts thought it was a good idea to have a new three-lane highway end in a street construction site that was a problem even without the added traffic.
🍺 🥨 Germany-wide news 🥨 🍺
🎻 Belgian festival uninvited German orchestra with Israeli conductor
👩⚖️ Solingen terrorist gets life
🛩️ Your German pilot was taking a nap while flying
🇨🇳 Far-right pol with China links stripped of immunity
Factoid
Berlin’s accelerated naturalization process has reversed a muted exodus of Germans from the country’s capital, according to T-online. The number of German nationals in Berlin rose by 6,336 in the first six months of 2025 while 836 foreigners left. The number of Germans in Berlin has declined for several years. The news site said naturlizations were part of the reason — Berlin has already welcomed 21,000 new Germans this year after 25,000 in all of 2024. The proportion of immigrant Germans among the Germans in Berlin rose to 16.9% in the first half of 2025 compaed to 16.2% at the end of 2024. We named the newsletter four years ago after the 20% of Berliners who then didn’t have a German passport — you now account for 24.9% of Berlin’s population.
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Thank you for the newsletter! “Left wing terrorists” is extreme and fear mongering. These are people trying to do something to positively affect our society.