Fuck Berlin E-Book

Kristjan Knall

• Herausgeber: BookRix
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

I am really sorry you live in Grimsby, the banlieue of Lyon, Podgorica or some other bumfuck nowhere. Which, at least from here in Berlin, is pretty much anywhere in the world. But guess what, Berlin is not a single fuck better. Actually, it's a shithole of epic proportions. Don't believe the hype, or you are going to be the fuckwit of the month. You won't earn money here, you won't have fun, in spite of the tons of drugs you will be taking, you will not meet your partner, soul-companion, no real friends, or even people who won't fuck you over at any given opportunity. You will be left as a bloated, syringe mark riddled corpse on the sidewalk best ignored, but most likely be pissed on by Berliners. And they won't even be drunk.   Now, don't get me wrong. This is not another racist pamphlet. They usually don't work out well in Germany. If anything, it's racist against Germans, and specifically, against Berliners. Thinking is the most unhealthy disease in the world, and people die of it just as they die of any disease. Luckily, in Berlin at any rate, thought is not catching. The fact is, they are the scum of the earth. If you stay here long enough, you will be too. 12 years, to be exact, and in Germany everything is exact. The reason? Don't ask, you traitorous pig. Just follow orders.   How it got that way, is a bit of a mystery. An ugly, chaotic, but at times absurdly funny mystery. So, if there's any way you can be diverted from coming here, or at least don't want to fall that hard, read on and see what an admitted asshole Berliner has to say. What's more, do you hate guide books? Good, because they are shit, unless you want to cue for hours at a fucking museum with thousands of people. Why is it that we always go to exhibitions, museums, historic sites and other crap that we wouldn't even give a firstt glance at home? Because we are bored, we don't know what to do, and where. So here is all the info you need to go to the dark corners, enjoy abject eccentricity, and get smashed like there is no tomorrow.   I've written a shitload of books about Berlin and way too often stammering twats come along and ask for an English version, while getting his purse nicked by a friend of mine. Don't you get insulted enough? So, yeah, as we're all so fucking international, here you have it, all unfiltered, all way too real. Oh, and be prepared to lose all your cushy illusions through vicious thoughts and obscenely strong language, you whiny little cunt.   Warum also soll man sich mit einem weiteren dieser Autoren treffen? Zumal der Verlag auch noch selbst davor warnt." - Der Tagesspiegel, 19.3.2013. "Fast durchgängige Meinung: Kristjan Knall hat einen Knall." - Berliner Kurier, 19.2.2013 "Vieles an Knalls Beschreibungen ist maßlos übertrieben und landet oft unter der Gürtelline." - Berliner Morgenpost, 24.3.16. "Dass er in der Verkleidung wie eine jüngere Ausgabe von Helge Schneider wirkt, war ihm nicht bewusst, ist ihm aber recht." - Süddeutsche Zeitung, 28.11.14 "Im Online-Auftritt des Berliner Kuriers hinterlässt ein Leser am 18. Februar in der Kommentarspalte hinter dem Bericht über die Flaggenverbrennung folgende Nachricht: "Für den Vogel sollten wir Berliner sammeln, um ihm ein Ticket nach Russland zu spendieren, am besten dorthin, wo der Meteorit runtergekommen ist. Oder an die Elfenbeinküste, da kann er ja dann die Menschen weiter beleidigen. Mal sehen, was die dann mit ihm machen." - Cicero, 20.6.2013   Weiteres vom Meister des Abfucks:   Berlin zum Abkacken. Eulenspiegel, 2013 111 Gründe Berlin zu hassen. Schwarzkopf, 2016 Stoppt die Klugscheißer!. Eulenspiegel, 2013 Europa ist geil, nur hier nicht. Eulenspiegel 2014   Edition Umsonst:   Fuck Berlin - A Not-Guide, 2022 Wir Lügner – wie Google uns uns entlarvt, Bookrix, 2017 Als Mehmet Yildiz: Neukölln, ein Frontbericht.

Leseprobe

Kristjan Knall

Fuck Berlin

A Not-Guide

For Hell.BookRix GmbH & Co. KG81371 Munich

Intro

I am really sorry you live in Grimsby, the banlieue of Lyon, Podgorica or some other bumfuck nowhere. Which, at least from here in Berlin, is pretty much anywhere in the world. But guess what, Berlin is not a single fuck better. Actually, it's a shithole of epic proportions. Don't believe the hype, or you are going to be the fuckwit of the month. You won't earn money here, you won't have fun, in spite of the tons of drugs you will be taking, you will not meet your partner, soul-companion, no real friends, or even people who won't fuck you over at any given opportunity. You will be left as a bloated, syringe mark riddled corpse on the sidewalk best ignored, but most likely be pissed on by Berliners. And they won't even be drunk.

Now, don't get me wrong. This is not another racist pamphlet. They usually don't work out well in Germany. If anything, it's racist against Germans, and specifically, against Berliners. Thinking is the most unhealthy disease in the world, and people die of it just as they die of any disease. Luckily, in Berlin at any rate, thought is not catching. The fact is, they are the scum of the earth. If you stay here long enough, you will be too. 12 years, to be exact, and in Germany everything is exact. The reason? Don’t ask, you traitorous pig. Just follow orders.

How it got that way, is a bit of a mystery. An ugly, chaotic, but at times absurdly funny mystery. So, if there's any way you can be diverted from coming here, or at least don't want to fall that hard, read on and see what an admitted asshole Berliner has to say. What’s more, do you hate guide books? Good, because they are shit, unless you want to cue for hours at a fucking museum with thousands of people. Why is it that we always go to exhibitions, museums, historic sites and other crap that we wouldn’t even give a firstt glance at home? Because we are bored, we don’t know what to do, and where. So here is all the info you need to go to the dark corners, enjoy abject eccentricity, and get smashed like there is no tomorrow.

I’ve written a shitload of books about Berlin and way too often stammering twats come along and ask for an English version, while getting his purse nicked by a friend of mine. Don’t you get insulted enough? So, yeah, as we’re all so fucking international, here you have it, all unfiltered, all way too real. Oh, and be prepared to lose all your cushy illusions through vicious thoughts and obscenely strong language, you whiny little cunt.

Disclaimer

So, all the swearing doesn't really prove a point, apart from keeping the cunts who think clean language make the world a better place for you and me as far away as possible. Don’t visit Berlin, don’t even read this, go back to you bible belt, bumfuck nowhere and die in abject misery. That said, Berliners are a reasonably unfriendly bunch. They don’t hate only you, everybody else as well, the world, and being constantly on the edge. What do you think why two world wars started here?

First: “central”. Forget that. Kurfürstendamm is as central as Alexanderplatz or Kotti. Depends what you want and how diluted you are. Then: districts. Of course they don't make sense, at lease not any more. Since a reform merged an obnoxiously square hellhole like Tempelhof together with gay Schöneberg, you can’t even generalize properly anymore. Schöneberg in itself varies from fairies to ghetto to retirement home in just about a few streets. That’s what the word “Kiez” is for, the hood. It may give you a little orientation in this cruel, cruel world. Just never, ever, stand in front of the Brandenburg gate and think you’re in the centre.

Berlin tries to be what Germany is not. And is failing, even there. Sure, the traffic is working and you can get food that is three inverted layers of colon-blasting meat. But forget orderliness, not being corrupt, or a total fucking Xenophobe. Berlin hates the whole Nazi-Shebang. So leave you dirndels at home.

Lastly, more and more, we are all tourists, everywhere. Good for you, shit for us. Just because your godforsaken shithole isn't that interesting, doesn't mean you can come and fuck up our backyard. I’ll give a lot of tips what not to do. If you’re only half as clever as you think1, you’ll figure where to go. As you’re reading this either because you are a full-blown masochist, or because you actually want something more interesting that the commodification of the tourist world, that makes everything about as interesting as Stoke-on-Trent. Face it: What you want is surprise, even if it’s a bad one. If I’d give away all the gems straight away, the last left Berliner would chop me to death with döner-knifes.

Rightly so.

1And we all do, see Dunning-Kruger-Effect. Ironically, the more tupid you are, the cleverer you think you are. God hates intelligence.

How not to piss off Berliners

Chapter I

How not to walk

Everywhere is within walking distance if you have the time.

- Steven Wright, comedian or inventor of aviation

You might get the impression Berliners hate tourists. That’s not the case, at least not completely, They hate fucking everything, starting with themselves. Traffic, work, clubs, the sun? Should all go to hell (München). If you really pretend to care there a few things you can do that make them hate you a tiny bit less. Not that they would show, but at least you have a slightly lower chance of being hacked to death with a car leaver on Hermannplatz.

Let's start at the very basics, the ones even tourists might master: walking and standing. You walk somewhere to get there. Be honest, Berlin isn’t much of a beauty, every glance at buildings, this or that tree is pretty much a waste of retina. Walk straight, don’t wobble, this city is full enough and gets fuller every day. Remember, the poser you all pretended to adore so much: Walk the line. Don’t let Berliners feel like they are in a 80s game having to avoid mindless obstacles. That’s what you are to them, at best. At worst, they see your ignorance as entitlement. Only because you have a job, parents and live somewhere where life is sometimes bearable, doesn’t mean you have to shove it in their faces. Walk the line, or fuck off. Or, at the very least, stand at the side. Noticed how small sidewalks can get in Neukölln, Moabit or Friedirchshain? It means that you are in a former worker’s district, not a flâneurs paradise. “All truly great thoughts are conceived while walking.”, Nietzsche said. He might have been right, but they come at the price of billions of mindless steps. If you want to pretend you get anything out of the view, do so at wide Kreuzberg or Charlottenburg streets. Or best: Mitte. Streets there can be narrow, but there are no Berliners anyway. Think you are watching the locals at Unter den Linden, Monbijoupark or Auguststraße? The fuck you are. The “Berliner Luft” hurdy-gurdy, the sowjet caps, the Currywurst with gold dust: it’s all a theater for those dumb enough to believe it. Image the horror when you have a hostage in a cellar somewhere, she is dying of thirst, and 10 Welsh block the sidewalk. People live here, you know? Or die. If you really want to take in the view: sit.

How not to stand

Standing still is the fastest way of moving backwards in a rapidly changing world.

- Lauren Bacall

Its virtually unbelievable, but standing seems to be even harder than walking. The simplest of acts, it’s devolution in action. Ever heard the joke about a blondie: What’s on her headphones that makes her drop dead when you remove them? “Breathe, breathe, breathe.”

Tourists love to stand in front of doors. You exit a café high on caffeine, you want to run, possibly explode, and these daft cows in post-ironic fur coats step out and keep standing right in front of the door? Why don't you slip into something more comfortable... like a coma? Get the fuck away from there, is there a shortage of side anywhere? It’s sad enough when you don’t know where you stand figuratively, literally it’s one inch short of being too dumb to be considered human. Even a Berliner for that matter.

It’s the worst in the U-Bahn. You know how many people rush though Alexanderplatz daily? Two Fusions, 140000 stressed, aggressive, misanthropic commutersi. Slightly less at Hermannplatz, but what it comparatively lacks in size, it compensates in grime and viciousness. Walk up the stairs agonizingly slow, hindering everybody from passing? Fell that in your back? Or stand on the left side of the escalator? That’s Berliners wanting you to die. Nobody, ever, needs you to exit the escalator and stop. Feel the hate-waves, they will give you back-cancer, one day, hopefully. Or the ticketing machines: It’s not rocket science. No, you don’t have to pick out all your coins like a granny. Get the fucking app and fuck off to whatever cheerless slab of concrete like “Stadtmitte” was sold to you as the centre.

Lastly, the hardest thing. I know it really hurts having to stand these weird fuckers in your head called “thoughts”, but, at least once an hour, look up from your phone whilst walking. It’s like walking through a zombie apocalypse. All these legging wearing, big-rim glassed, courier cyclist caped douchbags staring at ther app to find the most gluten free way to the second hand clothing store. These “Smombies”, smart-phone-zombies, who actually have developed a new bone from using themii, don’t have to be surprised if they get just run over. Actually this would be rather polite for Berlin. Normally, you would get you phone snitched, a fist in your fuckface, a few ribs broken, and pissed on when lying in the gutter. Try Tik Tok being of any consolation after that.

ihttps://www.store2be.com/de/locations/bahnhof-berlin-alexanderplatz; 26.9.19

iihttps://www.berliner-zeitung.de/ratgeber/gesundheit/stachel-am-kopf-forscher-vermuten—dass-sich-schaedel-durch-handy-nutzung-verformt-32790518; 15.10.19

How not to dress

“Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.”

― Oscar Wilde

“Who is scared of Hermannplatz?” Listen, honex (gendered form), your Berlin merch is not cool. It is not even tolerable. It does not say: “I am so in love with Berlin and proud to be here”. It says: “I am in love with a serial rapist and dumb as fuck”. Cloth bags, sweaters, even buttons: no Berliner would wear this shit. You could as well wear a t-shirt saying: “I got fisted by Grimsby!” Getting a hoodie celebrating Friedrichshain isn’t better. It translates to “I want to party but don’t really know where because the party was over 10 years ago and I am left me here, so horribly alone. I really, really want to belong, to you want a piece of my burger? Com on man, I can also blow you!”1 Wedding? You might at best kicked you butt in by chavs who are “born and raised” in Wedding and like to eat fairies like you for breakfast. At worst, it just means: “I want to be cool, but actually I just got so extremely no taste, that I would eat shit if people told me this was the new thing.” Kreuzberg? Just so over. Might have been cool in 1976. But then go all the way, throw a Molotov cocktail at the pigs, live in a squat without heating, take heroin. No? Well, then you are as fake as Kreuzberg is nowadays. It’s made for pussies like you. If you really, really need to wear something, then go for absurdities like “Reinickendorf”, or “Köpenick”. That’s so far out that some really scummy Berliners actually might consider it funny. They will let you know by punching your teeth out. If one thing is true, then then that stupidity always divides down into smaller units: race county, city, district, hood, street. As we are on it leave you dreary national flags at home too. People who enjoy waving flags don't deserve to have one. All these affiliations are for people who want to be worth something a without having done anything apart from being shat into the world at a specific spot. You will always be on the wrong side, mate. But if you feel a void in your life that can only be filled be senseless violence, go on.

About fashion in general: fuck it. It’s what shallow people use to compensate for lack of character. You manbun, your post-ironic 90s shirt, you leopard suit? It doesn’t tell the world how great you are, but how underfucked. You know what the style in London, Paris, Uppsala or any burning dumpster is right now? Berliners couldn’t care less. If you got enough time to know that and enough audacity to reproduce it, you are most surely to most boring git on this piss-stained corner of Warschauer Straße. Also, young soldier, remember: There is no such thing as ironic clothing. If it looks shit and is supposed to look good, it probably just looks shit.

1Menace II Society.

How not to drink coffee

“What do you want?"

"Just coffee. Black - like my soul.”

― Cassandra Clare, City of Bones

Coming back to sitting: You wouldn’t imagine it in your worst nightmares, but even that can be done wrong. The main question is: where. If you are unsure, go for the curb. Get some beer at your Späti, enjoy the cancerous fumes from the cars, have a rabid dog sniff your neck with his dripping wet nose he has just stuck in a pile of number two. But, at least if you don’t yell all through the night, Berliners will appreciate it. If not, you are in the wrong district. What the fuck where you looking for Steglitz anyways? If you want a bonfire out of rubbish try Rigaer Straße corner Liebigstraße as well. All the squats around make the “village square” fairly entertaining. This is as close as you will ever get to punk.

Why is sitting on the curb appreciated by locals? Because you, for once, don’t gentrify when doing it. You might even scare of the odd investor, namely your father. If it rains or there is a shooting outside and you really, really have to go inside, check out a café. Berlin is said to be a focal point for spies again, so learn from them:

1. Are people sitting on Macbooks?

Even one should be too much, but if there are several I-cunts around, walk straight out. Don’t get me wrong, computers are great. Then at least people don’t have weird ideas such as talking to others. Maybe they even commit suicide after social networks show them how ugly, unsuccessful and worthless they are. Look at his face! I bet his cornflakes try to crawl out of the bowl. But Macs are computers that are not made for getting shit done, they are there to be beautiful. To suffocate your mind in beauty. People say that Steve Jobs died too soon. But actually it’s a rather fitting metaphor for his company’s attitude to battery life. You are also being spied on way more than you should, forced into cooperate crapware, endless hellish loops of interface failure, operating systems age faster than bio-fruit in summer, to sum it up: you are most probably a shallow, annoying piece of shit. Go on, tweet you outrage on a phone made by kids in China. Macs should show other people that you are an aestheticist, but what it actually translates to is: I am a needy cunt. Love me. Never, ever do that. If cafés like the notorious “St.Oberholz” at Torstraße are specifically made for such people, run. It was the centre of capitalist “creativity” when Mitte was still cool, about mid-90s. But what creativity really means was not as sellable option: Think outside the box, collapse the box, and take a fucking sharp knife to it. It all came crashing down when people woke up to the burst of the bubble after a decade of unpaid internships. Their social atomization and general hopelessness merged into co-working spaces. Pay to work? The dumbest idea since Adam Smiths’: “If everybody is selfish all will be better off.”

2. Is it half a fashion store?

If you can still read and are not completely demented at the hands of reddit, you should know. Even worse: Can you buy the furniture, the flowers, the owner? If you want to sit on some bedbug riddled rubbish from the shared flat next to you, where Wikipedia-Leone and Arthur Xibmal just had anal on, go on. Flowers, candles, whatever they sell apart from stuff you can consume: fuck right off. A café is supposed to be a place to have, goddamn it, a little break from being bullshitted, aka the market.

A notable exception are weed- selling cafés. There are some in the ghetto districts, also quite close to hipster quarters. If you take off your beanie you may even reach them without being mugged, killed, and left to die. It’s easy to spot them: they look like to Turkish “culture club” non-cafés, just nearly empty. Cheap red leather, eerie David Lynchian atmosphere, no music. Never ask for a coffee, just for “10”.1 Or, if you happen to be Snoop Dog, for “100”. Unless you really are, they will most probably think you are a cop then.

3. How expensive is it?

I know, compared to the post-gentrification wasteland that is your home-base in London, S.F. or New York, “I’s all so heap here.” So is Somalia, tried going there? The city of “Mokka” brought the world coffee, it’s said to be AMAZING. If you survive, that is. If not, even more.

If you choose your location of procrastination make sure a coffee is not more than €3,50. Yes, it's that special time of year when we voluntarily imbibe pumpkin spice lattes, the coffee that tastes like a candle. €3,50 goes for loony coffees like Tumeric Latte, Dirty chai (traditional chai with a shot of coffee) or Nitro coffee (Cold-brew coffee infused with nitrogen gas is released through a pressurized valve with tiny holes) as well. Although, if you see any of that shit head straight out again, walking backwards, very slowly. If you see the Blue Algae Latte (made from steamed coconut milk and E3 Live, aka blue algae) anywhere join ISIS and bomb the fucking place.

Even if you entitled brat don’t care, locals do. You do not only pay for the coffee, but for the greedy landlord, whose rents due to the infernal legislative choke-hold of Berlin “Mietspiegel”, influence the rents around the shop. That means, every €5 coffee helps throw the last Berliners out of their affordable flats. Ever wondered why all the houses are renovated here? What your visiting parents from Alberquerque consider “beautiful” is a farewell to tenants who can’t afford to live in cooperate Disneyland. Every gray Altbau, every trashed up yard, every Arabic name on the doorbell keeps the Berlin you came here to see alive. Next time you fancy Gluten-Free-Buns for the monetary equivalent of gold fuck off to Williamsburg.

War Plan: For the best non-cow-rapey latte in Berlin check you Pappelreihe: Kienitzer Str. 109, Berlin, 12049. To mingle with locals, even Arabs Communists, whilst having a great view over the post-apocalyptic ruinscape that is Kottbusser Tor visit Cafe Kotti: Adalbertstr. 96, Berlin, 10999. For splendid coffee in style try to find the hidden Cafe Rix: Karl-Marx-Str. 141, 12043 Berlin. It has been there long before all was hip and will be when all else is gone.

1For further info do contact the author asking for „cake“.

How not to party

“I have Social Disease. I have to go out every night. If I stay home one night I start spreading rumours to my dogs.”

― Andy Warhol

Believe it or not the war on Iraq is based on a sound scientific principle, The bee hive principle. Which clearly states that if you are stung by a bee, you should follow it back to its nest and then proceed to beat nest to a pulp with a baseball bat until the stripey little turd has learned its lesson. Your homeland might bombard shitholes like Afghanistan and Iraq for “Freedom”, “Democracy”, “Security” or any kind of other virtue which was made totally meaningless by spin-doctors at best, or made into a threat signifying the exact opposite. Whilst brining sheep herders the glories of McHurt and subsequent visits privatized hospitals, back on your home turf the party culture pretty much resembles the celibate in you bombed bumfuck nowhere. Drinking only when you are 21, people following religions originating near the places you “democratize”, telling you whom not to fuck (or at all). Drugs being penalized worse than war crimes. So you come here to party, that’s what Berlin is for. Get #fomoed into all kinds of lunacy. This is all well, hopefully you only catch gonorrhea instead of the hip again syphilis. Here are some tips who not to party.

1. Noise.

Look, we get it, you are having this weird thing called fun. In contrast to Germans you show it as well. If Wotan would have known. But you know what? Nobody in the subway, in his backyard, even in the park is interested about how you feel. The even might prefer you dead instead of happy, just to have a bit of quiet. So just shut it as good as you can until you arrive at the rock-bottom club of your choice. Also, especially for our Spanish friends: don’t sing. We know you have this thing called culture, but it’s scary. Singing in German either means Nazi, or, nearly as bad, Schlager: by industrial scale margins the worst folk music imaginable. Mongolian-throat signing is Mozart in comparison. If you want to sing, there is a special hell for that: Karaoke places. One of the less infernal ones is in one of the most infernal places: Monster Ronson's Ichiban Karaoke.i

2. Piss and Vomit.

What goes in comes out, the disgusting circle of life. Pissing is no problem in Berlin, it’s pretty much expected. But better help out the dying trees and bushes. Doors to houses? Rather not.1 Bicycles? May you rot in hell. Also there is enough comedy around, no need to show everybody you wiener.

Vomit on the other hand belongs on the street. It's the natural equivalent to cars. If you make it to the trash-bin even better, but don’t get carried away. Only half making it, leaving you mess a meter around it is not exactly the thing Berliners want to see when they go to work half an hour later. Granted, you can rarely plan. But when in the subway try the rails. The mice will appreciate it. The guy sliding on it because you vomited on the floor and nearly falling in front of an incoming train will castrate you. Twice.

A notable exception are posh-districts such as Zehlendorf or Steglitz. If you end up there, most likely by being very stupid or having been bullshited by a “central” hotel, go wild. Every emptying of you can be directly considered a revolutionary act.

3. Facebookparties.

Don’t. They are a pest. There is nothing Berliners hate more than most unpleasantly being surprised by a mob of 200 people in their pub. There is a time and place to get to know the locals, but this is equivalent to showing up in their living room wasted, gonorrhic dick out and s screaming comes across the sky: “AUSSIE AUSSIE AUSSIE HEY HEY HEY!” If you want to meet locals go to a bar in small numbers, or alone, play some pool, sit at the counter. (Pretend to) enjoy, don’t invade. That’s a German privilege.

1Check out https://www.notesofberlin.com/ for hillariously hateful signs Berliners put up.

i · Warschauer Straße 34 · 10243 Berlin.; 30.9.19

How not to talk

I have no words for my reality.

- Max Frisch

This is first and foremost for our American friends, but also for all those who imitate them. We know when you’re born you get a ticket to the freak show. When you’re born in America you get a front row seat. Thank you for liberating Germany and all that, but right now you are messing up that good deed. No, not only by bombing half the world, coming back 20 years later and making a movie how bombing it made their soldiers feel sad.1i Not only by creating a staggering quarter of the worlds' pollution. Not by having a president that promotes everything toxic about humanity (granted: nobody who ever left the US has voted for cinnamon Hitler). No, you are killing it by using the forbidden words.

Like: It might not have crossed your methed up mind, but unless you use it as in “prefer”, this word has, like, absolutely, like, no meaning. What’s worse is, like, you can, like, use it where-ever and when-, like ever. It’s a fucking literal pest. The only thing it shows it that your brain works too slow for your already slow language. Even though English is very generous, you can say just about anything in three words. German is a tank, cumbersome, but very exact. The next time you are tempted to, like, use like, consider if what you have to say is really, like, thought through, or if you should, like, shut up forever.

You know: The best friend of “like”. No, we don’t, you haven’t told us yet, or if we did, why are you saying it, you redundant, pointless being? Consider, even German academic writing in English have a 10 % lower success rate, so no, we probably don’t know. If you need the constant, you know, confirmation of the communication partner, consider getting your self-esteem up another way, or, you know, straight kiss whomever you are talking too. Of course, you are not gay, but you know.

UUUUUHHHHH: Again, your brains seems to be a tad slow from all the boozing, meat carnage and Casomorphin. Even if this would be alright, which it is clearly not, you selfish prick, take your time. Be Zen. Time is not a line but a dimension, like the dimensions of space. Given that you are not able to think beforehand, don’t be afraid of the silence. You don’t have to fill up the few precious noiseless moments by a sound resembling a dying lawnmower. Yes, it will be the one thing that's worse than war crimes for you: awkward. But either you learn to live with the gruesome communicative world, or you realize thinking before talking is actually an, UUUUUUUHHHHHH, option.

Amazing: There are many words for “good”, but “amazing” is not one of them. It’s a word showing people what a shallow, annoying Muppet you are. Not only that is comes in droves, one amazing being tailed by at least another dozen, it’s also contagious. You try to get your totally unjustified happiness across, and what's worse, spreading it. This is Berlin goddammit, happiness is a criminal offense here. There are 6 Million dead Jews in the ground, you will die in abject misery alone2, and the weather is shite. So, just because life has not yet fucked the last hope out of you, don’t depress Berliners by showing how deep your fall will be.

California-Tone: Even worse, words like amazing and like are normally a horrid tonal affair. A-MAAAAAAIIIIIIIYYYYY-ZZZZZZIIIIIK! This whole screeching drag, way to long, absolutely insufferable. A high-pitched yodeling that wants the listener put out whomever is uttering it straight out of his misery. So fake, Barbie vomiting her lunch out a second time because she is so jealous. If you want to be the next Rhianna get lost in karaoke. If you want to talk shut the fuck up, at least tonally. Any idea why life in Italy where people pretty much sing constant is a total mess since about two millennia, whilst in Scandinavia, Japan or Korea stuff works out just about fine?

Gosh, darn, swearing: You are too scared to curse? You think somewhere baby Jesus might hear it any cry, then send you to eternal hell? Well, go see a doctor, it’s called paranoid schizophrenia. But please don’t bother us with it. God is dead. He died here, at the hands of Friedrich Nietzsche. East Germany is statistically the most at atheist place in the world.ii Or you just avoid the forbidden words because you adhere to some archaic social convention? Well, grrrrl, you are in the wrong city. Try Nashville, Salt Lake City or Mekka for that matter.

You are offended? Well fuck your big fat maggot faced manatee of mum right there. Hear that? Right now angel gets diarrhea. Twats like you are the same clinically insane dickheads that want to conserve languages and social norms to the brink of making them fucking devoid of meaning.3iii If your crippled ears and mind can’t handle a shitty bit of potty-mouth you are probably better of in cities where the lobotomized tossers of inhabitants cling to vocal order. Ever tried shitholes such as Oklahoma City, San Diego, or Waco? Whats more, dickhead: there is a psychological phenomenon that the more good stuff you talk, the less likely you are to do it. Surely cunts like you just can’t face how fucked up the world is and would rather love to keep it you of there despicably small mental horizon. So yeah, fuck right off.

Always active: “And they were like …., and then I was like…., and then she was like...” It’s nice that your life is deemed by your highness as so interesting, that you constantly have to reenact it, instead of talking about it. What's ore likely is though, that your life is boring as fuck, and as nothing happens you are locked in a soul-scorching circle of repeating. You know what keeps your externalized self-hate, cats, from not taking over the world?iv4 Not being able to communicate. Always staying in active keeps you on the mental level of a sardine. Cats’ breakfast.

That’s not to say that British don’t sometimes babble like lunatics, South Africans seem to never get out of the parody mode, or Japanese shamefully insult their ancestors by uttering sound-pictures of words. All accents are a nuisance, the price of language always being in flux. But as malaria few things are as wide spread and deadly as American English.

1Imagine Mongolians being sad today by Attia dying in his wedding night due to a nosebleed (really happened), after blessing one out of 200 men today with genes of him.

2If you are scred of that, why not take a few people with you?

3Ever tried to learn French? The Academie française makes sure the writing stays 400 years old, which is why it behaves to speech like a very distant retarded cousin.

4They also cost us an average of €12000. Dogs up to €15000.

ihttp://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2010/08/1-in-200-men-direct-descendants-of-genghis-khan/; 15.10.19; https://www.thevintagenews.com/2017/12/23/attila-the-hun/; 15.10.19

iihttps://www.sueddeutsche.de/wissen/religion-und-glaube-wo-es-die-meisten-atheisten-gibt-1.1336540; 1.10.19

iiihttp://www.sprachschach.de/sprachpolitik-frankreich/; 1.10.19

ivhttps://www.instagram.com/p/B3mY6z_ov1m/; 15.10.19

How not to crash

“Shared pain if half pain.”

German idiom

UUUUUHHH, you know, like, it’s so amazing that you can move your fat asses around now on bikes instead of ubering everywhere. What’s bad though, are e-scooters. Not the Vespa-like rebuilds, but the actual nearly-children-scooter. It’s one of the few opinions car owners and cyclists can agree on: scooter-riders should all be skinned alive. They are too slow for the street and too fast for the sidewalk. Worse, scooters get dropped in the most unreal places. When you don’t have to drag away one from the only impasse at your street, you fall over another one waiting to break you neck behind a corner – on the steps. Environmentally it’s just as mental: dozens get thrown into rivers and lakes. Every battery contains about as much toxic metal as the Bangladeshi shipwreck yards in Chittagong. Studies show that neither scooters, nor car-sharing does a fuck to reduce traffic and pollution. Quite the opposite. People who would use public transport take electric gimmicks instead. A programmer working in one of the sharing companies once got a visit from the cops. He showed them exactly where the baddies went. He knows about the pictures of acres filled by perfectly fine but disused bikes from Chinese sharing companies gone bust. He thrives on the billions of sharing companies littering Berlin street with scrap metal. Asked if sharing does anything at all the replied: “It’s all hipster shit. It works halfway in the city centre, the outskirts and especially the country can fuck off. Been to Hamburg? They have a state owned bike sharing system there, first half hour is free. That’s how it’s supposed to work. But it will not, as long as people still have this weird religion - capitalism.”

The only silver lining is that scooter-riders will decimate themselves. In the 1st weekend of availability in Berlin alone 4 people nearly died.i Never give up hope.

ihttps://www.morgenpost.de/berlin/article226356995/E-Scooter-schwer-verletzte-Fahrer-von-E-Tretrollern-und-Verkehsstraftaten.html; 1.10.19

Where not to go

Chapter II

Photographing

Traveling is being delighted by things you would safely ignore at home. Imagine the bewilderment of Berliners when tourists are staging a photo session around a bus stop, or kneel on the piss stained curb to get a shot of the amazing cobblestone. Just don’t forget the sepia filter.

Photographing is missing a moment to be able to recover it later to cheat yourself into thinking you have enjoyed it. The more you photograph, the better your life looks on insta, but the bleaker it actually gets. You will inevitably end up excruciatingly alone in your bedsit, looking in the mirror at the unfiltered monstrosity that is your face, crying over all the times you have missed. That’s the time when traveling to Syria to join Jihad suddenly seems not the worst of ideas.

Brandenburg Gate

A rule of thumb: to not turn your life into a postcard don’t go to any place you find on postcards. Brandenburg Gate seems to be a goo idea? It is not. It’s about as Berlin as Oktoberfest. The only time Berliners pass by there is on a bike, being annoyed by tourists who do not understand the complex subject of bike lanes. If you really need to head there, check you the Sowjet monument right behind it in Tiergarten, 500m on the right. It is an oddly small tribute to one dictatorship defeating a worse one. Still, it’s joyfully absurd, like a Japanese Garden for war. Also, there are tanks to be climbed.

Bundestag

Ever noticed that it says “Reichstag” in gigantic gothic letters on the front? Tells you a lot about German self-perception. Sure, you can go around it and there is a lawn in front, which, credit where it’s due, is big. Enough for at least 10000 people cheering at the Führer to come. You can even go to the glass dome on the top. If you want to wait for hours, that is. It’s like Berghain, but once you are inside, you don’t get party, buttfucking and so on, but a view. Nice, but irrelevant, like your life. You get that better at every other townhalls office canteen1, for free. To top the incontinences off it’s planned to dig a trench around it, against Terrorists and probably the Joker. They might as well fill it with crocodiles and open a Round Table of Lancelot. Welcome to the darkest medieval kingdom.

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1E.g. Kreuzberg: Kantine im Rathaus Kreuzberg Yorckstr 4-11 10965 Berlin

Potsdamer Platz

Are you into at best generic, at worst violently tasteless 90s aesthetics? No? They Potsdamer Platz is not for you. It’s orange and dirt coloured midget skyscrapers seem like a parody of a how the teletubbies imagined New York. There is stuff do to tough. There is a shopping centre. You know, these things that everybody runs to when opened and then forgotten in the blink of an eye. A German idiom goes: Nothing is older than yesterdays newspaper. It is: yesterdays mall. But you still fancy wasting money because you are a brainless consumerist olm? Then there is a gem for you right in the middle of Potsdamer Platz: the casino. Remember all these films about heists? Or even the masterful “Casino” itself? They have formed a picture of a stylish, atmospheric place, with special tables where stunners watch high rollers bet gigantic sums. Potsdamer Platz casino is all that – minus all of that except for the gambling. The only beauty you will find there is money itself. Does not suffice for you? Then get out of here you communist pig. They will feed you to the carps. The carps are about the only thing not hardcore depressing about this place. They trundle around in artificial ponds which might even be nice. You just see the reflection of Potsdamer Platz in them.

Alexanderplatz

Why would you? Do you want to feel small? Unimportant? Unwanted? Great, because that is what the lunatics construing it wanted you to. Alexanderplatz nowadays combines the worst of dehumanized GDR- city planning and hypercapitalist bling. On the north side the sad “Park Inn” overlooks a row of trashy shops. No park to be seen anywhere. Go upstairs for the smallest roof terrace in Berlin. At least it’s expensive as fuck. On the ground it’s even worse: revolting festivals like Oktoberfest litter the place, all dying in silence after a few days due to acute cheerlessness of the surroundings. Only a theater festival did the right thing: They walled off all view with bamboo. The vegan festival was a good call for idealists, but why would you want to save a world looking like Alexanderplatz? If there ever was a place who needed a mercy shot, it’s here. They now want to build wooden skyscrapers. What could go wrong, dear smokers? In every other space in Berlin people would riot, because due to merrily inhuman tenant legislation they make the rents around more expensive. At Alexanderplatz? Fuck it, they might as well build a nuclear power Plant.

The southern part is a tad more bearable. In the grim blocks walling it some nicely postapocaolyptic walks are to be had on the terraces. Or sit on Marx shoulders on the very end, him being right next to his friend and sponsor Engels. But be aware: This is the most dangerous square in Berlin, as tabloids never tire of hyperventilating. True, but it’s the size of an airport. If you want to get scared, Kotti is a better place. Sure, you will see Berliners. It’s the ones rushing by, because there is not reason at all to stop here. Most truly, heartily hate this place.