#460: Kita death, STD capital, S-Bahn vandalism, cocaine card
Northern lights!
Dear 20 Percent,
I’m grumpy today because S-Bahn problems are complicating my commute this week. To be fair, it’s not the S-Bahn’s fault. This time, vandalism is to blame. In short, somebody pointlessly damaged signal boxes between Gesundbrunnen and Nordbahnhof. And while technicians fix the signal gear, the dreaded Pendelvekehr (shuttle service ) is running between the two stations every 20 minutes, torpedoing my cross-town train trip — which now involves multiple changes with kids in tow.
What is it with the vandalism in Berlin? The Wedding S-Bahn station has been out-of-service since New Years Eve, thanks to some randos setting fire to the station and causing €300,000 in damage to the platform roof, lighting, PA, electrical and telecommunications equipment.
Enough with the nihilistic destruction, Berlin!
A bright spot this morning was readers sharing their awesome photos of the Northern Lights in the 20% Berlin What’s App community. ❤️
News below!
Maurice
🗓️ For those of you who like to plan ahead, the next 20% Berlin News Quiz takes place on Wednesday, February 11th. It’s a lot of work putting these events together, so we’ve started charging a small fee (€4). Score your tix now — hope to see you there!
Boy dies at Kita
My petty inconveniences are zilch compared to this horror: A five-year-old child died at a kindergarten in Niederschöneweide on Monday. Police say the boy was killed when a patio door fell on him. First responders attempted to reanimate him but were unsuccessful. More information about what happened will surely emerge but for now I’m speechless and angry — how the hell was this possible?
Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg tops STD ranking
According the new STD City Index Germany (commissioned by a sex work portal, conducted by the Robert Koch Institute), Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg was found to have the highest rate of sexually transmitted infections in the country. The study of 58 cities gathered data on HIV, gonorrhea und syphilis. The incidence per 100,000 people was 86.2 in Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg, followed by Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf (80.3), Mitte (71) and Neukölln (56).
Powdery postcard
Amateur drug traffickers aren’t getting smarter. Last autumn, a woman was busted at BER with kilos of maryjane in her luggage. In an equally dumb move, someone in Spain attempted to send cocaine to Germany by postcard, according to the Potsdam customs office. The drug was concealed in a plastic sleeve around the card. The police have opened criminal proceedings against the recipient. Ouch.
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Events this week, curated by The Next Day Berlin
💡Pierre Huyghe: Liminals
Opening: Thursday, 22.01, 7 pm-midnight. Exhibition until 08.03. Halle am Berghain, Friedrichshain. Free. After the opening: €10.
Huyghe is one of the most significant artists working today - Documenta, Serpentine, Skulptur Projekte Münster. Here: film, sound, vibration, light, exploring quantum uncertainty through a faceless figure in indeterminate states. Sound partly generated by a 100-qubit computer. DJ sets from CEM and Yazzus after 10 pm.
🔊 CTM Festival 2026
From Friday: 23.01 to 01.02. Different venues. Berlin. Free-€195
CTM Festival: 10 days of sound at the edge. Doom, drone, blackened choral metal, spatial audio that makes rooms disappear. Jan 23-Feb 1 across Berlin. Opening weekend: Growlers Choir’s 10-vocalist metal arrangement, Sarah Davachi’s organ drones, Ellen Arkbro, Earth. Full guide with our picks here.
🎶Jozef Van Wissem
Sunday, 25.01, 8 pm. arkaoda, Karl-Marx Platz, Neukölln. €17.
Jozef Van Wissem is a longtime Jarmusch collaborator - they did Only Lovers Left Alive together. Solo lute that drifts into drones, meditative and heavy at once. Good Sunday night mood.
🕰️ Last chance: Christian Marclay - The Clock
Until 26.01. Neue Nationalgalerie, Potsdamer Str. 50, Tiergarten. €14.
Marclay’s 24-hour film montage synced to real time - thousands of movie clips showing clocks, watches, time passing. Final 24-hour screening Jan 23-24, free admission from 8 pm through 10 am.
Our latest pod:
Factoid
Sick days skyrocketed during the pandemic and haven’t come back down. Chancellor Merz has once again been complaining about workers calling in sick — an average of around 22 working days per year, according to the BKK Krankenkasse — or actually just 14 days according to another analysis. “Is that really right? Is it really necessary?” Merz said at a campaign event in Baden-Württemberg on Friday Merz said the ease of getting a digital sick note issued by simply calling your doctor was partly to blame for the issue. Baden-Württembergers call in sick the least but for us Berliners, it’s 24 days per year. Maybe because there’s good nightlife on week nights? Sorry, Friedrich. 🤒
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Think it’s important to remember that more incidences can also mean more testing and a more sexually educated populace. Districts with well educated, low-key offers (checkpoints, anonymous tests, queer sensitive practices, etc) like Kreuzberg and Friedrichshain, and less stigma and more responsibility surrounding sexual health, will naturally mean more people test more regularly, which means more rates of incidence.
I’m thrilled I’m finally off the dating market despite all the fun that was.
What always shocked me about Germany is the lack of walk-in clinics and sexual health clinics.
Just every day stuff, not “fight with a dragon (medical secretary) until they let you come in for their _akute Sprechstunde_ tomorrow at 7am” but just here’s a place anyone can go at any time of day (in Canadian urban centres they are 7am-midnight, 7 days per week). Not emergencies, but also urgent.
Organized and Efficient. How on earth Germans managed to export this reputation is a complete mystery to me.