#459: No coffee bet, No apartments, No more retail at Galeries Lafayette
Where did Berlin get its name anyway?
Hey 20 Percent!
The wife and I went out to our regular Italian joint last night for dinner. Former health minister Karl Lauterbach (SPD) was one table over with one of his kids — we often see aging politicians in the place.
I joked to my wife that I wanted to give him a “Thank you for your service” because he caught a lot of Scheiße during the whole corona thing but I didn’t want to bother a dude out to dinner with one of his kids. But he did do an excellent job as health minister.
Then we noticed a Boomer lady at an adjacent table acting … weird.
She got in his way as he came back from the restroom and just didn’t move. Karl seemed confused but he eventually squished past.
She talked too loudly and the waiter eventually confided in us that she’d asked to have Herr Lauterbach kicked out.
“He’s a regular,” the waiter said, annoyed. He should have kicked her out.
Then, when Karl and his kid left, the table said good-bye to him and the woman screeched “HAVE A HEALTHY LIFE HERR LAUTERBACH!” It wasn’t nice and one of her friends yelled at her.
I walk past his apartment often and wonder if it still needs the police protection it gets — I now know it does.
Just a little slice of life in Germany’s capital!
Have a good weekend,
Andrew
PS: The latest episode of our podcast is out! We talk about the free potatoes, Berlin’s inability to build properly and why our tax office is faster than everyone else’s. Here if you missed the other link.
Ugh, the apartment market
Tell us something we don’t know: Berlin lacked 56,000 apartments at the end of 2024 as politicians continue to not make good on promises to do something about it, according to Die Welt. The Hauptstadt needs to add 16,300 apartments annually to make up for the deficit — the past and current administrations promised 20,000 per year but only built just over 15k in 2024 (numbers aren’t in for 2025 yet). The young and elderly are especially affected — students now dole out an average of 53% of their income for rent.
Not teach East Germany?
History teachers are objecting to plans to remove the East German dictatorship from the required curriculum of Berlin’s secondary schools — it would only be offered as an elective, according to T-Online. Berlin education senator Katharina Günther-Wünsch (CDU) had hoped to make the change this summer but school officials said they’d now reconsider the change. As opponents point out: No city was more connected to the two German dictatorships of the 20th century than Berlin.
No coffee bet
Killjoy mayor Kai Wegner has forbid 11 of Berlin’s 12 districts from holding an annual Kaffeewette (coffee bet) to raise cash for the Kältebus which plucks homeless people off the streets during freezing temps, according to RBB24. Districts since 2019 have tried to collect 500 bags of coffee for the service and, if they do, companies contribute €2,500 — residents are usually called upon to donate the coffee. But Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg (which doesn’t participate) whined to the city attorney’s office, which reviewed the event and said it could raise questions of corruption, and then advised against the bet. And Killjoy Kai® then forbid it. The event was founded by Neukölln and that district as well as Tempelhof-Schöneberg said they’d continue to accept coffee donations, even without the bet.
Still no Wedding
Train replacement service between the Gesundbrunnen and Wedding stations is being shelved because it’s little used even though the Ringbahn won’t stop at Wedding until early February, according to Tagesspiegel. The Wedding stop has been closed since arsonists set offices at the station alight during the anarchy of New Year’s Eve. The repairs will cost €300,000.
BMG moving into Galeries Lafayette
Does anybody miss Galeries Lafayette? The former French department store on Friedrichstraße will now become the home of record-makers Bertelsmann Music Group, according to taz. Controversial former culture senator Joe Chialo (CDU) had hoped to unite the three locations of the Zentral- und Landesbibliothek Berlin library at the site but the €600 million price tag gave politicians pause. The Tagesspiegel says a new location under consideration for the library is the Galeria Kaufhof store at Alexanderplatz.
🍺 🥨 Germany-wide news 🥨 🍺
☃️ Germany deploying to Greenland too
🚓 Wrongly jailed man gets €1.3m
Factoid
Check out what I learned at the 20% Berlin News Quiz this week. If someone asked you what’s the tallest mountain (ok, hill) in Berlin, you, like me, would probably say Teufelsberg. Or maybe Kreuzberg. And we’d all be wrong! It’s the Arkenberge construction junk pile in northern Berlin (with adjacent lake). Who knew? Maurice, that’s who!
🔗 🔗 🔗 Useful links 🔗 🔗 🔗
🎙️The 20% Berlin Podcast on Spotify
First the Kältebus suffers an arson attack, then Killjoy Kai® tries to prevent donations to it? Does anyone else think this is a little weirdly coincidental?
By the way - had fun at the 20% New Quiz last week, but some of those questions were hard!