Capital of Germany and of urban decay
Observations during a “home leave” in Berlin
BERLIN: I still have an apartment here. And this is where I live when I'm not in the USA. I'll be flying again soon. But I'm still in Berlin - and I'm amazed. Amazed at what is happening politically and socially in this country. I am appalled. As soon as I step out of the front door, my stomach revolts against the garbage on the streets. Homeless people everywhere. This is Berlin’s “Neukölln” district (New Cologne).
Admittedly, it's a special corner: once popular with the unemployed, then “hip” with artists and students. Now “normal people” live in the partly gentrified houses on the side streets, while the main street - “Sonnenallee” (Sun Avenue), made famous beyond Berlin by the award-winning movie of the same name, has become an Arab shopping mile and - dare I say it - “degenerated”.
Ismael, who had come from Lebanon forty years ago and planted flowers and herbs in the tree patches outside our front door, has moved away. “It's gotten so dirty here,” he complained to me. There's nothing left of his flowerbed and now the garbage is piling up there again, fueled by the Arab supermarket on the corner. When Ismael was still watering his flowerbed, I fished out the garbage. Now he's gone, and I'm only here on a stopover, so to speak. So I watch it decay without doing anything about it. It hurts.
Even the raised bed that Hassan, the store owner around the corner, had planted is a big garbage can again… The customers throw everything on the street, like they are used to from home in Syria, Lebanon, Palestine etc., the shopkeepers I spoke to told me. They had tried for a while to keep the street in front of their shop clean, they all claimed - and then gave up. It’s a pity.
I only post photos that don't make my stomach revolt.
