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Time to say Goodbye?

© Karikatur: Klaus Stuttmann

Roger Boyes: How Berlin betrays everyone of us

After 20 years in Berlin, Roger Boyes wants to leave the city. He will cherish Berlin with all its weaknesses and follies, its big sentimental heart, its vanity and its caustic humour. Maybe he even loves the place and its people.

It was just a moment, the time it takes to gulp a double espresso, but long enough to persuade me that I had to leave Berlin and reclaim an interrupted life. Too lazy to shop for food, I had breakfast in Kempinski. Two Amis were eating Eggs Benedict at a window table and, as usual, I strained to listen in. They were evidently business men considering investing in Berlin. It was like that old Walter Mehring song: Die Geier sassen beim Petit-Dejeunerwas Geier so frühstücken wenn sie regieren.

Prices are low, said one of the men, thin-faced but with a slight stomach that pushed against the table. I deduced he was talking about property in Berlin. But so are profits, said his colleague, Forget-it the German rental laws are a nightmare. Leave Berlin alone.

Leave Berlin alone! At the neighbouring table, I let out a silent cheer, a muffled Bravo! Who wants foreigners buying up our city? Imposing their alien rules and expectations on us? By all means, visit Berlin, yes; spend your money here, certainly; admire the city. And then, for the love of God--go home.

For me, this was the point of no return. Suddenly I realised that I had mutated into a Berlin micro-chauvinist, a near-native of this Asterix-village that is so determined to resist all that is foreign and strange. After 20 years, I had become a victim of the Spree version of the Stockholm Syndrome. I had slept with the enemy. It was time to go.

Many English people say they love Berlin, of course. The fatuous lifestyle magazine Monocle has just declared Berlin to be the eighth most liveable city in the world, after Helsinki (number one) and Munich (number four) but satisfyingly ahead of Tokyo and Madrid. The judges liked the S-Bahn presumably they did not investigate the city in winter and its value for money, its greenery, its bicycle paths. That's nice. There is a big difference between Berlin and the other winners though: places like Melbourne and Zurich are not just easy to live in but are embracing change. They give a sense that new ideas can be realised, that money can be made and that foreigners are not just something to be tolerated but celebrated as part of the adventure of urban life. That spirit, which I found as a student in West Berlin in the 1970s, has evaporated.

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But what's the point of me indulging in Wessi-nostalgia, of D-Mark cultism? It is usually based on distorted memory. Berlin, the new Berlin, has developed its own strengths and virtues. Until recently the arguments in favour of Berlin have been sufficiently powerful to convince me that I should stay around long enough to be buried in the Selbstmörderfriedhof in Grunewald. Alongside the sad White Russian exiles who threw themselves into the Havel in the 1920s, alongside Nico of the Velvet Underground and all the other lebensmuede Berliners whom the church chose to outlaw to the forest. It is good place, a Berlin terminus, where only the squirrels are aggressive.

The Hauptstadttugenden, what are they? Well, over the years, I have begun to understand them better. Berliners are good hosts. Not just in terms of inviting you to their homes though, of course they manage this too, often insisting that you take off your shoes so as not to scratch the parquette-- but in their willingness to put on a show. To my mind, Berlinale Chef Dieter Kosslick is one of the worlds great hosts, suspending all the usual clichés about Berliners by being charming, sensitive and well-organised. Second, Berliners take friendship seriously. There is an almost Sicilian quality to a male Berlin friendship; you are set tests and challenges, your loyalty is measured with the precision of a medicine-mixing pharmacist. Berlin friends demand that you nourish the friendship with Köpi, of course, but also with time and careful listening. If you let down a Berliner, you are not forgiven. I like this absolutism, even if it has made enemies out of a few former mates. Berlin too is a city of philanthropists people like Hans Wall and Roman Skoblo who devote a lot of thought into improving the place. Some Berliners are suspicious of these quiet donors, viewing philanthropy as a kind of vulgar display of wealth. But they're wrong; these people represent a strain of civic pride that has been discreetly present since the late 19th century.

How could you not admire such a rough authentic sub-metropolis as it seeks to transcend its imperfections? Alfred Kerr, quotes a Frenchman (he is unsure whom): En te perdant je sens que je t'aimais. Perhaps, that is the sense of the phrase, you have to lose Berlin in order to love it. Perhaps my heart will grow fonder as soon as I have the Abmeldebestätigung from the Bürgeramt Wilmersdorf.

But the truth, my truth, is this: Berlin, so badly managed for so long, has betrayed us all, those of us who thought we could fall in love with the place. Some older Berliner tell me that the place has become harsher, more self-regarding over the past decade. I don't think that's quite right either. It's not about the tone of the city, however raw, but about its withdrawal from the realities of modern Europe, its deliberate inability to deal with or even address the issues of an accelerating world. Under a string of mediocre politicians above all under Klaus Wowereit, Berlin has allowed itself to become as second-rate capital. I am sorry that it has to be a foreigner to say this , a foreigner moreover with packed suitcases (Kerr says: Scheiden sind Küsse, Küsse, Küsse; und Wiedersehen ist ein Lächeln but who else will say it? Not the mayor. Here he is telling Bild that Berlin has "eine besondere Anziehungskraft, nicht zuletzt die Touristenzahlen zeigen das". But wait, Herr W. Disneyland Orlando also has lots of tourists; it is attractive to certain groups of people(most of them aged under nine years old) and only for three days at a time. Tourists are no measure of international flair. Or a mark of a city's authority. As for Berlins problems, says Wowereit, it is up to the Bund to pay more: Da könnte es noch mehr Unterstützung geben - That doesn't sound like a politician with a vision. Actually it sounds almost identical to what Wowereit was saying five years ago. And my heart sinks as yet another Berlin politician abdicates responsibility.

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There was a time when Berlin was at the cutting edge of Europe. Franz Biberkopf in Döblins Alexanderplatz is constantly shifting between the chaos of the city and the wider crisis of meaning for which the city stands. Berlin has always had problems, not always of its own making, but it has never tackled them by standing still. Quite literally, it was the capital of speed. The Avus, completed in 1921 with private money, the first- Nur-Auto Strasse der Welt, was technically brilliant. Nowadays Berlin which has less volume of traffic than any other major European capital is rendered sclerotic by senseless staus. There is no Verkehrskonzept for dealing with this.

It is not Berlinss fault that the sleek ICE trains, the envy of Europe, slow down to the snail's pace of Güterzügen when they edge in to Brandenburg. But somehow it is typical of the city's dilemma. The quicker the world moves, the more immobile Berlin seems to become. In Franz Biberkopfs times, Berlin had a natural dynamic; this no longer exists. It has become cool to the outside world because of its big empty spaces space for clubs and galleries and re-invention. Provincial kids, not just from the villages of Baden-Württemberg, are in the city's thrall because they can take drugs and stay out late without anyone reporting them to their parents. But the clubs and galleries are going bust . They lack high spending art collectors, anyone willing to make an investment longer than nine months. And internet start-up companies become close-down companies as funds dry up. Markets shrivel and banks lose confidence. The best one can say of Berlins vast empty spaces today is that they provide great hiding places for criminals on the run. When someone breaks out of a jail in North Rhine Westphalia, the first phone call is to the Berlin LKA.

It would be cheap and silly to blame Berlins clinical narcolepsy, its sleeping sickness, on the political class alone. We all know the deep cultural rots of this stasis. A city that has been stuffed full of subsidies, like a wrestler on steroids, is of course going to find it difficult to move or think straight, is going to confuse size with strength. And of course its political class is going to be more adept at spending state money than saving it , more likely to cater to its clients than puzzle out what is best for the city. We let that happen.

Over the years I haven't made myself very popular in Berlin and no doubt this article won't improve my chances of becoming a Berlin Ehrenbürger. You don't become popular by trying to wake someone up in the morning. I will cherish Berlin with all its weaknesses and follies, its big sentimental heart, its vanity and its caustic humour. Yes, maybe I even love the place and its people.

But it's time to say goodbye and not with a Kuss, Kuss,Kuss.

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