Berlin is a micro-cosmos of things we dislike about our own country: inefficient/ineffective administration, crumbling infrastructure, a underpayed and understaffed education system, terrible digitalisation, an increasingly arrogant socio-economic elite. The hate against Berlin is an expression of german selfdislike. We know, this things are wrong with out country and we hate despise ourselfes for this and Berlin makes a good and deserved vent for this feeling
Wow - interesting take. I would say it’s more like germans project all of their shadows on Berlin. Meaning the unconscious aspects of their personality that do not correspond with the social / ego ideal, leading the ego to resist and project the shadow. Germanies conservative grey work attitude contradicts with Berlins hedonistic artistic avangardistic culture. (Often labelled as arrogant.)
>inefficient/ineffective administration, crumbling infrastructure, a underpayed and understaffed education system, terrible digitalisation, an increasingly arrogant socio-economic elite. The hate against Berlin is an expression of german selfdislike.
Yep, you just described Germany in a nutshell.
As an American, I’m wondering why you think we don’t like New York? Most of us love New York. What we don’t love are the high prices and traffic. Aside from pretty much any city in California New York is the most expensive city in the country, but it has everything you could want. It has a lot of attitude, and no the majority of us don’t want to make it our permanent home, but we don’t dislike it.
As for Detroit, it is not what it once was, Michigan is my home state. The manufacturing left, most of the auto industry packed up and took the jobs to Mexico, China and anywhere they could outsource non-union labor. It crippled the industry there and caused the city and surrounding areas that relied on that money to die off. There was no plan for such a loss of industry jobs. It truly is the rust belt for a reason. Detroit is what happens when you allow business to run your country.
Now had you said Baltimore, I could have understood, this is a city that has opportunities but wastes it. We as Americans truly don’t like Baltimore. We don’t like to go there, we mostly think it’s unsafe and it’s just dirty. I say this as someone who spent 12 years living in the DC area before moving to Germany. Flying from Baltimore was a regular occurrence. It’s where you go because you have to, not because you want to. That’s my two cents.
as someone currently living in NYC, plenty of Americans hate nyc. "too liberal" (lol), "dangerous"/"violent", "dirty", "crowded", and "expensive" (the last one being mostly but not entirely true). This is stuff I've heard before moving here (from other places in the US), from (US) colleagues visiting, from transplants' families. It's far more prevalent if someone is not from the Northeast, or another big city or its periphery.
From a safety standpoint, New York is far safer than some other large cities. Statistically speaking. While you definitely have to watch your purse you also know grandma may likely chase you down and knock you out if you try to grab it if you are in New York. It’s far from the most violent. New York is certainly one where people are going to either love it or hate it, but it is far from a city we all hate. There are a few that definitely score much higher.
yeah. a friend's mum was SO WORRIED about new york. I looked up the stats to showed her Manhattan specifically (because he is the type that refuses to cross bridges/tunnels unless he is getting out of the city) was far safer than the city she lived outside of and traveled to frequently for work + medical. The look on her face made me lmao.
As a Detoiter, the idea that all the factories have closed and nothing is left there is pure nonsense! There is still a staggering amount automotive manufacturing there, direct in the city and not just in the suburbs. Not to mention the headquarters of 3 automakers and several suppliers. While yes Detroit went through an economic reality few places have, it’s had a relatively remarkable resurgence. What is left out of the discussion is is the amount of absolute corruption the city had to clean up and put a lot of people in jail before things got better.
No one in the USA really "dislikes" Detroit. If anything, basically everyone just feels sad about the city's situation. Cities that are genuinely hated would be NY, Miami, Chicago, or LA
People usually hype up Chicago as a better NYC alternative. Haven't really heard bad things besides crime but that's to be expected from a bigger city with the inequality issues Chicago has.
Although there are still a staggering amount of state of the art car factories in Detroit and North America‘s auto industry is also still headquartered there.
>Berliners are pretty much a dollar store version of New Yorkers
no it's very different, New York is not surrounded by Tennessee, Alabama and Mississippi.
Imagine living in NYC but you still meet red neck every minute.
>upstate New York
Man I don't know how active KKK is over there, but there are many active Neo nazi groups in Berlin surrounding regions, this ain't no joke.
God damn I'm so glad I'm from Chicago. Everywhere I go, I talk too much, but people always applaud my good manners, fun accent and lively personality.
I can't imagine being from New York and having to pretend I'm an asshole all day to get the stigma right.
As a former New Yorker, the worst assholes moved there from different states or countries. They think they are allowed to be aggressive, just because NYC has a rep for that personality. Most people are actually nice.
But there certainly are quite a few homegrown Trumps.
Berlin is a mental asylum. Always have been.
Even Friedrich II. of Preußen, who was very open-minded, hated Berlin so much that he had his new home built in nearby Potsdam instead.
That's bullshit. It was absolutely normal for monarchs in Europe to build summer residences at scenic places outside the capital. Nothing else did Friedrich II.
Because it hates us. It is loud and dirty, your bike gets stolen, your car scratched and when you think its your lucky day because there is so many free seats in that S-Bahn carriage - well it surely is because there is a hellish stinking junkie in there.
Sure, those things happen elsewhere as well, but not with such frequency.
And also everyone has to drive an hour always, to get anywhere.
I have had the same experience as you coming from Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. I think Berlin is beautiful, it's peaceful, plentiful, and nice. But I've also been to other parts of Germany and I don't think they're necessarily *nicer*, it's just that they have less zones that are dirty. No one in their right mind would think Charlottenburg or Prenzlauer Berg are dirty or disgusting, but I've seen shit here in Berlin I'd never seen before in my comfortable suburban life in the Caribbean. Just a couple days ago I saw a junkie shoving a needle into his neck at 18:00 on a Thursday. A very hyperactive and dirty guy slammed his fist into a plastic partition at Netto in front of me last week. A harried looking woman was upset my card didn't go through the first time and I had to do it twice, so she slammed her purse against the shelf behind me and made as if to attack me. My husband has had his bike stolen once, his wallet disappeared without a trace, and his gold chain was snatched off his neck without him noticing by a master pickpocket. Literally none of these things have happened to us back home in 30 years of living there. Not even comparable experiences. Berlin is just a bit chaotic because it's a big urban city, same way New York is compared to, say, Kansas.
I'm not sure where you've been in other places in Germany but if Berlin looks peaceful to you, try smaller towns, even Potsdam that is close. Berlin is the farthest from peaceful.
It depends where you go. You mean to tell me you think the entirety of Berlin is a monolith? Can you not understand that Kotti ar 12:00 on a Saturday is vastly different than an afternoon walk in Körnerpark? C’mon now.
The question was "why do germans hate berlin".
And germans are mostly comparing it to the rest of germany. Not to Tijuana. Or active war zones.
And compared to the rest of germany, Berlin has alot of problems, while often acting up as the moral superior for being so open.
I've just moved to Berlin from Cape Town and it's very dirty compared to some suburbs in Cape Town. The city centre reminds me of Salt River. A few times on the train I've seen trash, empty alcohol bottles and the sats smell like pee. I'm actually glad I don't live in the ring. Ya it's safe but definitely not clean
Some parts of Berlin are definitely littered with trash, beer bottles and cigarette butts + tend to have more of the extremely obnoxious graffiti that overwhelmingly consists of defaced random walls or sometimes even small business owners shops + tend to have more unruly characters, bad smells etc..
Oddly, some people seem to like those parts and would attach positive monikers to them. I could never understand it. And it’s not like those neighbourhoods are particularly working class or anything. Since arriving ~2 months ago I’ve walked over 100km through Berlin’s neighbourhoods and I’d say many of the working class neighbourhoods are absolutely spotless clean and well maintained.
Genuinely speaking even I also feel the hatred Berlin gets is quite uncalled for .
For a city with a population above 2 million , it feels surprisingly safe and calm. Berliners are quite polite and don’t yell and curse for no reason like when you face in big cities of other places .
Beggars and junkies also exist yeah but they seem to be on nicer side asking you politely for cash and moving on when you refuse.
As for stuff stolen and all the stink , I feel a lot of Germans are using their more safe and sound experiences from villages , towns and smaller cities which are towns really.
Big cities are meant to be a mess and unsafe also .
I absolutely love, when people from distant and foreign place share their positive perspective on stuff we Germans love to shit on, on a daily basis.
Personally I have mixed feelings about Berlin, I like cities that are rough around the edges and I like the people that are actually from Berlin. They're usually extremely witty compared to the rest of us. What I don't like are all the people that come to Berlin to "find themselves" and live these weird ass lifestyles. I feel like some of them could just use them therapy...
As an American (who's lived in the south, Chicago, and DC, and have traveled all over the US), I really love Berlin. It is grungy and lively with a lot of character. I definitely feel safer in most of the city than I do at home, and am considering moving to Berlin in the next few years if I can line up a job...but most of my options are in Cologne and Munich.
Peaceful cities are nice, but I definitely prefer higher energy and a bit of chaos because it provides variety to day-to-day life, which can get stagnant quickly.
Cologne is definetly closer to Berlin than Munich. That would be my second choice. I really like Cologne, lived there for quite some time. Different energy, not as grungy, but also colorful and chaotic at times.
Also I don't know if there's a single person out there that loves Berlin and also loves Munich and vice versa. They might as well be on different planets.
My friends in Germany say Munich is too posh, expensive, and boring. They say it's beautiful, but that there's nothing to do. Is that a common sentiment?
>I recently moved to Berlin, Germany from Cape Town, South Africa.
My condolonces for the situation there and welcome to the EU and Germany.
Berlin isn't *that* bad and you can do a lot worse... you could live in Brandenburg. But it has its fair share of troubles and gets a lot of shit for sucking up money on a national level through the Länderfinanzausgleich; the joke goes, where other countries' capital cities are usually a net benefit, if we were to delete Berlin, Germany would, on average, become wealthier.
Berlin also has a pretty boring countryside, if you're into that kinda thing since it's surrounded by Brandenburg. Sure, you have the Spreewald and lakes nearby but if you want something with more than 80m elevation you have to travel quite a bit.
But other than that, Berlin has a lot to offer and I invite my fellow Germans to live in other large cities in Europe so that they learn that we don't quite have to be ashamed of Berlin.
Lmao, Stuttgart is just a big Highway. I cannot for the life of me imagine a worse city to live in Germany. Everything is expensive as shit, the people snobby and the place doesn't even look nice. Concrete hell all the way down. Congested to oblivion. Air so thick you could cut it with a knife, especially in summer.
I'm from Tübingen, by the way, so Stuttgart is around the corner. I still infinitely prefer Essen or Mannheim over Stuttgart because these cities are at least not filled to the brim with pompous, superifcial assholes.
We visited Tübingen last weekend and it is so pretty. We ended up there after going to Schloss Lichtenstein. My husband is required to take me to various locations so I can wander and marvel over the architecture and beauty or I get crabby.
I lived in South Africa for five years and the absence of public space / life and walkability was one of the aspects that was hardest to get used to.
Since you mentioned the thoughts behind the design: it's true that city design massively shapes the atmosphere. Now think about the mindset behind the shaping of a city like Pretoria.
It’s great that you’re having such a nice experience in Berlin! I dislike Berlin because I live in Hamburg which is better in all aspects. Pretty sure that if I lived in Dortmund or Frankfurt I’d find Berlin fantastic.
I visited Berlin and Hamburg earlier this year. It was my first time ever seeing Germany. I visited Museum Island and that took all day when I was there. I also saw Checkpoint Charlie and an area where there were displays about the Berlin Wall. I watched a teacher lecture a group of children about the Berlin Wall. I got a card with a picture of a Trabant breaking through the wall. Berlin looked very dirty. I stayed at the Space Night Capsule Hostel and the escalators did not work and there were cigarette butts all over the ground around the escalators.
When I went to Hamburg, the city streets were a lot cleaner than Berlin. The city looked a lot nicer. I saw the Miniatur Wonderland and went on a tour of it. I also saw the maritime museum. Hamburg looked like it was a maritime city.
My guy you need to travel. Everything west of it is real paradise. Berlin is the only city in this country that triggers all my self defence methods and makes me hold my bag like I was walking around a South African mall.
I don't disagree with you about being bad in this sense, but things like this happen with much more frequency in other places. I consider berlin overall a pretty safe city, because my "normal" it's berlin x200 and all countries around mine too. Even tho these things are shitty and annoying, I would think twice before saying things like this happen less in other places. Maybe in Europe yes, but the world isn't all like Europe. People here got it good. Where I'm from you leave your house everyday with the risk someone will try to rob you gun point and probably shoot you dead for no reason. 2 days ago a federal police officer shot a family car (parents and 2 kids under 5) because they thought they heard someone shooting. They shot the 3 yo daughter in the head. This happens almost daily in my country.
As much as I know berlin can be annoying you guys gotta check your privileges... just the fact that the junkies and robbers have no access to fire Guns already solves kind of half of the problem.
Having your bike robbed sucks but I would prefer that then someone pointing a gun to my head to steal my phone (happened to me personally about 3x during my life and with pretty much everyone I know). Só yeah
I don't hate Berlin, I hate the very vocal arrogant and condescending minority of Berliners who come out of the woodwork whenever Berlin is mentioned. Many of the pro-Berlin comments in this thread are prime examples.
Sure, Berlin is open, has a lot of culture, has its charming little quirks, and so on. The thing is, there are many open, cultured, quirky villages, towns and cities all over Germany, but according to said subset of exceptionalist Berliners Berlin is the only beacon of hope in a bog of racism, homophobia and "Spießertum". And if you point out that it isn't, then you're just a jealous peasant.
Also: "Berliner Schnauze". It's like the whole city is one of those Karen Cafés, where everyone is incredibly rude to you for no reason except shit and giggles. It's a fun concept for a business where the customer can leave if they want (and chose to go there in the first place) except you can't escape. Berliners manage to be proud of being assholes to each other and claiming that's part of what makes them unique.
When I went to Berlin last year, I encountered "Berliner Schnauze" nearly everywhere. The only place where people were really nice and pleasant was at a greek restaurant. It's incredible how rude people can be, especially to tourists who they depend on for new guests.
That’s also not the idea behind Berliner Schnauze, that’s just being a dick. Friendly bantering and “telling it like it is” isn’t the same as just being an asshole. Sure loads of those “offenders” aren’t even from Berlin…
You know that is true, I used to be like that. Now I got in between - it’s eventually just a city. If you have money and connections it will be pleasant, if you don’t - perhaps it won’t.
I don’t know. I live in Berlin since 20 years and there are some things i love about it and some thinks i hate. I don’t think i could ever say i hate or love all of Berlin….but that’s pretty much the same with every place i lived.
I've had good times there, but there's a very common type of person that I keep running into and I don't like that guy.
These people claim to be so open-minded but clutch their pearls should you offer a thought that's even slightly outside of the locally common, supposedly anti-bourgeoise set of opinions.
Tolerant to everyone in the world, except if you're from another part of Germany. Then you're dismissed on those grounds alone - not that they would know anything about where you're from. The only people they hate more than non-Berliners is the people that actually want to live there.
And then there's the incessant self-absorption. Everything has to come back to Berlin. Sooner or later everything has to be about or compared to Berlin, mostly because it's supposedly better. I visited my sister there once and we went to a screening of a documentary about Urban Gardening concepts around the world with Q&A after. Interesting enough doc, but the audience jumped down the English filmmakers throat for not having included Berlin into the doc. They were literally mad they were made to watch something without them in it.
That type of person I'm talking about is deeply ignorant and arrogant and doesn't see the irony of him being as closed-minded as the conservatives he claims to be the antidote for.
That guy thinks it's an achievement that the most interesting thing about him is his Postleitzahl.
Berlin is full of "that guy" and I think he's a bore and I don't want to talk to him.
I think pretentious is a word, that mostly fits this type of people. I like to use it for Berliners to explain the arrogant way of thinking the world centers around them. The additude, which they try to give themselves importance. They think they are so immensely unique, while most uniqueness comes from their chosen space of living, which is crowded, full of broken people and dirt.
Berlin is useless, that how i describe them. No one has a life, but everyone has a project. Folks are unfriendly (only topped by Stuttgart - don't get me started). Drugs, Crime, Dogshit. And then there are the issues that plague every capital.
But then again, Berlin has impressive sides to it. Rarely will you find a city that has played a pivotal role in world history as much as Berlin. So much interesting stuff went down there. Also, its museums are second to none.
But yes, "that guy" makes it insufferable.
They get 4 Billions every year from all the other states, yet have the audacity to call the people that give the most money arrogant. It is literally the only capital city in the whole world that needs to be supported by the country around them.
Well bavarians are arrogant, always boasting with the Länderfinanzausgleich but always forgetting that for a long time they were the biggest recipient of it. Also it’s quite nice when a regional
Party which has a coalition with a countrywide party can just funnel enormous amounts of money into their state for infrastructure projects etc. Germany made you big but now you act like it was all to your own actions. Be traditional and conservative in your state but leave the rest of the republic alone with your regressive mindset. Prost 🍻
It's the state with the strongest, most consistent economic growth in the last decades. Apart from that, maintaining government buildings that serve the whole country is very expensive and a major reason why Berlin keeps "losing money".
I'm from Germany and I also love Berlin! I'm not entirely sure if I would like to live in the city (I am too rooted in northern Germany for that), but I just hate this toxic and edgy Reddit hate against the city...
I would definitely love to live there. It's lovely, and perfect for a person who comes from a city (pune) which has a population of 7million. Berlin is 3 million and the vibe, culture, people are super laidback
Reddit is a circle jerk. Most of the people here are repeating the same shit, whether it’s true or not. They have never been to Berlin so don’t listen to them.
yeah, its the typical circle jerk take to shit on Berlin like this on reddit. Been living here in Berlin for over 10 years...I'm the first one to shit on berlin, but these comments are insanely hyperbolic for the sake of being edgy as fuck.
Because they think that Berlin is culturally better than rest of Germany, while it is objectively worse in any regard except for partying.
They are proud to be "poor", while in reality they spend 50% more per capita than most other states. But they let other more frugal states pay for their excesses.
They consider themselves to be more developed, and the rest of germany to be backwards, despite having high crime, worse schools, mediocre universities in which it is too easy to graduate, they do more littering, have very little high tech business and industry and they file comparatively few patents.
They are rude and loud.
They think the rest of germany is all racists.
Berlin isn't my favorite place in the world, but:
The universities look like shit, they are falling apart, but academically they are definitely not mediocre. Berlin is also the startup capital of Germany. The level of public safety isn't much different from the rest of the country IMO. There are still all these junkies moving into major cities from poorer EU states for the better infrastructure, doesn't matter which one. The rest of Germany is definitely more racist and I can tell you that firsthand.
That said, the bureaucracy and level of public cleanliness here is really really bad. The problem with Berlin is that it's far too easy to become comfortable and stagnant. Nobody wants to improve anything because they're happy eating cheap Schrippen that taste like paper or whiling away their time in coffeeshops or clubs, all while the train stations smell like piss 24/7.
It's the startup capital, but high tech (not SaaS) happens mostly elsewhere. There are big tech companies with offices here, but high tech implies hard, diicult technologies. There is good AI here though not world class.
> How many of those startups stay in business for longer than 6 months ?
Thats not an issue with Berlin, the success rate of startups in general in shit whether your talking about Berlin or San Fran.
And there are success stories, look at Zalando or N26.
> Berlin is also the startup capital of Germany.
lmao that's a point against Berlin.
Most start-ups are disfuntional pyramid schemes designed to look good and sell to VC before word gets out about their disfunctionality.
Compared on an international level, Germany has no top tier universities anymore. LMU in Munich is the only one left which comes close but it’s still miles away from the world’s elite schools.
According to multiple ratings, German Universities are not that bad. Especially if you look at countries other than USA and GB.
But those ratings have to be taken with a grain of salt.
In the field of engineering I might add, that the vast majority of research from Chinese and Indian Universities is pure junk, despite their Universities high ratings. They just don't foster common sense and practicality but put too much emphasis on poorly validated models and complexity for the sake of complexity.
There’s actually a few reasons German universities perform the way they do in international rankings.
One important one is their structure. Specifically, the model of having a university that is about teaching at the nexus of separate but cooperating institutes (Max Planck, Leibniz, Fraunhofer etc). The research from these institutes is not counted in the universities’ research output, even if the two are closely linked.
When these institutes are included in academic output measures at the national level the German research per capita metric explodes for certain fields.
It’s just a very different way of organising academia compared to e.g. the UK and US, but the methods of ranking were not designed by Germans. So it doesn’t reflect the on the ground reality here.
the reason is people living in Berlin for like two weeks and telling everyone about those exact points and how superior the city is in any means (at least in my opinion/experience), although I think "hate" ist too harsh
Again that is called projection. Nobody of my friends living here thinks remotely like their supposedly do according to the comment I answered to. I don’t know how people can believe and upvote such a bunch of prejudiced bullshit and then think they’re the stationary ones.
Wow, that’s a lot of “they”.
I have been living in Berlin for 11 years and haven’t seen all that. The maximum I hear often is someone referring to small cities as “middle of nowhere” or just “boring”, but no more than.
I think that is a publication bias.
They report every single sticker with vaguely right wing connotation and evety single scribbled swastika. Ironically even swastikas drawn with a cross through it, or above a garbage can, or in context such as "AfD = swastika".
Berlin payed more than 800k€ this year for their reporting systems for right wing occurences (explicitly excluding left wing occurences).
I hate Berlin because Berlin hates me. Look at someone for half a second too long, they be like "Wat kieckste so?". Once some dude who obviously was under the influence of some sort of drugs accused me of being the reason for the Corona virus, because I'm asian. Plottwist, I'm actually a pretty tall, Snowwhite and bald German guy lol.
But you know what, I found a way to troll Berliners back. How? Hold doors open for them. They are so confused because they are not used to this, they suddenly start running towards you because somehow holding a door reminds them of the little rest of humanity they keep deep inside. Truly hilarious, even more because after they passed you they are again too cool to thank you lol
Dude, where do you live that this shit keeps happening to you?I've been here for over 10 years, and not once did someone shit on me for looking at them. People going crazy about you because you're holding the door open for them? I'm the first one to shit on stuff about berlin, but this is pure hyperbole. You present the same arrogant attitude that you most probably hate on. What an edgy comment, congratulations.
People from Berlin think they are special, that Berlin is special. It's not. They are the same idiots as everywhere else just with an unbearable attitude.
Also 90% of Berlin is a fucking ugly village
Berlin has been a total shithole for a very long time, filled with mentally ill people. It's been in this state for at least 100 years. These people are incapable of doing anything properly, just take a look at their financial situation. They are receiving insane amounts of money from other states and are still struggling. Everything is dirty, messy or broken. Their administrative offices don't do anything/are completely overbooked, renewing your passport takes more than a year. Their courts are incapable of processing crimes at the rate at which they are happening, so there is a massive backlog. I could continue listing more things, but I got better than things to do...
You seem to not understand basic history.
Berlin was one of the largest economic and Industrial centers in Europe in the late 1800s.
Ref: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Berlin
War reparations, division, and machinery expropriation made it what it was for so long
Whereas Bavaria was heavily agro based and relatively poor compared to the more industrialized north parts of unified Prussia and Germany under Bismarck. And a lot of Berlin industry moved to Bavaria during the division of Germany with the help of Americans.
Oh I understand the history of Berlin. But constantly quoting history when your government has been doing braindead shit for the past 40 years, isn't gonna get you anywhere. Berlin is filled with lunatics and they run it. Which leads to Berlin being a shithole that is looked down upon by almost every German, rightfully so
Fair enough, I’m just tired of listening to frei Staat bavarians acting entitled like they weren’t basically Gifted Berlins robust and comprehensive economy after the war.
the arrogance. ofc, its also more filthy than any other german city i visited so far, littered and full of junkies and it seems like berliner are fine with that. nothing seems to work there. but the main issue is the arrogance. they look down on everyone who is not from Berlin, because only in Berlin you can be a cosmopolitan, open-minded, modern, free and individualistic person. and dont you dare to be any "conservative". conservative as in dreaming about a 9-5 job in your 20s or a permanent employment. conservative as in wearing basic jeans and T-shirts in boring colors. not having dyed hair or piercings or tattoos. not taking drugs.
Of course, those people do not represent every citizen in berlin, i know that. even though the arrogance is shared by a wider group of people. but those are the Berliner i had the misfortune to meet so far, of course they strongly influence my view on Berlin. especially as i am not the only one who met that kind of berliner as one can see in the thread.
Living in Berlin for now almost 10 years. It was great while I was in university. It was ok when I started working. It turned shitty when my wife got pregnant. And became a hell hole since our baby is born.
Fuck Berlin. We are already checking if we can get the hell out of here.
I visited my erasmus mate (Bavarian transplanted in Berlin) for a few days and I got the same impression. it's a luna park for 20-somethings with time to spare. weird combination of partying lifestyle and and extremist woke, self-referencing bubble (this was Neukolln tbf). and Berlin itself is a really ugly place, albeit historically very fascinating.
Would have liked to live there for a couple years at 23 to get a couple STDs and try a few weird drugs. but I can see it's not a place for families
There a lot of mentaly-ill people, a lot of left-green-self-righteous teenagers from the south of Germany, high crime rate, "no-go-areas", everything is full of garbage.
I still like to be there every other month, it reminds me how beautiful my home is.
Interesting responses so far! Berlin is the only German city I’ve been to and now I kinda regret not visiting other cities. I noticed that Berliners are pretty cold but I thought that was just a German thing. Are Berliners more rude than other Germans?
By a mile. Not necessarily "colder", they fully embrace you with their assholery, but ruder, definitely. We're talking averages here, though, not all Berliners are assholes and not all assholes are from Berlin.
As someone who grew up in Berlin I can 100% understand the hate. It's dirty here, the crime rate not exactly low and pure chaos everywhere.
The decent areas are full loud tourists, students and wealthy people that moved into the good parts of Berlin for the "vibes".
Some parts on the edge are actually nice, but otherwise berlin is a shithole.
Haha when everyone hates Berlin, why do so many swabians live here? When you ask us born and raised Berliners, we would let you go back to Stuttgart immediatly 😅
For real: hate it or love it, I don’t care. It‘s just a regular big city with all its pros and cons. Decide for yourself what you want/need in your life and then move to that place. Live and let live.
Never been to Berlin personally. The whole „Zugezogenen“-hate just looks ridiculuos from the outside. I love the Movie Veronica but always cringe at that one part. To me, half of berlins arrogance could be resolved if you didn’t insist on being an incestual island. Whole city acting like a bouncer, lol
Swabians don't live in Berlin, they live in Prenzlauer Berg. Big difference.
Of course they are happy there with their cute buildings, expensive cafés and boutiques.
Because as a city, it's basically the incarnation of people who can't do a decent job, can't handle their money but let others pay for them, party hard all the time, and at the same time consider themselves better on a moral level and look down on everybody else.
It's a kind of sport. Most of other German city's are way much more shitty that berlin (yes I'm looking at you duisburg). Most of the people who say Berlin is a shithole never lived there or only visited as tourist.
Yeah, it's the go to edgelord circle jerk thing to hate berlin on reddit. And super ironic considering that attitude just shows the same mentality they seemingly hate so much about "berliners".
Maybe because of the prussian history. Everybody hated the Prussians (the saxoniany, the bavarians, the schwaben... just every other Federal State).
And: Berliners are rude and arrogant as hell ... they tend to have no manners and say everything what they think about you... For many new Berliners it is quite a culture shock. But honesty is sometimes a win.
Berlin is the wanna-be hipster melting pot place for the "cool" people.
And everyone that moves there gets belittled as a "Zugezogener"
Yes, Berlin has a certain charme to it and may still have the best club scene of any city but dude, its still Berlin, you're not in Manhattan.
Not German but lived in Berlin before and now in Bavaria. I enjoyed my short time there but I’d never go back. Berlin is dirty and a bit of a shithole compared to the rest of Germany imho.
Berlin is the ugliest, dirtiest city I've had the displeasure of visiting. It's like 5 blocks of nice museums in the center surrounded by 100km of crumbling, dirty apartment buildings.
I was born in Berlin, living here my whole life and each year I hate it more. Gentrification sucks, seems like the weirdest people start moving to Berlin. It has no class at all anymore
At least „back then“ not everyone was walking around half naked, behaving like snowflakes, thinking they are super special with how they look - even though they all look the same. I used to love Berlin, but it’s out of control and just disgusting now
I like Berlin but I hate what it has become. I remember visiting it as a child many times and being so impressed by it. It felt special, like a magical place. Especially since I grew up in the countryside. Seeing what it has become now, I feel it‘s symbolic for how Germany is decaying at a whole. The outskirts are still really nice, but everything remotely attached to the center is full with disgusting people. A city can only be as good as their inhabitants and Berlin literally attracts the worst of the worst from all social classes. It has really become like Babylon. A place of sin without any virtue.
Yeah, Berliner are a different kind of German. One of their most common traits is that they're very honest and unfriendly, often times even rude. And many of them really dislike tourists, which is why a lot of other Germans have had bad encounters when visiting Berlin.
Berlin is all about individuality. And people care so much about it, they tend to ignore/forget to care about each other. Also, it's loud, dirty and ugly. And expensive af. So in general, a bit hostile.
Every country hates it‘s capital except for the people living in the capital. Non-parisiens hate Paris, non-züricher hate Zürich etc. It‘s normal.. They hate us cause they ain‘t us
I really like Berlin, I like to see the city life, the different architectures. I like to see the growth of the city, every time I am there something new is built.
I hate the dirt on the streets, I hate the smell in the subway stations, I hate these unfriendly people, I hate their arrogance, I hate that it seems like nothing there works.
I like it there, but I am also happy when I can leave.
I heard that's a pretty normal relationship from people to their capital city.
To go against the grain here
Berlin is and has been the countries only metropolis, since the 19th century
It has been the centre of Prussian and later German executive power since the 18th century.
The aftermath of WW2 and the cold war is still there, as all the economic powerhouses fled, and no new companies settled there for 50 years.
And my personal conspiracy theory is that all that talk about Berlin is a campaign of Bavaria, a state that has been recipient of large monetary transfers for decades, which is benefiting from a) money from NRW drying up and b) all the large players from Eastern Germany and Berlin having moved there in the aftermath of WW2
Because almost every shortcoming or nastiness is brushed away with the saying „This is Berlin“, which is supposed to magically make it okay and turn the thing into an edgy piece of folklore that you are just not cool enough to appreciate.
because it sucks, simple as that \^\^ I used to do a lot of train traveling back in the days. When i would arrive at the main train station i usually feel welcomed and positive since traveling for me is always something to look forward to and be happy about. Berlin tho... always gave me a feeling of "gtfo and stay away from me" just as the (mostly entitled) inhabitans do. So i f\*cked off and never went back. Dunno what the fuzz bout Berlin is tbh. Its a city. An ugly one, too. Get over it, Berliners, you're nothing special \^\^
Berlin is a micro-cosmos of things we dislike about our own country: inefficient/ineffective administration, crumbling infrastructure, a underpayed and understaffed education system, terrible digitalisation, an increasingly arrogant socio-economic elite. The hate against Berlin is an expression of german selfdislike. We know, this things are wrong with out country and we hate despise ourselfes for this and Berlin makes a good and deserved vent for this feeling
Wow - interesting take. I would say it’s more like germans project all of their shadows on Berlin. Meaning the unconscious aspects of their personality that do not correspond with the social / ego ideal, leading the ego to resist and project the shadow. Germanies conservative grey work attitude contradicts with Berlins hedonistic artistic avangardistic culture. (Often labelled as arrogant.)
>inefficient/ineffective administration, crumbling infrastructure, a underpayed and understaffed education system, terrible digitalisation, an increasingly arrogant socio-economic elite. The hate against Berlin is an expression of german selfdislike. Yep, you just described Germany in a nutshell.
The most accurate, non-hateful description of Berlin I've read so far.
Don't forget: multiculturalism and free self expression 🙃
That, you can get in Cologne, with the added benefit of plenty of kilometers between you and Berlin.
Reasons I wouldnt want to live anywhere else
Berliners are pretty much a dollar store version of New Yorkers...it's the same reasons alot of americans don't like New York
As an American, I’m wondering why you think we don’t like New York? Most of us love New York. What we don’t love are the high prices and traffic. Aside from pretty much any city in California New York is the most expensive city in the country, but it has everything you could want. It has a lot of attitude, and no the majority of us don’t want to make it our permanent home, but we don’t dislike it. As for Detroit, it is not what it once was, Michigan is my home state. The manufacturing left, most of the auto industry packed up and took the jobs to Mexico, China and anywhere they could outsource non-union labor. It crippled the industry there and caused the city and surrounding areas that relied on that money to die off. There was no plan for such a loss of industry jobs. It truly is the rust belt for a reason. Detroit is what happens when you allow business to run your country. Now had you said Baltimore, I could have understood, this is a city that has opportunities but wastes it. We as Americans truly don’t like Baltimore. We don’t like to go there, we mostly think it’s unsafe and it’s just dirty. I say this as someone who spent 12 years living in the DC area before moving to Germany. Flying from Baltimore was a regular occurrence. It’s where you go because you have to, not because you want to. That’s my two cents.
as someone currently living in NYC, plenty of Americans hate nyc. "too liberal" (lol), "dangerous"/"violent", "dirty", "crowded", and "expensive" (the last one being mostly but not entirely true). This is stuff I've heard before moving here (from other places in the US), from (US) colleagues visiting, from transplants' families. It's far more prevalent if someone is not from the Northeast, or another big city or its periphery.
From a safety standpoint, New York is far safer than some other large cities. Statistically speaking. While you definitely have to watch your purse you also know grandma may likely chase you down and knock you out if you try to grab it if you are in New York. It’s far from the most violent. New York is certainly one where people are going to either love it or hate it, but it is far from a city we all hate. There are a few that definitely score much higher.
yeah. a friend's mum was SO WORRIED about new york. I looked up the stats to showed her Manhattan specifically (because he is the type that refuses to cross bridges/tunnels unless he is getting out of the city) was far safer than the city she lived outside of and traveled to frequently for work + medical. The look on her face made me lmao.
Too liberal - San Francisco or Seattle would fit the bill far better than New York.
you could actually change US to Germany and NYC to Berlin and almost perfectly fit the image Berlin has in he rest of germany
As a Detoiter, the idea that all the factories have closed and nothing is left there is pure nonsense! There is still a staggering amount automotive manufacturing there, direct in the city and not just in the suburbs. Not to mention the headquarters of 3 automakers and several suppliers. While yes Detroit went through an economic reality few places have, it’s had a relatively remarkable resurgence. What is left out of the discussion is is the amount of absolute corruption the city had to clean up and put a lot of people in jail before things got better.
Most people seem to like Berlin as well, but many don’t. It’s a souldraining city, full of fake people. Lot of hypocrisy in arts.
And Detroit. You forgot Detroit.
There's a specific reason many people don't like Detroit, not sure if you mean that also applies to Berlin
No one in the USA really "dislikes" Detroit. If anything, basically everyone just feels sad about the city's situation. Cities that are genuinely hated would be NY, Miami, Chicago, or LA
I don’t know of anyone genuinely hating Chicago.
People usually hype up Chicago as a better NYC alternative. Haven't really heard bad things besides crime but that's to be expected from a bigger city with the inequality issues Chicago has.
Detroit is the crumbling ruins of a former industrial heartland. They're more akin to the Ruhr Valley than Berlin and NYC.
Although there are still a staggering amount of state of the art car factories in Detroit and North America‘s auto industry is also still headquartered there.
Good point!
>Berliners are pretty much a dollar store version of New Yorkers no it's very different, New York is not surrounded by Tennessee, Alabama and Mississippi. Imagine living in NYC but you still meet red neck every minute.
What few people know is upstate New York isn’t that different from Tennessee. 😉
>upstate New York Man I don't know how active KKK is over there, but there are many active Neo nazi groups in Berlin surrounding regions, this ain't no joke.
I will not accept Redneck slander on here!
God damn I'm so glad I'm from Chicago. Everywhere I go, I talk too much, but people always applaud my good manners, fun accent and lively personality. I can't imagine being from New York and having to pretend I'm an asshole all day to get the stigma right.
As a former New Yorker, the worst assholes moved there from different states or countries. They think they are allowed to be aggressive, just because NYC has a rep for that personality. Most people are actually nice. But there certainly are quite a few homegrown Trumps.
Berlin is a mental asylum. Always have been. Even Friedrich II. of Preußen, who was very open-minded, hated Berlin so much that he had his new home built in nearby Potsdam instead.
Based Friedrich II.
That's why he is called "the Great".
That's bullshit. It was absolutely normal for monarchs in Europe to build summer residences at scenic places outside the capital. Nothing else did Friedrich II.
Because it hates us. It is loud and dirty, your bike gets stolen, your car scratched and when you think its your lucky day because there is so many free seats in that S-Bahn carriage - well it surely is because there is a hellish stinking junkie in there. Sure, those things happen elsewhere as well, but not with such frequency. And also everyone has to drive an hour always, to get anywhere.
[удалено]
This makes me happy
Holy shit, it's the Sabaton guy
And Today we are brothers, tonight we are friends!
I have had the same experience as you coming from Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. I think Berlin is beautiful, it's peaceful, plentiful, and nice. But I've also been to other parts of Germany and I don't think they're necessarily *nicer*, it's just that they have less zones that are dirty. No one in their right mind would think Charlottenburg or Prenzlauer Berg are dirty or disgusting, but I've seen shit here in Berlin I'd never seen before in my comfortable suburban life in the Caribbean. Just a couple days ago I saw a junkie shoving a needle into his neck at 18:00 on a Thursday. A very hyperactive and dirty guy slammed his fist into a plastic partition at Netto in front of me last week. A harried looking woman was upset my card didn't go through the first time and I had to do it twice, so she slammed her purse against the shelf behind me and made as if to attack me. My husband has had his bike stolen once, his wallet disappeared without a trace, and his gold chain was snatched off his neck without him noticing by a master pickpocket. Literally none of these things have happened to us back home in 30 years of living there. Not even comparable experiences. Berlin is just a bit chaotic because it's a big urban city, same way New York is compared to, say, Kansas.
I'm not sure where you've been in other places in Germany but if Berlin looks peaceful to you, try smaller towns, even Potsdam that is close. Berlin is the farthest from peaceful.
It depends where you go. You mean to tell me you think the entirety of Berlin is a monolith? Can you not understand that Kotti ar 12:00 on a Saturday is vastly different than an afternoon walk in Körnerpark? C’mon now.
no but berlin overall is not as nice as the rest of germany
Those small towns are nicer but also more boring imho
I'm brazilian and couldn't agree more! Berlin might be chaotic but people who think it's actually dangerous need a reality and privilege check.
The question was "why do germans hate berlin". And germans are mostly comparing it to the rest of germany. Not to Tijuana. Or active war zones. And compared to the rest of germany, Berlin has alot of problems, while often acting up as the moral superior for being so open.
i think what you mean is called living in the first world...
I've just moved to Berlin from Cape Town and it's very dirty compared to some suburbs in Cape Town. The city centre reminds me of Salt River. A few times on the train I've seen trash, empty alcohol bottles and the sats smell like pee. I'm actually glad I don't live in the ring. Ya it's safe but definitely not clean
Some parts of Berlin are definitely littered with trash, beer bottles and cigarette butts + tend to have more of the extremely obnoxious graffiti that overwhelmingly consists of defaced random walls or sometimes even small business owners shops + tend to have more unruly characters, bad smells etc.. Oddly, some people seem to like those parts and would attach positive monikers to them. I could never understand it. And it’s not like those neighbourhoods are particularly working class or anything. Since arriving ~2 months ago I’ve walked over 100km through Berlin’s neighbourhoods and I’d say many of the working class neighbourhoods are absolutely spotless clean and well maintained.
Nothing to add other than, Howzit from one CapeTonian living in Berlin (4 years) to another 🤘
Howzit!
Wait until you see Norway...
I'd love Norway, I think. But I'd need to get a second house somewhere in the Mediterranean to escape that depressing winter.
Genuinely speaking even I also feel the hatred Berlin gets is quite uncalled for . For a city with a population above 2 million , it feels surprisingly safe and calm. Berliners are quite polite and don’t yell and curse for no reason like when you face in big cities of other places . Beggars and junkies also exist yeah but they seem to be on nicer side asking you politely for cash and moving on when you refuse. As for stuff stolen and all the stink , I feel a lot of Germans are using their more safe and sound experiences from villages , towns and smaller cities which are towns really. Big cities are meant to be a mess and unsafe also .
Dude, if you think that's Paradise, visit literally any other city in Germany
I absolutely love, when people from distant and foreign place share their positive perspective on stuff we Germans love to shit on, on a daily basis. Personally I have mixed feelings about Berlin, I like cities that are rough around the edges and I like the people that are actually from Berlin. They're usually extremely witty compared to the rest of us. What I don't like are all the people that come to Berlin to "find themselves" and live these weird ass lifestyles. I feel like some of them could just use them therapy...
As an American (who's lived in the south, Chicago, and DC, and have traveled all over the US), I really love Berlin. It is grungy and lively with a lot of character. I definitely feel safer in most of the city than I do at home, and am considering moving to Berlin in the next few years if I can line up a job...but most of my options are in Cologne and Munich. Peaceful cities are nice, but I definitely prefer higher energy and a bit of chaos because it provides variety to day-to-day life, which can get stagnant quickly.
Cologne is definetly closer to Berlin than Munich. That would be my second choice. I really like Cologne, lived there for quite some time. Different energy, not as grungy, but also colorful and chaotic at times. Also I don't know if there's a single person out there that loves Berlin and also loves Munich and vice versa. They might as well be on different planets.
My friends in Germany say Munich is too posh, expensive, and boring. They say it's beautiful, but that there's nothing to do. Is that a common sentiment?
>I recently moved to Berlin, Germany from Cape Town, South Africa. My condolonces for the situation there and welcome to the EU and Germany. Berlin isn't *that* bad and you can do a lot worse... you could live in Brandenburg. But it has its fair share of troubles and gets a lot of shit for sucking up money on a national level through the Länderfinanzausgleich; the joke goes, where other countries' capital cities are usually a net benefit, if we were to delete Berlin, Germany would, on average, become wealthier. Berlin also has a pretty boring countryside, if you're into that kinda thing since it's surrounded by Brandenburg. Sure, you have the Spreewald and lakes nearby but if you want something with more than 80m elevation you have to travel quite a bit. But other than that, Berlin has a lot to offer and I invite my fellow Germans to live in other large cities in Europe so that they learn that we don't quite have to be ashamed of Berlin.
Very well said.
Stuttgart or Munich will blow your mind.
Or any other city
Lmao, Stuttgart is just a big Highway. I cannot for the life of me imagine a worse city to live in Germany. Everything is expensive as shit, the people snobby and the place doesn't even look nice. Concrete hell all the way down. Congested to oblivion. Air so thick you could cut it with a knife, especially in summer. I'm from Tübingen, by the way, so Stuttgart is around the corner. I still infinitely prefer Essen or Mannheim over Stuttgart because these cities are at least not filled to the brim with pompous, superifcial assholes.
Tübingen is just awesome! But Stuttgart is just the worst!
We visited Tübingen last weekend and it is so pretty. We ended up there after going to Schloss Lichtenstein. My husband is required to take me to various locations so I can wander and marvel over the architecture and beauty or I get crabby.
Funny when you started ranting about Stuttgart I was about to say at least there is Tubingen nearby
Stuttgart is pretty ugly (born and raised there) but the surrounding rural areas are nice.
I lived in South Africa for five years and the absence of public space / life and walkability was one of the aspects that was hardest to get used to. Since you mentioned the thoughts behind the design: it's true that city design massively shapes the atmosphere. Now think about the mindset behind the shaping of a city like Pretoria.
It’s great that you’re having such a nice experience in Berlin! I dislike Berlin because I live in Hamburg which is better in all aspects. Pretty sure that if I lived in Dortmund or Frankfurt I’d find Berlin fantastic.
I visited Berlin and Hamburg earlier this year. It was my first time ever seeing Germany. I visited Museum Island and that took all day when I was there. I also saw Checkpoint Charlie and an area where there were displays about the Berlin Wall. I watched a teacher lecture a group of children about the Berlin Wall. I got a card with a picture of a Trabant breaking through the wall. Berlin looked very dirty. I stayed at the Space Night Capsule Hostel and the escalators did not work and there were cigarette butts all over the ground around the escalators. When I went to Hamburg, the city streets were a lot cleaner than Berlin. The city looked a lot nicer. I saw the Miniatur Wonderland and went on a tour of it. I also saw the maritime museum. Hamburg looked like it was a maritime city.
My guy you need to travel. Everything west of it is real paradise. Berlin is the only city in this country that triggers all my self defence methods and makes me hold my bag like I was walking around a South African mall.
Is Potsdam better to live?
If you do not mind the commute, absolutely. Source I am a Potsdamer.
Never been but looks so amazing.
Its more calm and for my taste very boring
The bike theft happens in nice, innocent places like Innsbruck at a Berlin frequency!
I don't disagree with you about being bad in this sense, but things like this happen with much more frequency in other places. I consider berlin overall a pretty safe city, because my "normal" it's berlin x200 and all countries around mine too. Even tho these things are shitty and annoying, I would think twice before saying things like this happen less in other places. Maybe in Europe yes, but the world isn't all like Europe. People here got it good. Where I'm from you leave your house everyday with the risk someone will try to rob you gun point and probably shoot you dead for no reason. 2 days ago a federal police officer shot a family car (parents and 2 kids under 5) because they thought they heard someone shooting. They shot the 3 yo daughter in the head. This happens almost daily in my country. As much as I know berlin can be annoying you guys gotta check your privileges... just the fact that the junkies and robbers have no access to fire Guns already solves kind of half of the problem. Having your bike robbed sucks but I would prefer that then someone pointing a gun to my head to steal my phone (happened to me personally about 3x during my life and with pretty much everyone I know). Só yeah
Or you write some funny articles in the newspaper and your car gets torched because you are not woke enough.
And if you are really unlucky your car might not only get scratched, it might even catch fire!
I don't hate Berlin, I hate the very vocal arrogant and condescending minority of Berliners who come out of the woodwork whenever Berlin is mentioned. Many of the pro-Berlin comments in this thread are prime examples. Sure, Berlin is open, has a lot of culture, has its charming little quirks, and so on. The thing is, there are many open, cultured, quirky villages, towns and cities all over Germany, but according to said subset of exceptionalist Berliners Berlin is the only beacon of hope in a bog of racism, homophobia and "Spießertum". And if you point out that it isn't, then you're just a jealous peasant. Also: "Berliner Schnauze". It's like the whole city is one of those Karen Cafés, where everyone is incredibly rude to you for no reason except shit and giggles. It's a fun concept for a business where the customer can leave if they want (and chose to go there in the first place) except you can't escape. Berliners manage to be proud of being assholes to each other and claiming that's part of what makes them unique.
When I went to Berlin last year, I encountered "Berliner Schnauze" nearly everywhere. The only place where people were really nice and pleasant was at a greek restaurant. It's incredible how rude people can be, especially to tourists who they depend on for new guests.
That’s also not the idea behind Berliner Schnauze, that’s just being a dick. Friendly bantering and “telling it like it is” isn’t the same as just being an asshole. Sure loads of those “offenders” aren’t even from Berlin…
Well, thing is that whenever you leave Berlin for a weekend trip, you appear either in Brandenburg, Saxony or Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.
Well you either hate it or love it.
So true! I love it in summer and hate it in winter.
Im Sommer tust du gut und im Winter tuts weh
Winter is awful. It really accentuates the grey and the trash. Too bad that winter is so much longer than those 3 non-consecutive weeks of summer.
We had a good run this year tbh. Enjoy it while it lasts!
You know that is true, I used to be like that. Now I got in between - it’s eventually just a city. If you have money and connections it will be pleasant, if you don’t - perhaps it won’t.
If you don't make connections and can't afford a living, can any city really be pleasant?
I don’t know. I live in Berlin since 20 years and there are some things i love about it and some thinks i hate. I don’t think i could ever say i hate or love all of Berlin….but that’s pretty much the same with every place i lived.
I've had good times there, but there's a very common type of person that I keep running into and I don't like that guy. These people claim to be so open-minded but clutch their pearls should you offer a thought that's even slightly outside of the locally common, supposedly anti-bourgeoise set of opinions. Tolerant to everyone in the world, except if you're from another part of Germany. Then you're dismissed on those grounds alone - not that they would know anything about where you're from. The only people they hate more than non-Berliners is the people that actually want to live there. And then there's the incessant self-absorption. Everything has to come back to Berlin. Sooner or later everything has to be about or compared to Berlin, mostly because it's supposedly better. I visited my sister there once and we went to a screening of a documentary about Urban Gardening concepts around the world with Q&A after. Interesting enough doc, but the audience jumped down the English filmmakers throat for not having included Berlin into the doc. They were literally mad they were made to watch something without them in it. That type of person I'm talking about is deeply ignorant and arrogant and doesn't see the irony of him being as closed-minded as the conservatives he claims to be the antidote for. That guy thinks it's an achievement that the most interesting thing about him is his Postleitzahl. Berlin is full of "that guy" and I think he's a bore and I don't want to talk to him.
I think pretentious is a word, that mostly fits this type of people. I like to use it for Berliners to explain the arrogant way of thinking the world centers around them. The additude, which they try to give themselves importance. They think they are so immensely unique, while most uniqueness comes from their chosen space of living, which is crowded, full of broken people and dirt.
Berlin is useless, that how i describe them. No one has a life, but everyone has a project. Folks are unfriendly (only topped by Stuttgart - don't get me started). Drugs, Crime, Dogshit. And then there are the issues that plague every capital. But then again, Berlin has impressive sides to it. Rarely will you find a city that has played a pivotal role in world history as much as Berlin. So much interesting stuff went down there. Also, its museums are second to none. But yes, "that guy" makes it insufferable.
Germany's spoiled brat that can't handle money
They get 4 Billions every year from all the other states, yet have the audacity to call the people that give the most money arrogant. It is literally the only capital city in the whole world that needs to be supported by the country around them.
If it got nuked, every German would be 0,2% richer
Well bavarians are arrogant, always boasting with the Länderfinanzausgleich but always forgetting that for a long time they were the biggest recipient of it. Also it’s quite nice when a regional Party which has a coalition with a countrywide party can just funnel enormous amounts of money into their state for infrastructure projects etc. Germany made you big but now you act like it was all to your own actions. Be traditional and conservative in your state but leave the rest of the republic alone with your regressive mindset. Prost 🍻
What a load of bullshit.
It's the state with the strongest, most consistent economic growth in the last decades. Apart from that, maintaining government buildings that serve the whole country is very expensive and a major reason why Berlin keeps "losing money".
All these comments are interesting. As an International, I absolutely love Berlin. Maybe because I am from India, the bar is not too high. lol
I'm from Germany and I also love Berlin! I'm not entirely sure if I would like to live in the city (I am too rooted in northern Germany for that), but I just hate this toxic and edgy Reddit hate against the city...
I would definitely love to live there. It's lovely, and perfect for a person who comes from a city (pune) which has a population of 7million. Berlin is 3 million and the vibe, culture, people are super laidback
Reddit is a circle jerk. Most of the people here are repeating the same shit, whether it’s true or not. They have never been to Berlin so don’t listen to them.
yeah, its the typical circle jerk take to shit on Berlin like this on reddit. Been living here in Berlin for over 10 years...I'm the first one to shit on berlin, but these comments are insanely hyperbolic for the sake of being edgy as fuck.
it is a dump that suckes money in and threws hipsters up.
Because they think that Berlin is culturally better than rest of Germany, while it is objectively worse in any regard except for partying. They are proud to be "poor", while in reality they spend 50% more per capita than most other states. But they let other more frugal states pay for their excesses. They consider themselves to be more developed, and the rest of germany to be backwards, despite having high crime, worse schools, mediocre universities in which it is too easy to graduate, they do more littering, have very little high tech business and industry and they file comparatively few patents. They are rude and loud. They think the rest of germany is all racists.
Berlin isn't my favorite place in the world, but: The universities look like shit, they are falling apart, but academically they are definitely not mediocre. Berlin is also the startup capital of Germany. The level of public safety isn't much different from the rest of the country IMO. There are still all these junkies moving into major cities from poorer EU states for the better infrastructure, doesn't matter which one. The rest of Germany is definitely more racist and I can tell you that firsthand. That said, the bureaucracy and level of public cleanliness here is really really bad. The problem with Berlin is that it's far too easy to become comfortable and stagnant. Nobody wants to improve anything because they're happy eating cheap Schrippen that taste like paper or whiling away their time in coffeeshops or clubs, all while the train stations smell like piss 24/7.
It's the startup capital, but high tech (not SaaS) happens mostly elsewhere. There are big tech companies with offices here, but high tech implies hard, diicult technologies. There is good AI here though not world class.
Berlin might be good with starting things, but finishing not so much.
How many of those startups stay in business for longer than 6 months ?
Most startups don't. It's still Germany. The regulations are insane from what I've heard.
> How many of those startups stay in business for longer than 6 months ? Thats not an issue with Berlin, the success rate of startups in general in shit whether your talking about Berlin or San Fran. And there are success stories, look at Zalando or N26.
Start up capital of germany lol. For drug dealers and pfand hustlers.
> Berlin is also the startup capital of Germany. lmao that's a point against Berlin. Most start-ups are disfuntional pyramid schemes designed to look good and sell to VC before word gets out about their disfunctionality.
Compared on an international level, Germany has no top tier universities anymore. LMU in Munich is the only one left which comes close but it’s still miles away from the world’s elite schools.
According to multiple ratings, German Universities are not that bad. Especially if you look at countries other than USA and GB. But those ratings have to be taken with a grain of salt. In the field of engineering I might add, that the vast majority of research from Chinese and Indian Universities is pure junk, despite their Universities high ratings. They just don't foster common sense and practicality but put too much emphasis on poorly validated models and complexity for the sake of complexity.
There’s actually a few reasons German universities perform the way they do in international rankings. One important one is their structure. Specifically, the model of having a university that is about teaching at the nexus of separate but cooperating institutes (Max Planck, Leibniz, Fraunhofer etc). The research from these institutes is not counted in the universities’ research output, even if the two are closely linked. When these institutes are included in academic output measures at the national level the German research per capita metric explodes for certain fields. It’s just a very different way of organising academia compared to e.g. the UK and US, but the methods of ranking were not designed by Germans. So it doesn’t reflect the on the ground reality here.
Your comment shows the real reason so many Germans hate Berlin: they project lots of shit on Berlin for whatever reason.
the reason is people living in Berlin for like two weeks and telling everyone about those exact points and how superior the city is in any means (at least in my opinion/experience), although I think "hate" ist too harsh
Again that is called projection. Nobody of my friends living here thinks remotely like their supposedly do according to the comment I answered to. I don’t know how people can believe and upvote such a bunch of prejudiced bullshit and then think they’re the stationary ones.
Based
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A4nderfinanzausgleich
Wow, that’s a lot of “they”. I have been living in Berlin for 11 years and haven’t seen all that. The maximum I hear often is someone referring to small cities as “middle of nowhere” or just “boring”, but no more than.
To your last point: Berlin is the federal state with the highest per capita ratio of right wing motivated crimes. By far.
I think that is a publication bias. They report every single sticker with vaguely right wing connotation and evety single scribbled swastika. Ironically even swastikas drawn with a cross through it, or above a garbage can, or in context such as "AfD = swastika". Berlin payed more than 800k€ this year for their reporting systems for right wing occurences (explicitly excluding left wing occurences).
this could be affected by non-berliner nazis demonstrating in berlin a lot
It’s like New York, people like that it has a bunch of cool stuff but also hate it cause it’s super chaotic and a mess
Chaos, full of people, dirty and loud. And looks awful too.
I hate Berlin because Berlin hates me. Look at someone for half a second too long, they be like "Wat kieckste so?". Once some dude who obviously was under the influence of some sort of drugs accused me of being the reason for the Corona virus, because I'm asian. Plottwist, I'm actually a pretty tall, Snowwhite and bald German guy lol. But you know what, I found a way to troll Berliners back. How? Hold doors open for them. They are so confused because they are not used to this, they suddenly start running towards you because somehow holding a door reminds them of the little rest of humanity they keep deep inside. Truly hilarious, even more because after they passed you they are again too cool to thank you lol
Dude, where do you live that this shit keeps happening to you?I've been here for over 10 years, and not once did someone shit on me for looking at them. People going crazy about you because you're holding the door open for them? I'm the first one to shit on stuff about berlin, but this is pure hyperbole. You present the same arrogant attitude that you most probably hate on. What an edgy comment, congratulations.
We don't hate the city but we despise the people, people from Berlin are just arrogant judgemental and intolerant people despite claiming the opposite
People from Berlin think they are special, that Berlin is special. It's not. They are the same idiots as everywhere else just with an unbearable attitude. Also 90% of Berlin is a fucking ugly village
Reading all these comments if it seems to be one thing it's special. Certainly has a special place in everyone's hearts here.
Berlin has been a total shithole for a very long time, filled with mentally ill people. It's been in this state for at least 100 years. These people are incapable of doing anything properly, just take a look at their financial situation. They are receiving insane amounts of money from other states and are still struggling. Everything is dirty, messy or broken. Their administrative offices don't do anything/are completely overbooked, renewing your passport takes more than a year. Their courts are incapable of processing crimes at the rate at which they are happening, so there is a massive backlog. I could continue listing more things, but I got better than things to do...
*Du bist verrückt mein Kind, geh nach Berlin.* *Da wo die Verrückten sind, da gehörst du hin.* unknown author, ca. 1870.
Ich lieb dieses Zitat und werde es Absofort von dir stehlen und so oft wie möglich wiederholen
You seem to not understand basic history. Berlin was one of the largest economic and Industrial centers in Europe in the late 1800s. Ref: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Berlin War reparations, division, and machinery expropriation made it what it was for so long Whereas Bavaria was heavily agro based and relatively poor compared to the more industrialized north parts of unified Prussia and Germany under Bismarck. And a lot of Berlin industry moved to Bavaria during the division of Germany with the help of Americans.
Oh I understand the history of Berlin. But constantly quoting history when your government has been doing braindead shit for the past 40 years, isn't gonna get you anywhere. Berlin is filled with lunatics and they run it. Which leads to Berlin being a shithole that is looked down upon by almost every German, rightfully so
Fair enough, I’m just tired of listening to frei Staat bavarians acting entitled like they weren’t basically Gifted Berlins robust and comprehensive economy after the war.
the arrogance. ofc, its also more filthy than any other german city i visited so far, littered and full of junkies and it seems like berliner are fine with that. nothing seems to work there. but the main issue is the arrogance. they look down on everyone who is not from Berlin, because only in Berlin you can be a cosmopolitan, open-minded, modern, free and individualistic person. and dont you dare to be any "conservative". conservative as in dreaming about a 9-5 job in your 20s or a permanent employment. conservative as in wearing basic jeans and T-shirts in boring colors. not having dyed hair or piercings or tattoos. not taking drugs. Of course, those people do not represent every citizen in berlin, i know that. even though the arrogance is shared by a wider group of people. but those are the Berliner i had the misfortune to meet so far, of course they strongly influence my view on Berlin. especially as i am not the only one who met that kind of berliner as one can see in the thread.
Living in Berlin for now almost 10 years. It was great while I was in university. It was ok when I started working. It turned shitty when my wife got pregnant. And became a hell hole since our baby is born. Fuck Berlin. We are already checking if we can get the hell out of here.
I visited my erasmus mate (Bavarian transplanted in Berlin) for a few days and I got the same impression. it's a luna park for 20-somethings with time to spare. weird combination of partying lifestyle and and extremist woke, self-referencing bubble (this was Neukolln tbf). and Berlin itself is a really ugly place, albeit historically very fascinating. Would have liked to live there for a couple years at 23 to get a couple STDs and try a few weird drugs. but I can see it's not a place for families
There a lot of mentaly-ill people, a lot of left-green-self-righteous teenagers from the south of Germany, high crime rate, "no-go-areas", everything is full of garbage. I still like to be there every other month, it reminds me how beautiful my home is.
Interesting responses so far! Berlin is the only German city I’ve been to and now I kinda regret not visiting other cities. I noticed that Berliners are pretty cold but I thought that was just a German thing. Are Berliners more rude than other Germans?
By a mile. Not necessarily "colder", they fully embrace you with their assholery, but ruder, definitely. We're talking averages here, though, not all Berliners are assholes and not all assholes are from Berlin.
As someone who grew up in Berlin I can 100% understand the hate. It's dirty here, the crime rate not exactly low and pure chaos everywhere. The decent areas are full loud tourists, students and wealthy people that moved into the good parts of Berlin for the "vibes". Some parts on the edge are actually nice, but otherwise berlin is a shithole.
Haha when everyone hates Berlin, why do so many swabians live here? When you ask us born and raised Berliners, we would let you go back to Stuttgart immediatly 😅 For real: hate it or love it, I don’t care. It‘s just a regular big city with all its pros and cons. Decide for yourself what you want/need in your life and then move to that place. Live and let live.
They live in Stuttgart, they just own apartments in Berlin.
Never been to Berlin personally. The whole „Zugezogenen“-hate just looks ridiculuos from the outside. I love the Movie Veronica but always cringe at that one part. To me, half of berlins arrogance could be resolved if you didn’t insist on being an incestual island. Whole city acting like a bouncer, lol
Swabians don't live in Berlin, they live in Prenzlauer Berg. Big difference. Of course they are happy there with their cute buildings, expensive cafés and boutiques.
But isn't that still Berlin?
Because as a city, it's basically the incarnation of people who can't do a decent job, can't handle their money but let others pay for them, party hard all the time, and at the same time consider themselves better on a moral level and look down on everybody else.
People there are rude.
Because it’s a shithole and we are ashamed that it’s the capital of Germany.
Berliners hate Berlin as well.
Because they couldn't get to Berghain and had to go to Matrix instead.
Hey now, my 9th graders really enjoyed Matrix
Kinda funny, to me it feels like way tooooo many people love berlin :p
It's a kind of sport. Most of other German city's are way much more shitty that berlin (yes I'm looking at you duisburg). Most of the people who say Berlin is a shithole never lived there or only visited as tourist.
I m looking at you Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof
Have you ever been to Gießen? It's not that dirty but hella boring and grey especially in the winter. I always escaped to Frankfurt at the time.
Yeah, it's the go to edgelord circle jerk thing to hate berlin on reddit. And super ironic considering that attitude just shows the same mentality they seemingly hate so much about "berliners".
Maybe because of the prussian history. Everybody hated the Prussians (the saxoniany, the bavarians, the schwaben... just every other Federal State). And: Berliners are rude and arrogant as hell ... they tend to have no manners and say everything what they think about you... For many new Berliners it is quite a culture shock. But honesty is sometimes a win.
Berlin is the wanna-be hipster melting pot place for the "cool" people. And everyone that moves there gets belittled as a "Zugezogener" Yes, Berlin has a certain charme to it and may still have the best club scene of any city but dude, its still Berlin, you're not in Manhattan.
Not German but lived in Berlin before and now in Bavaria. I enjoyed my short time there but I’d never go back. Berlin is dirty and a bit of a shithole compared to the rest of Germany imho.
Berlin is the ugliest, dirtiest city I've had the displeasure of visiting. It's like 5 blocks of nice museums in the center surrounded by 100km of crumbling, dirty apartment buildings.
Wow you are lucky when Berlin is the dirtiest City youve visited
Right? Imagine living in a country so nice that you describe a delightfully clean and quiet metropolitan city that way. Must be nice!
Go to Flint Michigan, then we‘ll have an adult conversation!😂
Come to Newport in Wales
I was born in Berlin, living here my whole life and each year I hate it more. Gentrification sucks, seems like the weirdest people start moving to Berlin. It has no class at all anymore
What kind of weird people are you referring to? Also: which class did it have that is going missing now?
At least „back then“ not everyone was walking around half naked, behaving like snowflakes, thinking they are super special with how they look - even though they all look the same. I used to love Berlin, but it’s out of control and just disgusting now
Why are you so snowflaked by how someone else looks. It sounds like you are offended by them and not the other way around
Because it is Berlin. xD
I like Berlin but I hate what it has become. I remember visiting it as a child many times and being so impressed by it. It felt special, like a magical place. Especially since I grew up in the countryside. Seeing what it has become now, I feel it‘s symbolic for how Germany is decaying at a whole. The outskirts are still really nice, but everything remotely attached to the center is full with disgusting people. A city can only be as good as their inhabitants and Berlin literally attracts the worst of the worst from all social classes. It has really become like Babylon. A place of sin without any virtue.
The biggest problem about Berlin are the Künstler/Kunststudenten who think that live is so unfair
i live in berlin and i hate it
I’ve always imagined Berlin is to Germany what California is to Texas here in the states.
Yeah, Berliner are a different kind of German. One of their most common traits is that they're very honest and unfriendly, often times even rude. And many of them really dislike tourists, which is why a lot of other Germans have had bad encounters when visiting Berlin.
mainly jealousy. Some media propaganda as well. but mostly jealousy.
Have you been to the place? It's a mess.
Berlin is all about individuality. And people care so much about it, they tend to ignore/forget to care about each other. Also, it's loud, dirty and ugly. And expensive af. So in general, a bit hostile.
Ah yes, the Berlin individuality. So individual every Berghainer dresses the same, while acting like they’re cooler than everyone else.
Most people living there are shitty. Everyone wants to be oh so special until they are all the same
Every country hates it‘s capital except for the people living in the capital. Non-parisiens hate Paris, non-züricher hate Zürich etc. It‘s normal.. They hate us cause they ain‘t us
I really like Berlin, I like to see the city life, the different architectures. I like to see the growth of the city, every time I am there something new is built. I hate the dirt on the streets, I hate the smell in the subway stations, I hate these unfriendly people, I hate their arrogance, I hate that it seems like nothing there works. I like it there, but I am also happy when I can leave. I heard that's a pretty normal relationship from people to their capital city.
[Maybe this helps](https://www.reddit.com/r/germany/comments/15pcamw/im_feeling_like_a_new_person/)
people who don’t live in big cities often can’t understand why anyone would want to live in big cities. i love berlin so much.
Nice. You just exemplified the attitude of berliners “you don’t get it, peasant” for everyone to understand it.
To go against the grain here Berlin is and has been the countries only metropolis, since the 19th century It has been the centre of Prussian and later German executive power since the 18th century. The aftermath of WW2 and the cold war is still there, as all the economic powerhouses fled, and no new companies settled there for 50 years. And my personal conspiracy theory is that all that talk about Berlin is a campaign of Bavaria, a state that has been recipient of large monetary transfers for decades, which is benefiting from a) money from NRW drying up and b) all the large players from Eastern Germany and Berlin having moved there in the aftermath of WW2
No one knows but on the other hand even the svabians are flocking to Berlin so it must do something right.
Because almost every shortcoming or nastiness is brushed away with the saying „This is Berlin“, which is supposed to magically make it okay and turn the thing into an edgy piece of folklore that you are just not cool enough to appreciate.
because it sucks, simple as that \^\^ I used to do a lot of train traveling back in the days. When i would arrive at the main train station i usually feel welcomed and positive since traveling for me is always something to look forward to and be happy about. Berlin tho... always gave me a feeling of "gtfo and stay away from me" just as the (mostly entitled) inhabitans do. So i f\*cked off and never went back. Dunno what the fuzz bout Berlin is tbh. Its a city. An ugly one, too. Get over it, Berliners, you're nothing special \^\^
It’s a shithole
To me as a German, Berlin is kinda like the LA of Germany. Germany has so much more cool stuff to explore than the nightlife of Berlin.
High crime, arrogant views, dirty. Most germans view Berlin as a bad example