Why do I feel so free in Berlin City?
Since I moved to this city, everything I write is extremely Berlin-centric. I think I’ve fallen in love with her (the city of Berlin). At the same time I feel overwhelmed and I can’t stop talking about it. Everyone knows that there are many crazy things that you can do here – like having a pony as a travelling companion in the s-bahn. – but still that’s not the point. Since I was here a feeling of freedom pervaded me: it tests my shyness and pushes me out of my shell, for better or worse. I want to find an explanation for this feeling.
This thought occurred to me last Saturday night
I was at an italian bar / art space called LaBettoLab drinking a spritz while listening Makoto – a friend of mine – playing experimental techno music. And along with that, many other artistic performance were going on at the same time: a half naked man was painting some sort of abstract expressionist picture, a video-art footage was projected on the wall. My friend’s electronic music created such a creepy atmosphere and the place was so crowded in people that much into the performances, that I said to myself: where else could I spend a night like that? Where else but in Berlin?
The waiter – most probably also the owner of the bar – introduced the artists one by one with verve, humor and a strong italian accent: “Berlin was the city of diversity!” He cried out solemnly “That’s why we all came here. But now everyone is so fucking busy and everything is so expensive.”
What does “Berlin City of diversity” mean?
There was a time when Berlin was a reference point for all the open minded people of the World. During the cold war many artists and hippies came to see the fragile limit between the Est and the West of the World. After the wall’s fall, the city exploded in a celebration of free sex, free drugs and street art. Berlin was the first city in Germany for unemployment. But living was easy, you could just get a subsidy from the State and occupy an abandoned flat. Squats, which are illegally occupied buildings, were a meeting point for great artists, as well as a breeding ground for counter-cultures.
Nothing is scandal no more
What about it, now? How’s today’s situation? Well, in the last 5-6 years, gentrification raised up the value of the real estates – which meant also no more occupants and free flats. Startups are popping up everywhere like mushrooms, hidden behind promises of a revolution in whatever market. Squats have now been legalized without fights nor contestations. The fire of transgression apparently is gone off: there is no rebel with no opposition, no more transgression as nothing is any longer a scandal.
One thing is for sure:
Yet, Berlin still is a reference point for all the freaks in the World. Filling yourself up with drugs or quitting the job to only survive with the unemployment benefits, living like that would basically make you feel like a loser in any other place, but not in Berlin. The point is that here no one cares about the way you spend your life.
Freedom is participation
Liberalism wouldn’t be the proper word to define this way of thinking: such tag is bound to a colder capitalistic point of view based upon which one just cares about its own business – and might the rest go to hell. Berlin is not that – all the opposite, in fact: no matter how much you are annoutcast, you’re never going to feel left alone by yourself. Every once a trouble comes to you someone will help you.
To me, the right word to define this Berlin freedom is “suspension of judgment”. Years ago I attended some theater classes. During those classes all of us students would crawl like animals, cry like babies and laugh like drunks. Nobody would ever judge us because everything (legal) was allowed in such context. The perimeter of the rehearsal space was our land of freedom. In return, we had to build a strong and positive relationship with our classmates. Such was the agreement: being free as long as being also participatory. There is also an italian song called “La libertà”, by Giorgio Gaber that says “Freedom is not hanging on a tree, neither having an opinion. Freedom is not a free space but Freedom is participation”. This basically is the same concept behind such a society that welcomes and breeds refugees, homeless people and needy individuals, as long as they participate to the community.
Show your diversity!
In Berlin there are people with big money for sure – as there are anywhere else in the World – but nobody either venerates them or envies them. They just go unnoticed. The outcasts, instead, are not considered as losers at all, they are just different. And also, sometimes you have the feeling that the more unlucky and miserable you are, the more you are respected. That’s because outcasts reflect the authentic Berlin spirit of squats and artists.
This might seem an alternative world where everything is upside-down. This way of thinking apparently has nothing to do with big cities’ usual lifestyle. In Milan for example, you are considered only based on what you earn and for what you squander in dinners / cloths / holidays. Still, no matter how much you are narrow-minded, you can’t help being fascinated by the German capital. You heard about crazy things that are going on and you want to see with your eyes. The problem is that many of those “curious visitors” come here just to “have THE experience”. They think they can go to Berghain and meet unconventional people and shake their hands like spoiled kids go to the zoo to watch caged tigers and take pictures of them. But outcasts are not a circus act. Maybe you can understand the authentic spirit of Berlin only by droping your mask of successful asshole: show at last your diversity.
I felt something like this in New York. One evening I went out with my pijama to the shop across the street and no one looked at me as if I was crazy. You can be whoever you want. You can do whatever you want (just not illegal stuff possibly). And no one would judge you
Wow I would love to visit NY as well 🙂 Thanks for your comment <3