Of course, the nights are longer in Berlin.

If the restaurants are open later, there are more techno clubs, more fetish parties, more underwater concerts - more tinsel, more yoga studios, more BSR and BER, more BVG and BSC, more BRD in general, because Berlin is the capital.

Political center, but also moral base.

The announcements are made from here.

What is woke and what is not is decided in Berlin.

Not a place of negotiation, a place of determination.

Simon Strauss

Editor in the features section.

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From Berlin you can describe the world as you like it.

In Berlin, people often stand around after gallery openings or book premieres and don't greet each other even though they know each other.

In Berlin everyone is always late.

Most people in Berlin expect that they will be talked about if they don't appear somewhere.

Nobody in Berlin would think of making a song called “Berlin”.

Most people think it's great to be here.

And with the best will in the world, they can no longer imagine waking up somewhere else in the morning.

To jog anywhere else than in the Mauerpark.

To meditate somewhere else than at the “Görli”.

To swim anywhere else than in the “Stadtbad”.

Waiting somewhere else than at the "Kotti".

Cool but lonely

Not a spot that doesn't mean anything to anyone.

The names of the streets, the squares, the subway stations are worn out, worn out, used up.

Berlin lives more from its reputation than from its history.

Because for most of them it ends somewhere in their twenties.

What was before: Better leave it to science or Netflix.

Berlin rhymes with bubble.

Wrapped in a fine shimmer of soap, most of the people here think and talk as if there was no outside at all.

Except maybe the Uckermark, which you drive to at the weekend with an electric rental car and bulging Bio Company bags to finally be back in nature.

And then only to meet the same well-meaning noses at the fire bowl as in front of your own front door in Mitte at the weekly market.

Berlin is a cosmopolitan city, but there is nothing cosmopolitan about the people here, they don't stroll, they don't roam around, they eat hastily and drink cocktails under neon lights, they ride bicycles as if that were a political sign, they despise their neighboring districts, they know exactly where you can find the best wholemeal bread or the strongest gin or the most beautiful retro lamp.

Too many universities, too few student cafes. Moabit is now too expensive. People come to Berlin for love or love life. Because of the others, the networks, the peer groups, the milieu. Karl Scheffler wrote a city in 1910, “condemned to be forever and never to be,” but a century later there is not much left of it. Fame has made this city lazy, global desire has made its features haughty. The much-sung Berlin air hangs heavily over the roofs, and in summer there is no longer a beach chair for the retired KADEWE saleswoman at the Wannsee lido.

A chilled, a hardened city.

Still busy, no question about it, but most of it here comes to nothing.

Overloaded and conceited, cool but lonely, Berliners live from their reputation, worldwide recognition, the stars who come and praise, the investors who buy and buy, the politicians who drive past in their limousines and have never got off the Alex .