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Yeah... anybody who knows Germany will laugh at the idea of Berlin being some sort of powerhouse in comparison to Munich and Stuttgart. The fact the last two we

Yeah... anybody who knows Germany will laugh at the idea of Berlin being some sort of powerhouse in comparison to Munich and Stuttgart. The fact the last two weren't even mentioned makes the author look really uninformed.

ptaipale 11y ago
Indeed. Berlin is nice in many ways, but it is precisely because it is a historical anomaly from the Cold War time; it was subsidized in several way to keep it alive as a West German (BRD) enclave within DDR (East Germany). Now it's the capital again, and "normalizing", which means that rents and property prices are going up, and so is the general price level (which is currently lower than in other German cities - not usual for a European or any capital city).
mattlutze 11y ago
Though Stuttgart, at least, really is "just a city," albeit one dense with industry and finance. If the author was looking at describing cities that exist as quasi-independent entities, I'm not sure it'd really fit. As well to consider is its size: as big as it feels, the city is around 600k people and the official metropolitan region, even with its 5.3 million, is very low density (the Wiki heads say ~340 persons/sq.km., vs thousands in other reported areas).
- junto 11y ago
  Also send to miss the fact that Berlin, Hamburg and Bremen are (uniquely in Germany), both cities and states officially. Bremen and Hamburg are an oddity since they have maintained some degree of state autonomy since the forming of the 'Hanseatic League', the history of which is several hundreds of years old, dishing numerous cities birding the North and Baltic Seas. Interestingly, the German city of Lübeck also held this honour, up until it was removed by Adolf Hitler, after they refused him to publicly speak in the city. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanseatic_League https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanseatic_League

ptaipale 11y ago

Indeed. Berlin is nice in many ways, but it is precisely because it is a historical anomaly from the Cold War time; it was subsidized in several way to keep it alive as a West German (BRD) enclave within DDR (East Germany). Now it's the capital again, and "normalizing", which means that rents and property prices are going up, and so is the general price level (which is currently lower than in other German cities - not usual for a European or any capital city).

mattlutze 11y ago

Though Stuttgart, at least, really is "just a city," albeit one dense with industry and finance. If the author was looking at describing cities that exist as quasi-independent entities, I'm not sure it'd really fit. As well to consider is its size: as big as it feels, the city is around 600k people and the official metropolitan region, even with its 5.3 million, is very low density (the Wiki heads say ~340 persons/sq.km., vs thousands in other reported areas).

junto 11y ago
Also send to miss the fact that Berlin, Hamburg and Bremen are (uniquely in Germany), both cities and states officially. Bremen and Hamburg are an oddity since they have maintained some degree of state autonomy since the forming of the 'Hanseatic League', the history of which is several hundreds of years old, dishing numerous cities birding the North and Baltic Seas. Interestingly, the German city of Lübeck also held this honour, up until it was removed by Adolf Hitler, after they refused him to publicly speak in the city. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanseatic_League https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanseatic_League