Alternative what..?

Now I’m more or less in the middle of my stay here in Berlin and by now I should have formed some kind of idea of the spirit of the place. To me Paris was elegant, beautiful and impudent. People where in general groomed and had natural, even minimalistic style. But the Parisian style was not axiomatic: it was a product of careful calculation. The days of Marie Antoinette flounce and frill were over. The idea was to look and seem sophisticated.  

Berlin lacks that kind of orderliness. Ask anyone abroad the question “How is a typical German?” and you’ll probably get an answer saying something like: “Organized, rich, industrious, professional and confident.” What comes to Berlin, I would leave everything else out of the definition except for perhaps confident. Even people abroad, especially young people, might already have an image of Berlin as a hip and trendy place. But for sure it is not rich or industrious. Even the Former Governing Mayor Willy Brandt said in the eighties that Berlin ist arm, aber sexy.”  Berlin has no significant industry. The unemployment is much bigger than in the rest of the Germany (Berlin 14%, German average 8%)). It is not the capital of finance, like Frankfurt or London. It is neither a place for business like Hamburg, Munich or Stuttgart. But Berlin is hip - there is no doubt about that.

Berlin is an absolute place for young (partying) adults. It’s almost like a paradise for groups of friends: you can take your beer bottle to the metro and sit there going around the ring (the S-Bahn train which goes around the whole city) if you feel like it. You can have picnic in one of the many parks in Berlin. Tiergarten itself covers 210 hectares of the whole city. You can pick up a bar from hundreds of different choices or go to Warschauer Strasse, where people often tend to end (for some reason). And when you come back, there is always a Currywurst or falafel kiosk open.

A word, which keeps popping into my head here, is ‘alternative’. Berlin is also supposed to be alternative. You have bio food shops and vegan restaurants all around. You will find cool design shops and graffiti walls überall. You may spend your Sunday at the hippy neighbourhood Prenzlauerberg (somebody at our work said that she managed to live in Prenzlauerberg without getting pregnant this being a little miracle since the place has a reputation of being the place for young adults) or go to the present ‘it’ place Kreuzberg in search for alternative new. And (what I loooove) you can do your shopping at flea markets and second hand shops. So Berlin seems very alternative, doesn’t it?

 Not.

In fact, when you take a closer look at things you’ll find out that actually being alternative seems to start becoming a norm here, at least for young people. In Mauerpark, for instance, people are searching for similar kind of stuff that makes the prices either go up (e.g. vintage leather bags) or produce mass production of cheep goodies (e.g. geeky glasses). The geek look (see Buddy Holly) is, for that matter, also hip in Berlin. You can’t simply go to a metro without meeting a hipster listening to some hipster music with his/her hipster iPod and carrying his/her hipster camera. I thought that I had found the coolest and most original bike from Mauerpark but when I look around I see billions of these bikes, yet again, everywhere (mine is perhaps a little bit more worn-out than the rest). The intelligence factor is part of this all alternative movement and you can definitely find a political group in Berlin to sign up for. But, like before, also the kind of thinking here has a certain trend factor: the more leftist and anti-capitalistic the ideology is, the better.

As a conclusion, I might proclaim that yes, Berlin is indeed alternative but within the norms of trendiness. Well, now that it’s all said and done I don’t actually care that much. As long as I have my veggie burger, can enjoy my Sunday flea markets and feel like I’m here and not some other capital in Europe, the Berlin sun keeps shining.