11 ms·

According to many people, including record shop owners I’ve talked to, Berlin’s scene is actually not so underground and not so cool anymore as a result of tour

• carlmr 3y ago
  >Berlin’s scene is actually not so underground and not so cool anymore as a result of tourism and immigration. It's funny how the (somewhat leftist) techno scene hates on foreigners destroying their tradition. Berlin and Bavaria aren't so far apart after all.
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  • cookiemonsieur 3y ago
    Which is immensely ironic considering that modern house and techno is an invention of African Americans in Chicago. We've truly come full circle. The same thing is being done to hiphop in a similar way.
    • piva00 3y ago
      Just to be a bit pedantic: techno didn't come from Chicago but from Detroit :)
      • cookiemonsieur 3y ago
        My bad. But the point stands. Complaining about a cultural movement that they have almost entirely gentrified is massively ironic.
        • Mashimo 3y ago
          I think the scene is complaining about tourists and "foreigners" was a bad choice of word in this thread. People are flocking to big names and entry prices are as high as they have ever been. It's less about the actual music. And in that complaint I don't see any irony.
        • have_faith 3y ago
          Do you have a lot of knowledge about how the techno scene in Berlin evolved and came to be?
        • piva00 3y ago
          I wouldn't say "gentrified", techno just evolved from the Detroit roots, first in the UK and then continental Europe (Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, etc.). Techno came from an already gentrified African-American community in Detroit, the Belleville Three [0] were from a more affluent part of Detroit at the time, inspired by the 70s/80s German and Japanese electronic music scene, it was never like the roots of hip-hop... [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Belleville_Three https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Belleville_Three
          • Detroiterr 3y ago
            > the Belleville Three [0] were from a more affluent part of Detroit at the time Nobody in Detroit has ever called Belleville affluent (or 'more affluent' or whatever), and I go back to those days. I will politely omit the lol because you (obviously) aren't from around here. Techno was indeed the music from middle-class African-Americans. It's too bad the world demanded that young Black male artists must act like the white world expected - like gangsters - to sell hip-hop records.
          • samatman 3y ago
            Belleville? Affluent?? Lol. Lmao. Belleville is Juggalo country, cuz. Ypsituckians working in auto parts factories.
            • Detroiterr 3y ago
      • luma 3y ago
        Seems like UNESCO forgot about us in Detroit. Not to worry, we're used to it, and we'll party all the same.
        • larodi 3y ago
          Detroit deserves much more in its failed financial state to be made héritage of like anything… Urban heritage man, re u joking. Sadly no bright future for Detroit for the time being…
    • throwaway11460 3y ago
      This is a different branch of music that doesn't have much in common with Chicago style house/techno. It's similar so people lump it together, but it evolved separately from synthpop, eurodance and electronic music that Kraftwerk did in 70s. The modern commercial EDM/techno is pretty different from what you're going to hear at a Berlin/Prague underground techno club, and has almost nothing in common with freetekno as heard in the forests.
      • pgeorgi 3y ago
        Haven't you heard about the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Studio_for_Electronic_Music_(WDR) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Studio_for_Electronic_Music_(W..., America's finest place of avantgardist music and sound experimentation? (/s)
      • helboi4 3y ago
        I beg to differ. Plenty of Berlin techno is a descendant of Detroit techno. The fact that you only mentioned Chicago already shows a lack of understanding. Kraftwerk and the others you mentioned influenced Detroit techno pioneers, Detroit techno pioneers influenced Berlin techno pioneers. It's a transatlantic sound.
        • throwaway11460 3y ago
          I mentioned Chicago because the parent did. But I agree that there's a lot of cross influence.
    • pastacacioepepe 3y ago
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    • 45577834ff 3y ago
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    • throwaway2562 3y ago
      Nonsense. Jeff Mills was a Skinny Puppy fan, and you can hear it. All the Belleville Three were heavily influenced by Kraftwerk and euro-electro, and you can hear that too. All of them namecheck a much richer and diverse set of influences than Chicago house, itself a refinement of disco, a far from strictly racially-defined movement. The UK was the first to wake up to US techno, long before the US did, if you actually know/ lived through the history. Then of course you have Plus 8, Tresor, Basic Channel and so on. You can try for an Afro-American imperial case, but it’s going to get factually unstuck fast. The whole damn point was people dancing in a room together, not whatever authenticity tests you have in mind.
      • helboi4 3y ago
        Yep, exactly. It was German etc sounds being appreciated by African Americans in Detroit, being mixed with their influences in Chicago, and then travelling back across the Atlantic. Its a transatlantic international group effort and to deny either side of it misses the whole point.
        • randomopining 3y ago
          You both explained it very succinctly. I don't get why people have to grasp at depictions of history that simply aren't true. They want to believe that Jeff Mills and Belleville 3 somehow created this new music from nothing and inspired the entire world.
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      • cmrdporcupine 3y ago
        > Jeff Mills was a Skinny Puppy fan, and you can hear it Totally. I have somewhere in my pile of neglected vinyl one of the "Final Cut" releases, which was a straight-up wax-trax style EBM/industrial thing which Jeff Mills was involved in. Late 80s/early-90s. > The UK was the first to wake up to US techno, long before the US did Arguably, the US never really did. Most people here in North America remain clueless to what techno is and can't distinguish from EDM or other dance music forms. In Detroit itself, there was obviously an active scene, but much smaller than anything you'd find in most European cities (Detroit itself is a fairly small city, population wise), and much smaller than its own hip-hop scene. Back in the 90s when I was much more into this scene, it was very much a niche underground thing. Active scene participants here in southern Ontario/Toronto (3rd/4th largest city in North America) were a few hundred people at most and we pretty much all knew each other. Detroit techno producers and DJs spent most of their time touring in Europe (where they could get paid), not here in North America. The Detroit Electronic Music Festival events were kind of a rare acknowledgement by a larger audience (I went to the first two only, though). All said though, the "Detroit" "authenticity" pole in techno served as a counteracting force against the unbearable soul-less, drug-rush-focused, "whiteness" of trance, progressive house, etc.
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    • rvense 3y ago
      If you are suggesting that "modern house and techno" emerged fully formed from black kids in Chicago and that Berlin techno is just imitation, I do wonder why you're even bothering to take time out to comment - this isn't really a position that could be seriously held by someone who's ever actually listened to the music.
    • boppo1 3y ago
      >African Americans in Chicago That's funny, Detroit lays claim to the same thing.
      • lamp_book 3y ago
        Chicago claims house. Detroit claims techno. They aren’t exactly the same.
  • pastacacioepepe 3y ago
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  • yorwba 3y ago
    Foreigners and tourists are different groups, albeit with significant overlap. The techno scene has a problem with tourists in particular, whether foreign or not. A Bavarian tourist booking an all-inclusive guided tour to pose on social media is going to stick out all the same. Meanwhile an Algerian on a student visa who spends more time partying than studying will fit right in.
  • easyThrowaway 3y ago
    Dunno. Sven & friends at Berghain never looked particularly lefty. Tbh They always gave me a a strong...erhh... "Aryan" vibe if you know what I mean.
    • Tenoke 3y ago
      They aren't super 'lefty' but "Aryan" is completely unfair. Berghain cares a lot about diversity, and non-straight and non-white people have a sligtly higher chance of getting in (never any guarantees for non-regulars of course), which is the opposite of what a nazi place would promote.
      • easyThrowaway 3y ago
        Non-white and non-straight as long as they looked like they were coming right from a balenciaga catwalk. And they weren't shy in the past of hosting notoriously hard-right aligned djs and artists. Berghain antics aside, the point I was trying to make it's that Berlin club scene isn't exactly as "welcoming" of outsiders as a whole as the OP was suggesting.
        • scns 3y ago
          > And they weren't shy in the past of hosting notoriously hard-right aligned djs and artists. Whom?
          • easyThrowaway 3y ago
            Vatican Shadow is probably the most infamous example, it had resonance even outside of the local scene. It was probably the point when their usual "We don't take a political stance" position didn't fly at all.
    • scns 3y ago
      Sven is gay.
      • 3y ago
  • filoleg 3y ago
    This has nothing to do with foreigners and everything to do with outsiders/passerbys/tourists. It is basically the techno scene version of gentrification (not talking about the impact or harm or whatever else being comparable between the two, just the mechanics of it), except it is happening with the techno scene instead of housing. This is not incongruent with your observation about “somewhat leftist” techno scene people hating on outsiders destroying their tradition. It is very similar to the analogous complaints those “somewhat leftist” people would make about gentrification. A very comparable similar example: Burning Man. Look at how it changed and what people who have been attending it since forever ago are saying. Very similar things, and it obviously has nothing to do with actual foreigners. It has everything to do with “gentrifying” the event, and it just slowly turning into a trust fund glamping larp.
  • junon 3y ago
    I'm a foreigner, nobody cares about that. People coming in and recording their adventures, sitting in the corner texting, wearing fur boots or eye paint, etc are the ones that aren't so much appreciated. Nobody's ever had a problem with my shitty German as long as I've been partaking in the atmosphere as intended.
• sabellito 3y ago
  Heard exactly that, including the Leipzig part, every year for the 5 years I lived there 10 years ago. Berlin is the biggest city in continental Europe, there's a lot of everything and there'll always be hidden little nooks.
  • L_226 3y ago
    Bigger than Paris? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_urban_areas_in_the_European_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_urban_areas_in_the_Eur...
    • toyg 3y ago
      Maybe they meant big as in "big in Japan", if you know what I mean :D the techno scene in Paris, although undoubtedly vibrant, is definitely less renowned than Berlin's.
    • thiago_fm 3y ago
      It is bigger than Paris if you don't count the surrounding area around Paris, which isn't Paris. This article isn't correct as it is taking into account the surrounding area.
    • vidarh 3y ago
      Those are urban areas. If you instead count by city limits, Berlin is bigger by a large margin [1]. This is the perpetual problem with defining "biggest" - to some the urban area of Paris might still be "Paris" but the vast majority of it is outside the city limits. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_in_the_European_Union_by_population_within_city_limits https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_in_the_European...
      • earthnail 3y ago
        But Berlin stops entirely at its city limits. There is almost nothing beyond it. That's just a consequence of its history with the east/west divide. More people live in Munich's metropolitan area (i.e. where underground and overground take you) than Berlin. Still, Berlin feels like a proper city and Munich like a large village. Berlin vs Munich is where your metric (people who live inside city boundaries) works to describe the metropolitan effect. Paris, on the other hand, is on another level entirely. When you travel from Paris to Berlin, Berlin feels like a small town. And here, the metric of people who live inside city boundaries just doesn't describe the feeling of the cities at all.
• deleted 3y ago
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• mat0 3y ago
  Well I can tell you in my totally anecdotal view that the underground scene here is alive and well, you just need to look a bit harder for it ;) It’s true that mainstream media like Instagram and TikTok are bringing the worst of the scene and it’s true that there are now a lot of kids that think that the techno scene is to dress in fetish clothes and film yourself dancing waiting for “the drop”. But this is just capitalism and globalization doing its thing. Trends come and go. You can still go to awesome parties here in Berlin that won’t be filmed and uploaded to Facebook, and it’s also true that people complain a lot about the scene going mainstream but in reality if you want money from it, there’s so many mouths that the underground scene can feed. I think a bigger problem for the club culture is the festival scene, but that’s a whole different discussion. There are cool initiatives coming from this such as ASlice so I don’t think it’s as bad as some old schoolers are claiming
  • pantalaimon 3y ago
    I feel like the growing festival scene is a direct result of properties getting scarce in the city. Or maybe that people got too busy that they can only afford to party when it’s a proper vacation.
    • diggan 3y ago
      > I feel like the growing festival scene is a direct result of properties getting scarce in the city. On the hand, Barcelona is as cramped as ever (with rents showing it too) but there is plenty of festivals in the city, especially around Port Forum (a marina) which have huge open spaces and is right before the city limits.
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• piva00 3y ago
  Leipzig seems to be the new underground place in Germany from what I've heard and experienced. I believe this is the usual cycle of cities going through: arts scene existing because it's a cheap place to live, artists congregate in places they can afford, create a cool scene, the cool scene brings some bars/cafés and slowly it erodes to gentrification since these places are cool and attract other crowds into it (higher income, and/or tourists), eventually it makes the place expensive and artists have to find a new place where it's cheaper to live, and create their spaces. Very similar to the geeks, MOPs, and sociopaths essay on subcultures. [0] [0] https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths
  • earthnail 3y ago
    But Leipzig doesn't have the same growth opportunity as Berlin. Leipzig is 1/8th the size of Berlin and as such its upper bound on how large a scene can become is massively capped. Add to that that Berlin has been a place for internationals for generations, whereas Leipzig is entirely German. For the record, I love Leipzig, I think it's gorgeous.
  • immibis 3y ago
    The usual cycle of capitalism going through cities. This thing where vultures move in and monetize things that other people created for free is a peculiarity of the way our economy works, not a universal truth (although it's a universal truth that it happens wherever it's allowed to, it's not universally allowed to happen).
• Tenoke 3y ago
  >towards Leipzig. This has been a meme forever, and while Leipzig has its own decent scene for its size, it is not remotely close to rivaling Berlin. Pick a decent sample of either established or up and coming DJs and compare how often they play in Berlin vs there to disuade yourself of that notion. >and even Sofia. Yeah, no. Just because a city has some parties here and there, it doesn't mean it should even be in the conversation in this context.
  • throwaway55671 3y ago
    > established or up and coming DJs Well there's the problem. What you should compare is how many unknown new guys just making good music for fun in small unknown clubs visited by locals are there. In my city I can go to a random non-descript bar with zero marketing or entrance fee, sit down peacefully with a drink, and hear world class techno together with few dozen strangers. Every evening. Doesn't feel that way in Berlin anymore, even if I pay it's all that global commercial style that the established DJs with promoter/management teams seem to fall into and the places are totally overcrowded.
    • projectazorian 3y ago
      What city?
      • throwaway55671 3y ago
        Prague
• omnimus 3y ago
  Nothing even compares to Berlin. Prague has basically 2 clubs and they are working partly because it's cheap and only 4hour train from Berlin so it's fun destination for both Berliners and Berlin DJS. Athens is where lots of the techno scene (djs, producers) has been moving to but that's because property is cheap so they can run away from Berlin winter. It also has like 2 clubs. In Berlin there are so many venues it's hard to remember them.
  • ehnto 3y ago
    Is this specifically techno/underground clubs you mean? My pokey city in Aus has like a dozen "EDM" clubs that spin a decent breadth of techno to house to dnb etc. Perhaps I should count myself lucky?
    • earthnail 3y ago
      EDM isn't Techno. It's a bit like saying that hard rock is like metal (somewhat bad analogy, but I hope you get the point). I know you listed a range of genres but it's important to note that the Berlin techno scene would never consider itself part of EDM. In Europe, most EDM is happening in Amsterdam.
      • ricksunny 3y ago
        Can you distinguish these two? In my head EDM & techno occupy the same space.
        • jahnu 3y ago
          The exact meaning of EDM has shifted over the years but I would say that currently it means stuff like Skrillex and Hardwell whereas techno is more like Carl Craig or Inigo Kennedy or Charlotte de Witte
        • HKH2 3y ago
          One clear difference is that EDM tends to have a lot of lyrics, whereas Techno tends not to.
• padjo 3y ago
  At the point where UNESCO are recognizing it it’s probably fair to say it’s not underground at all anymore
  • diggan 3y ago
    It doesn't seem like "Berlin underground techno" is being recognized by Unesco, but rather just "Berlin Techno". So while the underground movement might be the grassroot for the mainstream, it would seem like they're recognizing techno in Berlin overall, not just the underground part.
  • larodi 3y ago
    Precisely. Why did I need to tell this all BS at all, you nailed it soo good. It is heritage, history, not the wave itself.
• junon 3y ago
  I live in Berlin. This isn't true at all. Berlin's underground scene is still quite strong, perhaps just not as strong as it used to be. There's more "in the open" stuff due to the popularity, yes, but there's still plenty of (sometimes literal) underground raves happening. I'd also argue that the most recent accelerator for the shift in culture in Berlin isn't so much the tourism, but the pandemic. People haven't really been the same since.
  • wheels 3y ago
    Tourism definitely wasn't a major drag on the techno scene. There's always been the tourist clubs and the clubs that were more underground. Berliners usually don't go to Berlin's best known clubs. (Who the hell goes to Watergate or Tresor? Old joke was that Tresor was the biggest club in Dresden.) I think the biggest drag is actually rent prices. When I got to Berlin 20 years ago you could get a room in a shared flat for €100. That same room now would be €500. Same for music spaces: it was easy to rent unused warehouse space in the inner city 20 year ago. There are a lot of interesting things that happen to a city when rent is ridiculously low as it was in Berlin for a long time (there were more apartments than people). There's still a lot going on in Berlin, but the character has very much changed. 20 years ago it was rare for clubs to be legal. Most of Berlin's well known clubs now started off as illegal clubs back then. But there were hundreds of other spaces that didn't survive and transition to being legal spaces. There's still some of that, but much, much less. Also back then just randomly setting up a sound system in a park in the summer was much more tolerated. "Open Airs" in Berlin were just kind of what you did in the summer. Honestly, while I generally did not partake in such, the pandemic was the first time that I realized that came back some. Partying was illegal and the parties were moderately guarded secrets. I hadn't seen that much buzz around illegal parties in more than a decade. Addendum: As a weird note, I don't even get the grandparent's comment about Potsdam? For the non-Berlin folks, it's a city just outside of Berlin's borders, but an hour away on the train from the more alternative bits of the city. It's neither known for its music scene, nor honestly as a place that rich people want to move. I know a couple of people that have moved there because of usual suburb reasons: they wanted a bigger place, and it's cheaper there. The other cities listed there are also weird. I've been out in all of them but Lyon and, yeah, there's some stuff, but to say the "scene" is moving there is really off. Three of the cities listed there are in the Balkans, but the best city for techno in the Balkans is undoubtedly Belgrade.
• jamil7 3y ago
  There's still quite a lot of illegal/semi-legal free party scene type stuff going on, especially in summer. A lot of the scene has been pushed outside of the ring, though. Leipzig is lovely but tiny in comparision, you won't find even remotely as many clubs and parties.
  • codetrotter 3y ago
    > Leipzig is lovely but tiny in comparision, you won't find even remotely as many clubs and parties. That’s exactly what someone would say, to keep the tourists away :p “No, there are no underground raves around here, nor have there ever been, nor will there ever be. Please stay away from this town.”
    • picadores 3y ago
      You make two entrances - one is "backstage and delivery guys" - thats where the people you want get in- the other is for insta-noodles and hipster-replacement folk, who want to wait all night and then get rejected in some viral video..
  • picadores 3y ago
    Eh, because they do not want people there, who listen to promotions and whatever the socialsewersystems carries as hip to them. Where there is affordable housing, there be musicians doing brave new things instead of worrying about rent and rapping rants about gentrification.
    • jackcosgrove 3y ago
      > Where there is affordable housing, there be musicians doing brave new things instead of worrying about rent and rapping rants about gentrification. So I am not a techno aficionado, and I'm curious what the state of Detroit techno is now. It seems like it should be more notable (maybe it is and I'm not in the scene to know) given the history and cost of living. I regret the US turning away from house and techno, compared to Europe.
• cribbles 3y ago
  > the scene is moving towards Leipzig Speaking as someone who's split ~half my time between Leipzig and Berlin for the last 5 years, this is not true. Leipzig's club scene is an extension of its university population. It's younger, straighter, whiter, and about two orders of magnitude smaller. People visit the clubs while they're going to school there, then they graduate and move elsewhere. Often to Berlin. Why does this illusion exist? Because Leipzig is about an hour away from Berlin by train. Berliners visit for a weekend and think "wow, it's like Berlin in the 90s! Still cheap! And look at all these cool young kids at these scrappy clubs -- so that's where the underground has gone!". Then they go back to Berlin and spread the word to credulous out-of-towners, who go on to repeat this truism to people who have never visited either city. In reality, Berlin's club scene -- both "mainstream" and "underground" -- dwarfs that of any other city. Nothing short of an asteroid hit is likely to change that.
  • jijijijij 3y ago
    The main reason why Leipzig won't become the "next Berlin" is rents are increasing there, as fast as in Berlin. It is still cheaper, but not "let's try and find out" cheap. I think, for a moment around 15 years ago, Leipzig was dirt cheap and had quite a bit of momentum, because you didn't need a business plan to try and make things happen. People, students from west Germany, payed 100€ for rent and 30€ for an atelier. Lots of raw excitement and empty buildings. But the momentum died maybe 8 years ago. What's left is nothing like Berlin. Cheaper, but still expensive; liberal-ish, but all kartoffel. Leipzig doesn't feel exciting, but small now. And it's deep in enemy territory, very depressing region, the mere thought doesn't spark joy at all.
  • larodi 3y ago
    Techno has always been about that in Europe - young and white. And it is not in Berlin anymore. Berlin can have the heritage, NOW it’s not there anymore, do u get it?
• aqme28 3y ago
  That's what they say about every scene. It's always too late. It's always getting too mainstream.
• Annatar 3y ago
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• lippihom 3y ago
  https://ra.co/events/de/berlin https://ra.co/events/de/berlin events tonight in Berlin... parties at 100+ clubs, doesn't seem like anywhere comes close.
  • larodi 3y ago
    It’s what commerce looks like. Abundance is not a mark of the underground.
• baxuz 3y ago
  Zagreb. Seriously?
  • rospaya 3y ago
    Yeah, I'm wondering too.
• snakeyjake 3y ago
  >Berlin’s scene is actually not so underground and not so cool anymore as a result of tourism and immigration. In my experience, people who like things because they are hidden and exclusive tend to be shitty, shallow, superficial people. Many, many, varied decades of life lived all over the world, and I've never witnessed a counterexample so I hesitate to make it an absolute. Same goes for people who think they like things more than others because they liked them first.
  • ferongr 3y ago
    On the other hand, normies do ruin everything.
    • snakeyjake 3y ago
      In my experience, 100% of all people who use the word "normie" unironically are shitty, shallow, superficial people.
      • mtizim 3y ago
        If you stop squinting, you'll see that neither the average exclusive activity enthusiast, nor a person using "normie" unironically are shallow nor superficial. Maybe your experience can be explained by how you see these people, not by how these people actually are.
    • Tainnor 3y ago
      Living in Berlin and being into techno, clubbing and drugs is the most "normie" thing ever. Try being a rock or jazz fan - or even Schlager.
  • lukan 3y ago
    "In my experience, people who like things because they are hidden" Sounds a bit like a strawmen. No one here said, they like something, because it is hidden. But hidden places are quite free and can cultivate a very different culture, than one that plays by all the legal rules. And where money took over everything. The best places I have been, were not listed in lonely planet. And I could not book them online. I had to find them.
• brcmthrowaway 3y ago
  Berlin is over, just like Burning Man is over
• barrenko 3y ago
  Leipzig being known as Hypezig.
• testfrequency 3y ago
  You know, I didn’t want to get attacked by Berliner’s for saying this…but I was pretty….whelmed…by the techno scene when I was there for a month. I’ve enjoyed far more raves in LA and Detroit, and lots of harder techno clubs in Chicago that felt a lot more authentic. The Berlin crowds were kind and chill, but there definitely was this odd feeling where it all kinda felt..scripted? I hadn’t gone to Berlin up until two years ago, so I can only imagine it was pretty incredible a decade ago before tourism swamped them. And before anyone asks, I was rolling with native berliners and service industry folks, so I was fortunate to get in to and attend a lot of the best parties while I was there. I’d love to go back, I do just feel like it was slightly overhyped before I got there :/. Happy for them regardless, they deserve the recognition even if I didn’t get to really experience the best of it
  • seabass-labrax 3y ago
    Clarification requested: surely that's underwhelmed? Or are you saying that you were emotionally involved in it despite the 'scripted' feeling as you describe?
    • satvikpendem 3y ago
      "Whelmed" is new slang to mean, it was ok, just alright. It is a reaction to over- and underwhelmed which now carry a bit more extreme connotation.
      • testfrequency 3y ago
        Exactly :)
    • testfrequency 3y ago
      The latter. I don’t think it’s fair to say I was underwhelmed (I wasn’t), I enjoyed my time despite the feeling of how prescribed a lot of the parties/clubs/people felt (party enough like I do and you’re sure to come across this, it’s not unique to Berlin). I just had this possibly _too_ high expectation of the Berlin techno club/party scene before I got there, and it just didn’t wow me like I had heard it would (despite having a great time and no issues). Berlin as a city, however, exceeded my expectations..which definitely adds to my confusion on my overall sentiment towards everything