#467: The maglev is back, coke cakes, BASF layoffs
The white lady of Grunewald
Hey 20 Percent!
This icy sidewalks debacle is just a metaphor for both what’s wrong with Berlin and what makes it attractive.
Very little functions well in Berlin, which means the city-state seems tolerant only because it can’t get its sh*t together enough to do something. Like clear ice off sidewalks, bike paths and streets to an acceptable level.
Or meddle in your lifestyle.
OK, property owners are responsible for clearing sidewalks in front of their buildings but is the Ordnungsamt really going to issue and prosecute the thousands of tickets spawned by this cold spell? No.
But they’re also not going to ticket you for taking a shortcut when you shouldn’t, eating that döner or drinking that beer in the subway when you shouldn’t or swimming wherever you feel like even though you shouldn’t.
There has to be a better, middle path that keeps the city tolerant while making it more safe and livable but we aren’t there yet. Instead, every time I slip I take a deep breath and try to remember that it’s all just a metaphor for the incompetence that makes Berlin the place I’ve wanted to live for over two decades.
Have a good weekend!
Andrew
Would you like coke with that cake?
You know who’s very innovative, fleißig (industrious) and un-Berlin? Our cocaine dealers. Smugglers hid 1 kilo blocks of the stuff in cream cakes and then packed them in cake boxes and transported them on a bus to Prague, according to T-Online. Officials there discovered 30 kilos in the baked goods and arrested 8 people, 5 of whom remain behind bars. They’re facing sentences up to 18 years. Mahlzeit!
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Did you already forget BER?
The latest sign of Berlin’s incompetence is a proposal for feasibility study for a maglev train between the former Tegel airport and Spandau (see above). Transport senator Ute Bonde (SPD) hopes to get the OK next week, according to RBB24. The start of a collosal bad idea. Tegel itself is already years behind in its redevelopment into the Urban Tech Republic (a technical university, some housing and probably an office or two). And major infrastructure projects are no longer Germany’s forte. Costs spiral. Deadlines are fictitious and a tram that is already planned for the route seems much more doable and realistic.
BASF layoffs
And sometimes it’s the outsiders ruining Berlin: Chemicals giant BASF this week said it would transfer its internal business services unit to India starting in 2028, according to Tagesspiegel. 2,800 people provide personnel and accounting services for the southern German company from its Berlin offices on Storkower Straße. Another 100 provide IT support from Schwarzheide in the former Lausitz mining region between Berlin and Dresden. They’re all now on the chopping block though the company says the plan is still in its infancy. Let’s hope it never matures.
The new old stadium
Some projects do actually progress: Construction on the new stadium in Mauerpark is progressing and workers Thursday used explosives to remove two lighting towers from the old Jahn Sportpark stadium and, to be honest, it made me unhappy. The towers were a part of the Mauerpark skyline — when they were on I took comfort in knowing that other people were doing something they liked in one of my favorite parks. The stadium re-do into a more accessible venue was supposed to cost about €100 million but is now likely to cost upwards of €260 million by its planned completion in 2029, according to Tagesspiegel (paywall), because Germany is no longer good at large construction projects. Despite costing almost three times as much, costs forced the abandonment of a special accessible gym as well as a reduction in the size of another multi-use hall. But please, go on with your maglev train.
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💩 Far-right AfD disappointed in buddy culture
👕 Who would want a 1936 Olympics t-shirt?
Factoid
Since it’s Friday the 13th how about a little Berlin superstition? The Hohenzollern, who ruled Berlin (and Prussia) until 1918, believed they were haunted by the ghost of Anna Sydow, the last girlfriend and mother to two children from Elector Joachim II. Joachim was a Hohenzollern who ruled over Brandenburg from 1535 until his death in 1571. He let Anna live in the family’s Jagdschloss (hunting lodge) in Grunewald but, after he died, his son from another mother was little impressed with his dad’s girlfriend, and had her jailed in the Spandau Citadel, where she died in 1575. Her bones are supposedly sealed in a walled-off staircase in the Jagdschloss and her ghost was supposedly seen in white at the hunting lodge, the Juliusturm Spandau and even the old palace downtown.
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TBH I kind of want the 1936 Olympic shirt. Great social-realist aesthetic, and also downright insanity vibe. Is there some way to wear it with enough antifa stuff that it's just cool and edgy?
Every time the maglev resurfaces it inevitably conjures up images of the Simpsons‘ monorail…