IN PROGRESS

Two things Berlin seems incapable of getting right:

One is the traffic. The other one is garbage disposal.

The traffic first. In Berlin, the car is king. Cyclists are second-class citizens, and pedestrians third-class citizens.

Nobody is taught basic traffic rules, and very few observe them, and in any case, nobody is expected to observe them. There is no traffic police, and the staff in the few police cars one sees tootling around do not seem to be there for the traffic.

Bike paths are not respected by neither pedestrians nor cars, and pavements are not respected by anybody. Cars park on bike paths and pavements (even police cars when they stop for coffee); cyclists cycle on pavements, that are now also plagued by e-rollers hurtling along at breakneck speed, terrorising everybody including children and dogs. Still, the police observe and do nothing.

It gets worse: Instead of simply teaching and expecting its precious drivers to keep their much-worshipped cars away from cyclists and bike paths, like in normal countries, Berlin prefers to put up barriers in order to force drivers to stay on the road where they belong. These barriers are getting larger and larger and more and more ugly and are in many places completely dominating, and ruining, the look of the streets of Berlin. As if Berlin needs to look more unattractive than it already does.

Photos illustrating the “beatification” of Berlin thanks to braindead drivers to come.

In Revaler Straße, the barriers between street and bike paths are a little more discreet – a kind of oblong boulders that are slippery as ice – as I learned the hard way, and I am sure I am not the only one, and I would be surprised if they don’t cause accidents among cyclists as well.

But that is of course OK as long as the kings-of-the-road drivers and their beloved, stinky, noisy scrap-heaps are unharmed.

I fell and damaged my face and right hand. Four days later, one side of my face, already badly scratched from the meeting with the asphalt, is turning green and yellow, and my hand likewise. Ligaments in my thumb are so badly damaged that whether or not I have surgery, that hand will never be the same again.

More, including photos, to come.

The other thing is garbage disposal. This country has the most stupid systems in the so-called western world, with doors to garbage rooms and lids to containers very difficult to open. Where I live, people shorter and less strong than me, for example, have real difficulties using them, and half the time, I also have to give up opening the door to our garbage room, and simply leave the garbage bag outside. As if Berlin is not in many ways ugly enough already.

And the containers are never emptied often enough and therefore often overflowing, making Berlin look like a city in a third-world country.