www.AllAboutGermany.NET | Moving to Germany | Visiting Germany | Living and W... - 19 views
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psaunders on 03 Apr 11Wouldn't it be better to start with this anecdote. It's got real impact. As it is, it's buried too far down and there's too much tame scene setting to start with.
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There’s a sort of proletarian parochialism to be found in Berlin
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the parochial attitude of many western Berliners towards eastern Berlin
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I’ve been to parties and social gatherings there many times where one set of people stay at one end of the room and another -- the newcomers -- at the other end.
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Gentrification in Berlin has now started to make itself felt in staunchly working class and immigrant Neukoelln
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A video has recently appeared on YouTube about the phenomena of gentrification in Neukoelln
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t that time I also had the pleasure of viewing a tiny, squalid, almost windowless one roomed apartment that had just become free for letting in Neukoelln. It had until very recently been previously occupied by a mentally disturbed alcoholic whom the police had found dead drunk on the street a few blocks further down. When the police entered his apartment they found a large collection of knives, hammers, baseball bats, knuckle-dusters, axes and other weapons scattered around the flat. When I visited the now empty apartment, these items were all still laid out on the kitchen table awaiting their removal by the police. Apparently the apartment had also by necessity just been fumigated. Needless to say, I declined to take up a rental contract with the agent for that particular property.
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can understand some of the points he makes about the superficiality of the hipsters with their “Starbucks standards and expectations” and how they just want to party for a few years before moving on again somewhere else. But I don’t entirely agree with his point of view. Berlin needs newcomers, it needs new creativity and new enterprise. It can’t afford to stagnate and just remain a working class city in a city with little for the working class to do anymore. I find this hostility towards “Aerzte, Architekten und Anwaelte” rather parochial and narrow-minded. Why be against these people? Because they are doing well for themselves? What are they supposed to do? Sweep the streets or draw Stuetze (unemployment benefit)?
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funny rant, critical of the newcomers and their standardized Latte Macchiato attitudes. The video was also featured on Dutch TV recently.
