#471: RAW closures, infrastructure woes, latest poll
Görlitzer Park now with opening hours
Hey 20 Percent!
My father used to always say the best thing about jogging was when you were done. This was in the day before endorphins and dopamine were common terms. It was a joke about being lazy.
And lazy my father was.
But it’s also how I feel about the Berlin winter. The longer, colder and darker it is, the better that first ray of sun feels.
My Deutsche Bahn train was inexplicably 10 minutes late for its first stop of the day this morning but standing in the sun at Gesundbrunnen waiting for those 10 extra minutes was better than the endorphins I got from running two marathons or the dopamine of my childrens’ smiles.
Enjoy your weekend — I’m not sure how you can’t.
Andrew
💡Next Tuesday, March 3, Maurice is doing another 20% Berlin News Quiz at Geist im Glas in Neukölln - and there are a handful of tickets left. Grab ‘em while you can.
The end of RAW?
And while I’m glad winter is nearing its end, I fear for the end of the RAW area in Friedrichshain, a pearl of culture that’s getting too rare in Berlin. Six clubs and restaurants at the site have been told to cease operations by their landlord, ostensibly over fire safety concerns, according to RBB24. Cassiopeia, Crack Bellmer, Weißer Hase, Lokschuppen, Zum schmutzigen Hobby and Emma Pea were all told to close their doors in January by real estate investor Kurth Immobilien GmbH. Club owners say they are caught in a battle between the F-Hain-Xberg district and the investor, who bought the site in 2015. Kurth wants to build some residential units in the area but the district said that makes an in-progress re-zoning unnecessarily difficult. Housing would also raise the spectre of noise issues, which have led to the closure of at least half a dozen old-school Berlin clubs.
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You’re not supposed to ride on the sidewalk
I would welcome an end to Berlin’s crumbling infrastructure as well but I fear we’re just at the beginning — for the second time in as many days a mini BSR streetsweeper broke through a sidewalk. The first was Wednesday in Steglitz when wood supports under the pavement broke but Thursday in Mitte a sweeper crunched into a sewage pipe from the adjacent building, according to Tagesspiegel. No poop has left the building since. The fire department got the vehicles back in-service and no injuries were reported.
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Tschüssi Wegner!
And a recent poll about the state elections in September indicates an end to our CDU-led government. The conservatives rule together with the center-left SPD but that constellation would have collected just 38% of the vote, down from 46.6% in 2023, were the election last Sunday — not enough to govern. Most likely is the red-red-green coalition we had before made up of the left-wing Die Linke, environmentalist Die Grüne and the SPD with 46%. The ̶N̶a̶z̶i̶ far-right AfD got 17% of the theoretical votes, the second-most behind the CDU’s 22%. The SPD was third at 16%. Cute fact: The poll is known colloquially as the Sonntagesfrage (Sunday Question), because pollsters ask how respondents would vote were the election on Sunday.
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Görli sleep in
And Sunday is the end of hanging out in Görlitzer Park after 10pm. Starting March 1, rent-a-cops will eject anyone in the park after 10pm but activists against the park’s closing hours have called for a sit in (sleep in?) Sunday. The protest will begin in the neighborhood at 6pm and then move into the park at 7.30pm where it, like every good Berlin protest, will more resemble a party. The closing hours are supposed to limit crime in the area but neighbors fear it will just push the dealing and related activity into the streets.
🍺 🥨 Germany-wide news 🥨 🍺
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Factoid
Two years ago on this day left-wing domestic terrorist Daniela Klette was arrested in her Kreuzberg apartment after a 30-year manhunt. She’s accused of taking part in at least 13 robberies that were used to finance the left-wing Rote Armee Faktion, or RAF, terror group. She was caught because she had been posting pictures of her recreational activities on Facebook, where facial recognition software recognized her despite an assumed name. If you don’t know about the RAF, I recommend the Baader-Meinhof Complex film. The group murdered high-ranking officials, robbed banks and even once stormed the German embassy in Stockholm, sometimes with the help of East Germany. There must have been moments in the 70s and 80s in West Germany when it felt like the RAF had the upper hand.
📯 📯 📯 Postkutsche (reader mail) 📯 📯 📯
A reader had some thoughts on the inaccessible sidewalks:
One thing the snow has highlighted to me is how Berlin is NOT an accessible friendly city for people with disabilities, old people with mobility challenges, or as I’m experiencing, people with babies and prams. It would be good to highlight if there are stories of these groups feeling unable to go outside for nearly a month/ discriminated against due to the lack of gritting in the snow.
Having a baby has also opened my eyes to the severe lack of baby-changing facilities in cafes and restaurants in Berlin, and lack of ramps to access premises. In the UK all cafes etc have to have baby changing and ramp access by law (I believe...). This could be an interesting thing to highlight and pressure Berlin to change? It certainly feels like hipster establishments, that would probably call themselves the height of Berlin lefty, are deliberately making things difficult for mums with babies - sexist and snobby in my opinion (especially as cafes get lots of income from mums on parental leave!).
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🎙️The 20% Berlin Podcast on Spotify
I’m always heartened to see you two always describe the AfD as the ‘Nazi’ party. Of course, they are not the Nazi Party, but they are just like them. So why the hesitation from other quarters to call them such? And especially here in Berlin, where a) the Nazis ruled, and b) Berliners aren’t normally backwards in coming forwards to call a spade a spade!
And speaking of spades…does the city of Berlin not own any with which to clear all that bothersome grit away?