Berliner within 10 steps

24. December 2013 at 11:55

Wolfram

berliner-within-10-steps

shopping tip Berlin, shopping guide Berlin, shopping in Berlin, Shopping tour, sightspots

With this title (“Little style adviser for newcomers”) in the new Zitty-Spezial. - as a Berlin born (but it took at least 395 steps) - I certainly get curious. Regarding the 10 respects a whole four are concerning fashionable aspects ( = 40% ! ) what means that a comment on this blog is not at all uninteresting – even if I’m looking at it from male point of view and a little bit different;-)

At first the fashion accessories a true Berliner can be recognized by:

1. To buy a parka: The original Berliner wears parkas since the American got rid of their army stocks in the “US-Steg-Shops” (sometimes with real bullet holes of the Vietkong) That was long time before there were Buwe-Parkas in the market.

2. To wear drainpipe/skinny jeans: Didn’t already Brigitte Bardot wear these at the end of the fifties? Also a form of nostalgia, but not specific for Berlin.

3. To wear hand-knitted or cut off clothes: An evident sign for anti- consumerism. (That is why Berlin is also still so cheap as fashion metropolis). It seems that the fans of this movement meet hier („Bis es euch vom Leibe fällt“). Berlin is surely in the lead here.

4. To wear sneakers: Well, the sneakers – Joschka Fischer made them socially acceptable in Hessen – so I think it is not a speciality of Berlin …

The further 6 steps give such illustrious advises as: to attend a yoga class, to eat vegan 2 days a week, to arrange soup parties, to use a bike, to tear down woodchip wallpaper, to go shopping on a market (incl. flea market). I resume as follows:

Do you become a Berliner thereby?

Everything seems as half-baked as the 2 days vegan food a week - “a little bit pregnant”. You can attend a hundred courses here (many people are doing), but not only yoga. There are a lot of parties as well, but the highlight is always Currywurst at midnight, bike is actually hip since you can take it into the train (if it‘s raining) because Berlin has a really great city rail network. Woodchip wallpaper start going mouldy in well heat-insulated houses – but also somewhere else – and

What I accept are the interesting other markets in Berlin - for example the market for fabrics and petty wares every Saturday at Kottbusser Brücke or the last covered market halls which are often visited just for drifting, not for shopping (always these tourists ….!!) ;-)

market for fabrics and petty wares at Kottbusser Brücke

Marheineke Markhallle - with piano player

Résumé

Dear Zitty-author: you will not become a Berliner by pinning on a button with the slogan "Ich bin ein Bearleena" or wearing a special kind of shoes or pants. You will become a Berliner under the parka or at the latest when realizing – whether newcomer or born here - that you don’t want to live anywhere else no more.

And regarding the outfit – most Berliner don’t care less what they wear. You can regard this as anti-consumerism or as the Berlin nonchalance. But in any case it is a good climate for new products and unimagined experiments. That is why this town makes so much fun!

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