With the elections coming up and Berlin being once again flooded with posters that couldn’t be any more meaningless and vague, time to mention another widespread political message which started cropping up here and there over the past few monts: the Berlin Loves You Not stickers. No less vague but apparently with no unclear target: the many tourists and foreigners coming to visit and coming to stay.
With gentrification swapping back with full force into the Western districts of Kreuzberg and Neukölln that had been pretty much left to their own devices for the past 20 years, and Kreuzbergers being a historically belligerent lot, our neighbours complain about rising rents, the many apartments turned into holiday flats, drones of European youth roaming the streets in search of the next Berlin party. While there maybe some valid questions or issues, surely this can not be the right answer.
So just to say, we think it’s great. The more the better. Not only do bring tourists a not inconsiderable amount of money into our poor but sexy town, but more importantly, they bring the cosmopolitan and international spirit that Berliners have always envied the larger metropolises of London, New York or Tokyo. The visitors we see, we see them go to our local stores, bars, clubs because those are the places we go. Was that not meant to be a good thing?
Germans love to travel – we’re particularly set on finding hidden, local spots, and we adore it when we feel welcome. So shouldn’t we be welcoming ourselves? Germans love to work or study abroad – so what could we possibly have against foreigners wanting to study or work in Germany?
To me, just that fact that Berlin should have this attraction to foreign youth to want to come and live here, to learn the language, is kind of amazing. A thing one couldn’t have imagined 20 years ago, when Germany was probably somewhere among the bottom five on the international hipness scale.
So anyway, us being Berlin as well, we say don’t you worry, none of it is true.
2 Comments
Well said. I felt kind of indifferent to these stickers but the more i think about it, the more i also think: it’s not the right way or energy. We should be generally open and welcoming towards foreigners, tourists, students, a whoever from wherever we share the same city with. Just the way we would want to be treated if want to work, live or party some place else…
Those stickers are just plain embarrassing. Disturbingly, it appears such sticker activists have only moved to Berlin in the past ten years themselves, hence lack perspective. For almost two centuries Kreuzberg has been in change, for the better. None of the stickerist would want to live in the Kreuzberg of the early 60s. This is erring nostalgia leading to false demarcations.
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