Living with Bob column 03 – poor but sexy

There are worlds, where you jump clothed with a red cap over polygon bushes. Some cruise through dangerous areas like Vice City or walk through fantastic landscapes called Azeroth. You hear about lands, where each day of the week is associated with a specific color of clothing, states, where you should not reveal the soles of your feet to others and then there are lands, where you are asked to take off your shoes before entering a home. 

 

There are cities, people spend most of their time in cafés, villages, where they have a siesta, there are whole metropolises, where scrawny girls pace catwalks, places where you won’t think people speak your language because their dialect is that strong. There are cities, where it is custom either to drink champagne in public means of transport or to chauffeur daddy’s Chevrolet. And then, there is Berlin.

In Berlin it is fancy, to be poor. Living there is true to the motto: poor, but sexy. Even Governing Mayor of Berlin made that out. Besides actual capital campaign slogans like“be loud, be blunt, be Berlin”, the motto “be poor, be sexy, be Berlin” should also be advertised on posters or shown in the “Berliner Fenster”, the underground goggle-box.

Since surviving with a minimum of means, wearing your younger brothers raddled cloth and living off canned soup is fancy in Berlin, it is also usual to live in hip districts with deprived but intellectual fastidiously inhabitants at a high percentage. People live in old buildings in need of renovation, ideally in situation of squatting.

These districts are characterized by crumbling facades, discounters, Turkish vegetable stails and kebab shops. On your way to next supermarket you have to race through the classic Berlin-dog-dirt-slalom. Nowhere else (in Germany) staying out late boozing, growing lonely and smothering is as easy as in Berlin. This is the love-hate, separating and connecting players in this daily routine game…

Many people won’t accept the truth, but for a considerable time you may watch a terrifying trend: From filth to chic. Just as cheeky skateboard girl Avril Lavigne turned into a premium-punk with own perfume collection, someday even the last dirty corner in Berlin will be prettied up. An alternative man-made house is sold and will be substituted by an uptown with mall. All over the town the renovation-devil goes around. Being poor does not seem to be sexy anymore. This fact abruptly figured, when Bob and I came back to Berlin after a few days in the country.

Like many others we lived in an old 80ies style building, equipped with all that goes with it: grey walls, leaking pipes, a brash janitor. But when we entered our sink-estate-hallway, we asked ourselves how we missed out, that year 2011 arrived in our district. The walls suddenly in clear white, banisters in azure, a date enquiry for painting the doorframe fixed at our entrance.

The landlord asks via E-Mail, if we like to use the new online service for claim reports. And as early as next day, after four month of waiting and endless calls with the janitor, a plumber comes to repair the plughole.Our little neighborhood’s cosmos is turned upside down. Surely soon architects’ offices and health food stores will spring up like mushrooms.

Since we don’t have a dog, Bob and I are anyway taken for nerds. And now we of all people are living in a newly painted poser domicile among public housing. Outlaws! The only solution is: to move!

 

 

Last but not least BOB’s special tip: You may look up all of my apish adventures or MMORPG here on MMORPG-BOB.COM.