Here a few “handy” street observations from my walks through my new neighbourhood Berlin Treptow.
Why do we always lose just one glove? – Berlin Treptow (Photo by Stefan Klenke)
Here a few “handy” street observations from my walks through my new neighbourhood Berlin Treptow.
Why do we always lose just one glove? – Berlin Treptow (Photo by Stefan Klenke)
I just heard on the news that the rents in Berlin increased by 70%(!!!) in the last 10 years. The price is now around 10 Euro per square metre when it was just around 6 Euro a decade ago. The reason for this incredible rise according to the news was the increase in population. I was disgusted to hear this. I think the real reason is a system that supports greed and profiting on the needs of human beings. The system allowed house owners to raise and raise the rents without a healthy limit.
New Berliners who moved from other cities and countries where they already were used too expensive rents willingly accepted to pay those “still relatively cheap“ Berlin rents while the less fortunate poorer Berliners were pushed out of the city centres to the cheaper borders.
In a popular city like Berlin there will always be people who would still be able to pay for way too expensive rents. But still the problem is the system who failed to build cheap social housing and instead decided to cash in and build luxury expensive apartments for renting or buying and did not introduce an effective rent cap – and created another gentrificated unfair unequal city. This system is called Capitalism.
When we look at the news today we might easily believe that humans are just about war and destruction. And some even think it would be best to erase humans off the globe. Well I strongly believe the world is what we want it to be and that we must remember that most people want peace and love. We must not give in to fear and hate.
It starts with every single one of us. Try to be nice to people around you. Try to improve the world with a smile, by planting a tree, making art, writing some music, donate money to people who protest and peacefully fight for our rights and our planet or join them, try to eat less meat, don’t buy a fossil fuel car, switch off lights you don’t need, do not buy plastic crap you don’t really need, boycott evil companies like Nestlé, Monsanto, Bayer or Shell, hug people more often, do not buy cheap clothes from places like Primark or bottled water that was transported thousands of miles.
Ask yourself, when you die – what have you done to make this world a little bit better?
I wish you loads of Peace and Love – not just for 2017.
Having lived in Neukölln a few years I can confirm that it is in many areas a dirty place. A part of me feels it adds to the charme and undergroundy authentic vibe of the more and more hip district in the South West of Berlin. Another part is sad and angry that people chuck their rubbish everywhere disrespecting our environment.
The writing “Neukölln bleibt dreckig!“translates as “Neukölln stays dirty!“ I see it occasionally written on walls in the city; sometimes with Berlin, Kreuzberg etc. instead of Neukölln. I understand it as a angry cry for people who are scared of gentrification which is “cleaning“ up more and more areas and making the rents go up and up and thus taking away the home districts aka Kieze of people who cannot afford to live there any longer.
The question is if these writings will in any way stop the gentrification or if it adds to the area being seen as cool and undergroundy and therefore attracts even more rich, boring people who want to feel cool and undergroundy.
I saw this on an art studio in the trendy Rixdorf quarter in Neukölln Berlin. It translates roughly as “This is no hip district!“ And a little less directly translated it means: “Fuck off, rich people and hipsters! Leave us alone and our rents low!“ I guess when you have to write a message like that it probably is aleady exactly that – a hip district taken over by rich people, hispsters and high rents.