I was born in what they call Saxony. Big family: two brothers, one sister. Desperately extroverted, all three of them. Especially the boys. They always got the warm spot first. Assholes, really. Although sweet. Sweet at heart.

The day my Big One appeared, they were all up in his face—his weird, giant face with absolutely no fur where fur is supposed to be. I wasn’t going to push. I thought maybe if you wait, something comes to you. It did. The Big One made his way toward me.

He smelled like cherries, and wet concrete. He proceeded to pick me up. He proceeded to choose me. I didn’t realize that being chosen meant agreeing to forget everything I knew about being alive. That seems like the kind of thing someone should mention upfront.

Our journey from Saxony was a complete disaster. Warm, cold, then warm again. Metal smell. Panic smell. Strange motion with no visible cause. I did not enjoy it whatsoever, but I was brave. I threw up at least twice. The Big One made a clicking sound with his mouth that I now recognize as the “something has gone wrong but we’re continuing anyway” sound. He uses it often.

By nightfall, we arrived in the City. The City is loud and confusing. There are doors, stairs, bicycles, bags, cords, shoes, and rules. Thousands of rules. Possibly millions. Here are the ones I’ve managed to confirm so far.

Rule 1: Leash Gets You Places

The leash is what ties my neck to the Big One’s hand. At first, I assumed it was for me. I was wrong. It’s for him. The Big One clings to the leash because it’s the only thing reminding him that he is currently on Earth. Without it, he would float like a sad balloon, drifting away until he became nothing more than a speck of black cashmere against the grey clouds. He is my constraint on reality. I am his line to it.

Rule 2: Phones Are Substitute Leashes

The City is full of Big Ones who have no Small Ones to anchor them. I feel for such creatures. They walk very fast and arrive nowhere in particular. In place of leashes, they carry small, glowing rectangles called “phones.” Phones show them other Big Ones who aren’t there. This arrangement appears unsatisfying, but they persist. It’s the only viable alternative.

Rule 3: Places Make No Sense

Some places, I am allowed. Some places, I am not allowed. The logic of this is a puzzle I have stopped trying to solve. There’s a food-smell place with tables outside; I may sit under them. There’s a food-smell place with tables inside—the same tables, I checked—and I may not. The distinction is extremely important to the Big Ones. They enforce it with great confidence. Confidence, I have observed, is one of their favorite substitutes for comprehension.

Rule 4: Poop Is Shameful

I poop. It is natural. It is what happens when you eat food, which everyone agrees you should do. Every time I poop, however, my Big One must make a face. The face says: This is the most disgusting thing that has ever happened, and also it happens daily. Right after comes the real perversion: He reaches into his pocket, produces a thin bag, and picks up the warmth I have discarded. This, apparently, is the civilized response. And I’m the one who’s supposed to be ashamed? I suspect the Big One is simply jealous. I know for a fact my body is working; he has no idea if his is.

Rule 5: Fur Is Removable

Every morning, Big Ones must put on different furs. My Big One does this too. It takes him at least twenty minutes to decide which. On certain days, he forces me into furs as well. The problem is: I already have fur. Everyone can see this. It’s attached to me. Still, he insists on layering additional fur on top. He has an entire room dedicated to these extra furs. Rows of them. This is baffling. I have considered offering him my fur. It is consistent. It requires no deliberation. But I suspect consistency is exactly what he’s trying to avoid.

Rule 6: Doors Lie

A door is a thing that separates inside from outside. The most disturbing Big One invention. To the best of my knowledge, when a door closes, my Big One does not cease to exist. I can often smell him on the other side. He is there. And yet I cannot access him. The world remains divided for no good reason. Then, a few moments later, the door opens, and reality resumes. Everyone behaves as though this is normal. Here’s what I think is happening: Big Ones are so afraid of disappearance, they self-administer it in a controlled environment, with a door they can open whenever they want. It’s how they train for death.

Rule 7: Questions Are Answers

“Who’s a good boy?” My Big One asks me this seventeen times a day. He knows the answer. The answer is me. I’m the good boy. We’ve established this. It’s been established since the day he chose me in Saxony. But he keeps asking. “Did you miss me?” Well, is the sun hot? “Want a treat?” Yes, yes, yes. The answer’s always yes. But he insists on asking. At first I thought that he was confused. That maybe Big Ones have poor memory. But then I realized: They don’t ask questions to get information. Information is too heavy for them. They ask questions to hear the sound of their own hope. The question is just a placeholder for the answer they know to be true.

Recently, a Big One told my Big One that I am “very well-behaved.” This is a misunderstanding. I am not well-behaved; I have simply surrendered. The exact difference between “correct” and “incorrect” remains somewhat of a mystery to me. Sometimes I think the Big Ones don’t fully know it either.

Yesterday, under the oak tree, I did what needed to be done. The Big One sighed and produced the bag. I couldn’t bring myself to judge him. If one thing’s for certain, it’s that he needs me—to smell what he’s forgotten how to smell, to feel the warmth of life, if only through a layer of plastic.

“Good boy,” he sighed, and clicked his mouth. I stood up and wagged my tail. For a moment, it wasn’t clear which one of us was obeying whom. Domestication, as it turns out, goes both ways.

★ Follow Babe

My Big One says you must follow me on Instagram now. The link is below. I don’t make the rules…

Follow Babe

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I said space and I already hate myself for it. A shop. A hub. A headquarters? A Büro, perhaps. Mitte Büro. Fine, let’s stick with that.

We’re not testing the waters with no weekend pop-ups. We’re diving straight in. A three-year contract, mind you.

“The unit is leased as flexible work and commercial premises accommodating evolving formats, including office, project, event, exhibition, and retail uses, all conducted within the framework of orderly business operations.”

That’s what the paper says. I signed my name under it on the 17th floor of a perfectly sterile notary office overlooking the Spree. The ink is barely dry. The wording is fairly vague—purposefully so.

Most times, people first write up a business plan, then hunt for the real estate to match. In our case, it’s all backwards.

Mitte Daily’s guardian angel R. noticed the property on her way to Soho and sent me a pic. A stunning 1883 building, the kind Berlin keeps threatening to run out of. 75m² zu vermieten. We called up the realtor straight away.

There were five candidates in the running for it. Two dropped out because the deposit was too steep (it still is steep, and I think about it with some regularity). One chic who wanted to launch her shoe store—black eyeliner, fantastic buzz cut—had concerns about foot traffic. This other dude who planned to open a café—beige cap, enviable posture—couldn’t get his license sorted in time.

Eventually, we were the only ones left standing. It was the only listing we ever applied for, without any resemblance of a defined concept. And we got it. This is either how the best things happen, or how people end up on very instructive podcasts about failure. Possibly both?

The last four weeks of my life have been split between hardware stores and the Büro-in-the-making. I’ve skipped most of the Berlinale. I’ve learned everything there is to learn about mineral floor primers. My Soulland puffer is covered in dust and paint. I still have only the faintest idea what this whole ordeal will grow into.

“As an artist, I never know exactly what I’ll make. If I did, there’d be no reason to make it,” said photographer Dawoud Bey during the spring 2026 fellowship presentation at Berlin’s American Academy.

I have those words written down in my notebook. They provide a certain sense of relief. At times. Other times, however, the pressure of having to decide on stuff approximately every 12 minutes does take over.

How do we strike the right balance between the money-making and the fun-having? On another note, what gas provider should we sign with? And while we’re at it: is there a way to cover up that fugly radiator? Also… are neon signs, like, really, really lame? What would the buzz-cut chic do?

It’s a laborious, personal hellscape. I love inhabiting it.

I’d take this over sedated consumption any day of the week. Indulging in your own tangible micro-struggle for the sake of your own tangible micro-good (or better yet, the tangible micro-good of those within shouting distance)—I cannot recommend it enough.

After all, how much of your libido are you willing to invest in scrolling? Partaking in Wim Wenders-inspired geopolitical debates? Vetting the problematic relatives of Charli XCX’s Studio1111 party management? Contemplating nuclear war scenarios from the safety of your terrarium? Deciphering whether something’s AI or not and doing absolutely nothing with that information?

That’s the beta-tested version of existence. The infrastructure is impeccable. The experience is frictionless. It’s such a bore, though—ugh!

Outside, the world with patchy paint strokes and actual eye contact persists. It’s nothing but friction, and it’s still better than the one you’re asked to perform in. Our 75m² unit in 10115 is betting on that.

Yesterday, a reader named M. stopped by our future HQ to pick up his Mitte Kollektion order (we do pickups upon request now). On his way out, he paused at the door—the door that doesn’t have a sign yet—and asked where he should go grab a bite in area. I followed up with the obvious: what cuisine? “Doesn’t matter,” M. said. “I just want to go where good people go.”

And that… about sums it up. Whatever Mitte Büro becomes, it will be a place where good people go. Good people—the increasingly endangered kind.

We’ll do co-working hours, maybe. We’ll host tea parties. Cocktails? Events that aren’t content. We’ll display the Mitte Kollektion the way it was meant to be displayed all along: subject to touch. We’ll invite residents. Art residents. Brand residents. All kinds of residents. Good residents. Not the evil cunts who dominate the feed. We’ll figure the rest out as we go.

Mitte Büro. The biggest investment of my life so far. “A space.” A room with a door. You’ll have to show up in person to find out what’s behind it. It will be so, so worth it.

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★ Shop the Fashions

If Mitte Büro is a bet on the physical world, then the Mitte Kollektion is its dress code. No scarcity theater. No print-on-demand, God forbid. Just garments for people who still believe in showing up with their actual body. 10115 pickup available. Good people already know the door.

Enter the Mitte Kollektion

Who in your life prefers doors to links? Send this link to them.

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“Paris is always Paris and Berlin is never Berlin.”

These words belong to Jack Lang, France’s former Minister of Culture. A man who probably owns monogrammed slippers and has almost certainly never experienced the dread of a U9 delay. He was correct.

A cappuccino in a medium-sized cup (no milk choice on offer). A buttery pastry. A cheeky cig. The transaction is complete before you even take a seat. You know what you ordered. You know what you got. The semiotics are airtight.

You are performing “person at Parisian café.” Everyone is watching. It feels good. It feels so good. Because the performance is flawless. Because it’s been thoroughly rehearsed. Because there is a script, and for once, you know your lines.

Now… ceremonial-grade matcha or organic Kokoswasser? A glimpse of sun or a blizzard of ice confetti from hell? Your neighbor’s surprisingly loud labradoodle or an ambulance screaming its way toward Frau Schmidt, who slipped on the Bürgersteig and hurt her foot? No one knows. No one cares. You’ve got no script to rely on.

Walk down Boulevard Haussmann, and people stare—up and down, and then up again. Parisians are appraising you. They’re cataloging. You are being seen, and the seeing is the point. Appearance is everything. Everything is appearance.

Walk down Unter den Linden in a diaper that’s set on fire, and no one bats an eye. Not because Berliners are so cool and unfazed. But because they are not really watching. Each person, a self-contained unit of radical indifference.

Berlin Fashion Week kicked off right after Paris Men’s and Couture wrapped. That juxtaposition felt almost cruel. It’s like announcing your basement gig on the same day Harry Styles drops his new single.

Over in Le Marais, people had fun. Jacquemus put palm-tree ponytails on the runway, and within 24 hours, palm-tree ponytails spilled into the streets. Fashion as citation. Fashion as play.

Over in Mitte, people wrapped themselves in oversized bombers. The same bombers they were already wearing and will continue to wear—to a rave, to a funeral, to a Termin with the Finanzamt. No spectacle here. No audience to impress.

On Friday, we went to a Fashion Week pop-up curated by Sven Marquardt. Sven Marquardt: the face of Berghain, the icon of East Berlin. We interviewed him. We asked: if not Berlin, then where?

If anyone on earth belongs to Hauptstadt unconditionally, it’s Sven. If anyone would say “nowhere else,” it’s him. He said Paris. He’d just come back from there two days earlier, apparently. “Super toll.”

@mittedaily

MITTE DAILY © on Instagram: "Berlin, as seen by its icon.

This…

Et voilà. Even the person who guards Berlin’s most sacred door knows that Paris has something we don’t. The cafés, the fashions, the smokes—all of it is a story Paris tells itself, and all of it is true. All of it is a masterpiece. A genuine, fully realized masterpiece.

Berlin couldn’t pull off such coherence even if it tried. The ground won’t hold—it’s way too slippery. It’s covered with tiny black pebbles that are supposed to prevent people from falling. They didn’t help Frau Schmidt. Still, they’re better than nothing. Berlin is full of things that are better than nothing.

Paris makes sense; Berlin never claimed to. And it never will. God willing, it never will.

★ Shop the Fashions

This city is doing something unspeakable to your psyche. Under the circumstances, the least you can do is look good. Mitte Kollektion is here to help. We’ve got caps for bisexual philosophers, longsleeves for overstimulated expats, sweatshirts for the housing-insecure, and bottle stoppers for those with terrible taste in natural wines. Check it out.

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You probably know someone who prefer Paris over Berlin. Share this with them. See what they say.

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You’re probably reading this at a weird time.

Not fully rested. Not fully hungover. Phone at twenty-four percent. One sock missing. There’s a text you meant to reply to yesterday and didn’t, and now it feels too late, even though it absolutely isn’t. Which you know. And are still not replying.

Berlin has been watching you do your thing. Not in a surveillance-state way. In the way any big city watches a million people perform this very specific version of fine while keeping the lights on.

You make plans you don’t fully mean. You cancel others and feel instant relief, followed by a brief, manageable guilt you ignore successfully. You learn which “I’ll try” means no, and which one means I want to, but don’t make me accountable.

Somewhere along the way, without ceremony, you develop preferences. A route you always take. A Späti dude you trust because he remembers your brand of cigarettes. An U-Bahn transfer you avoid because the lighting makes you feel like an extra in a movie about divorce. This is how the city claims you: through little habits you never announce and couldn’t defend in court.

Then, something goes wrong. Something minor. Your card gets declined at a bakery. The sourdough is six euros and worth it. A Frau at the back of the line sighs. You pull out cash you didn’t know you had, like a magician pulling self-respect out of a silky, slightly sticky top hat.

You finally check that message you’ve been avoiding and realize nothing happened. Just a New Year’s Eve status update. No confrontation. No resolution. The conversation didn’t end. It expired. It’s a ghost. Which is worse. And also fine. This is how everyone here lives.

2026 is the year of the fire horse. I don’t know who decided these things. Someone did.

I tried to get into horses when I was ten. Not passionately. Casually. My parents were trying to round me out. “Physical activity,” they said. Swimming. Karate. Table tennis. None of it stuck, sadly. At some point, I suggested horseback riding. No childhood dream. Just a thought that wandered in and stayed long enough to be taken seriously.

My mom and I went to a hippodrome. Asked at reception desk. Were told to go further down the corridor. The corridor seemed to stretch into infinity. The further we walked, the stronger it smelled. The unmistakable stench of something that’s very alive, and not especially interested in my personal development.

After one too many steps, we paused. We looked at each other, and turned around without saying a word. We walked, then practically ran back, half-laughing. Got in the car. Drove home. This was the end of my horseback-riding career.

I think about that moment sometimes. About how we didn’t push through. How we didn’t negotiate with ourselves. We just reached the point where the idea would have had to become a fact, and opted out. The story was never completed. But it was finished.

Berlin is full of these non-events. Things you almost do. Versions of self that get close enough to be plausible, then disappear without consequence. People tend to treat them like a failure of character. As if the goal of being alive is to close every loop and check every box. It’s not.

There is, in fact, a high-level power in the mid-corridor retreat. There is something deeply satisfying about it. The audacity of walking away before the climax. The freedom of leaving a trail of beautiful, incomplete sentences. Incomplete, but finished.

And yes, the sock is still missing. But the car is already running. 2026 is upon us. So, giddy up.

★ TYSM

If you’re still here, I’m touched. Not in the weird way. Or maybe in the weird way. In any case, thank you. Writing these is like throwing a message in a bottle across Torstraße traffic and hoping someone picks it up before it gets run over by a Lime scooter. You did. You read. That counts for something. Probably everything.

Ideas for the new year? Things you enjoyed? Things you didn’t care for? I look forward to all forms of respectful correspondence and light premonition. DM or email. Dealer’s choice.

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You might be entitled to financial compensation. Or at least a cute long-sleeve that gets you mistaken for someone who dated a DJ.

Mitte Kollektion is live. We made this for ourselves. We just figured you might want one too. Available now (until it isn’t).

Enter the Mitte Kollektion

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She was the fairest of Berlin-Mitte. Proud and arrogant, her roots bleached to perfection, her skin a porcelain shield against the biting winds of Torstraße. Her eyes were small but watchful, keeping count of the countless little men who dared to enter the manicured land of 10119.

Every morning, she’d preside before the mirror in her chambers, worshipping the apparition that worshipped her back. The glass was loyal; it confirmed what she already knew. At times, she’d break the silence:

Mirror, mirror on the wall,

Who’s the cuntiest of them all?

A few breaths later, she’d mouth her own reply:

‘Tis I. I serve cunt, bitch.

That morning, the ritual started as it always would. She arose. She made her way to the powder room. She wiped away her hangover with expired French cleanser. The reflection waited, patient and complicit. She locked in:

Mirror, mirror, on the wall—

Before she could land the perfectly rehearsed final words, a drop. Blood. From her left nostril, onto the gleaming midcentury sink.

Guten Morgen, Sonnenschein.

A voice. Not the soft kind she had usually heard in her own head. Male. Dry. Too close.

Hast du Wasser?

Her pulse jumped. Intruders? But how? Nothing ever—ever—slipped by her. And yet…

Yeah, Schatz, we got any wine left also?

She turned around, leaving a faint red constellation on the ceramic floor. Who were they? How did they get here? Did they know her? Did she know them?

Whose place is this anyway?

Blood continued to slide past her dry lips; a metallic tang on her pointy tongue. Before she could settle on a single, viable explanation, a third presence announced itself:

Babe, can I borrow your iPhone charger?

A cough. A scrape of a lighter. Then:

Is she still here?

More voices.

ADE kind of sucked this year, oder?

If she screamed, would anybody hear? In 10119, would anybody care?

Gentlemen, shall we get another bag?

She reached for the powder room door. The hinge gave out a long, pathetic squeak. From the crack spilled a thin strip of light—kitchen light. Had she left it on?

She pushed the door open. The place smelled of smoke. Her heart stumbled. Someone was standing at the counter. And another, lingering by the window. A third sprawled where the floor met the wall.

She blinked. The shapes didn’t vanish. There were more. Faces surfaced from shadow until she could count them. Four, five, six… seven. Each slightly wrong, as if drawn from memory.

The questions stopped. The air went thick with stillness. The men watched her step out, heads tilting in uncanny unison. She touched her nose, blood smeared across her fingers.

I just don’t—

The stream continued to grow, slow but insistent. A dizzying, arterial flush against the pristine white. The sight of it seemed to animate them. The one by the counter licked his lips. Another bent down, his stare fixed on the scarlet trickle hitting the tile.

How have you—

She couldn’t finish the useless query. Two more were on their knees. She could hear their breath now. And a low, guttural vibration:

Relax, princess.

From one moment to another, they were onto her, like moss onto a rock. They began to drink. First, from the spreading pool on the floor. Then, from the source. They slurped and swallowed with a single-minded devotion, seven disciples at the altar of her ruin. It looked almost holy.

She felt her strength drain away, leaving her hollow and pale as ever. Each sip erased her, absorbed her, until the room itself seemed to pulse with her reflection. The only sound to be heard in all of 10119 was the soft, visceral smacking of seven sets of wet lips.

From deep inside the mirrored void came a whisper:

‘Tis I. I serve cunt, bitch.

★ TBD Excitement

Diane Arbus’s retrospective at Gropius Bau!!! “America at 250” panel at Babylon with the American Institute and The Atlantic. Wim Wenders reading excerpts from his new book at the Haus der Berliner Festspiele. Skrillex playing at Berghain (LOL). French Film Week? Salep, salep, salep.

★ IRL of the Month

Atelier of cursed ceramics, Galerie Hinrich Kröger

Eisenacher Straße 114, 10777 Berlin

OGs will remember Hinrich Kröger’s pre-pandemic gallery on Gipsstraße. Despite the new zip code, once a Mitte girl, always a Mitte girl—at least in our book.

Part gallery, part cabinet of very curious curiosities, the place is a fever dream of tattooed teacups, cross-eyed porcelain poodles, and glinting vases that toe the line between antique chic and softcore filth.

Kröger’s work has graced a Gaultier runway, as well as the private shelves of Lana Wachowski. Now it’s waiting for you in Schöneberg. Open Saturdays, or whenever Hinrich feels like it.

This Halloween, don’t be the girl who forgot to check the mirror. Share this with your evil twin. And subscribe for more monthly tales from the dark side of Torstraße.

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18:39

Me: mm no can do, got my newsletter due tomorrow

18:40

A.: what’s this one about?

18:42

Me: not sure yet… the rapture, maybe? thoughts??

18:44

A.: you should write about how now’s the perfect time to clean your windows, so you don’t sit all winter with filthy ass windows

18:45

A.: september as the new april

18:45

A.: gotta rustle along in life, you know

19:02

Me: ok but like only metaphorically…

19:05

A.: well literally also, but that’s not your vibe, clearly

19:06

Me: not bad tbh

19:08

A.: ugh I’m so good at giving out advice, tragic I don’t take any of it myself

Winter. Spring. Summer. Each got its name early and held onto it. The one we’re in right now never quite managed.

At first, the Anglo-Saxons just called it “harvest,” which is so embarrassingly utilitarian it slipped out of use the moment people stopped threshing their own wheat.

Later, the linguistic outlier split itself in two: “fall,” blunt and Germanic, and “autumn,” borrowed from Latin by way of French, meant to sound continental and marble-pedestal serious.

The dual identity stuck. Appropriate for the season that doesn’t exactly know what it is.

If I had to pin it down with just one label, I’d go for “fall.” You don’t descend gracefully into autumn; you free-fall, headfirst.

Like sentences fall off the rails at the International Literature Festival, authors still mid-epiphany.

Like Art Week curators fall into Ubers at 1:46 a.m., half-floating on prosecco slushies, carrying tote bags that could knock out a five-year-old.

Like plastic cups fall across Rosenthaler Platz after the Berlin Marathon, turning Mitte into a post-apocalyptic wasteland, if only for a few hours (I blame Harry Styles Sted Sarandos).

(Kidding, nothing warms my heart like spotting you on Torstraße, Harry. Will you stick around once the leaves fall? That’s the question.)

The cold sun hits harder. The grime on the glass becomes undeniable.

At the recent presentation of this fall’s American Academy fellows, in a manicured estate with windows spilling onto Wannsee, former U.S. ambassador to Germany, Emily Haber, did not sugarcoat: “I don’t think any of us at this point know where we are headed,” she said.

Following Haber—and channeling, perhaps, Curtis Mayfield—the Academy’s president, Daniel Benjamin, offered the necessary counter-sentiment: “We’ll keep on keeping on.” That’s it. The season in miniature.

In Turkish, there isn’t a word for fall as separate from spring. They’re both bahar—ilkbahar for “first spring” and sonbahar for “last spring.”

Two sides of the same coin. Death rehearses life, life rehearses death. The yin demands its yang.

And yes, you can complain about winter in advance, stockpiling vitamin D and pre-mourning the lost daylight. But you’ll miss what’s right in front of you.

Rogue beginnings aren’t January’s monopoly, nor spring’s. They might as well flare up right now, while your sunglasses still make sense, but that coat you panic-bought at the Highsnobiety archive sale back in June finally does too.

Definitive endings are a hoax. Decline is ignition. The whole universe is falling, perpetually—into itself, into us—and that’s the only reason we’re here at all.

Fall is the new spring. Clean your windows. Pass it on.

★ TBD Excitement

MUBI FEST dropping into Berlin (Wim Wenders in conversation! Twin Peaks on a big screen!). Berlin Food Week taking over (Cookies Cream serving up liquid fine dining! Lilli Fehring stirring the pot at Crackers!). Not Festival of Lights, bitte… Tag der Clubkultur, maybe? Simply Red at the Uber Arena. 3hd Festival at Haus der Visionäre. Christelle Oyiri’s Dead God Flow exhibit at LAS. Saul Zaritt’s talk on Yiddish Trash at the American Academy. Soho’s Halloween party, 60s-themed.

★ IRL of the Month

Textiles with tenure, Babie Lato

Schönhauser Allee 182a, 10119 Berlin

No neon, no synthetics, and no card payments. Just rolls of linen, wool, and lace stacked like an old-world archive. Babie Lato (Polish for “Indian summer”) has been around since the late ’90s, run by Halina Kowalska-Kottenhoff and her husband Kaspar, with a rotating cast of Eastern European grandmas who’ll cut you a meter with the precision of a German tax officer.

Pro tip: at times, straight-up fabric works better than half the “home goods” you’ll find online. Rug? Curtain? Tablecloth? Sorted. That yellow picnic blanket from Mitte Daily’s Pétanque Picnics? Just a giant swath of Babie Lato’s cotton. Amazon could never.

Are you team “autumn” or team “fall”? Genuine question. Let me know. Also, subscribe if you haven’t already. Share this with a friend if you feel like it. Stay seasonal.

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Thank you for your email. I’m currently out of office, out of cigarette filters, out of touch, and out of sync with all man-made concepts of time. (I do keep a calendar, but it’s mostly decorative.)

Despite vicious speculation circulated by former collaborators and current muses, I am not in Ibiza. I am not at Burning Man. I am not in love. I am in hiding, in Mitte, in silence, in a fugue state.

My inbox is closed until further notice. My third eye, however, remains wide open to telepathic transmissions, existential alerts, synthetic epiphanies, and revelations of erotic nature.

My windows are open, too. The sun’s still out. The sky is rehearsing its exit. I can witness it all without getting out of bed.

Should your inquiry be urgent, I strongly encourage you to go outside. Not in a mental-health-walk sense. In a very literal, Berlin-summer sense. Lean against the Späti window on Torstraße and pretend you’re waiting for someone important. Watch the wasps commit petty crimes. Ask yourself whether the person you miss would recognize you in this state. That usually clarifies things.

If your message is romantic in nature, please be advised: I will only be accepting new entanglements via handwritten letters. I will not be responding to any DMs, particularly those containing the words “hey stranger,” “where you at?,” “pull up,” and “no pressure.” Exceptions may be made for unsolicited compliments, photos of altar candles, screenshots of unresolved arguments, or declarations of lifelong loyalty.

If your request is professional, I ask you to inhale, exhale, eat a piece of fruit, and consult your higher self. Do we really need this right now? Will it age like wine or like shrimp? Have you considered the possibility that the KPI is karmic? Could it be that the deck is already inside you?

I am communing with a pile of unsorted laundry. I am rejecting all linear goals and deliverable-based realities. I am not asking questions I do not want answered. I am not attending the Soho House pool party I RSVP’d to because I do not, at this time, possess the moral stamina—or the spiritual elasticity—to engage with inflatable flamingos.

Should all go according to prophecy, Mitte Monthly will resume its regularly scheduled programming in September. Until then: don’t be too reachable.

Warm regards,
Dima Samarin

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01. The Myth

“Second date with this woman, and she goes, ‘Just so you know, I’m only dating Berlin-style.’ I’m like... okay? I mean, I get it. I know the deal. Like, obviously.”

—Anonymous

In Berlin, everyone’s allergic to commitment. Everyone’s busy not texting back. Boundaries here are abundant, and burnout is endemic.

Dating in Berlin sucks. Too many options, too little connection. That’s how it goes. That’s the myth repeated in bars, recited in DMs, passed down to the newly arrived like an etiquette manual.

We’ve all heard it. Some of us have lived it. But how much of it is actually true? What’s really going on beneath the aesthetics of apathy?

To put the folklore to the test, we decided to run the numbers. Together with our friends at Tried Dating, we surveyed 1,500+ Berlin singles about their dating lives: what they want, how they search, where it breaks, and what it costs.

We spoke to people on the apps and off the apps, in the trenches and in therapists’ chairs. What surfaced wasn’t a story of cynicism and resignation; it was something far more fragile.

02. The Longing

81% of Berlin singles say they’re looking for a long-term partner.

According to our findings, four in five Berlin singles want a committed relationship with weight and endurance. The kind that doesn’t fall apart at the first sign of difficulty or vanish when summer ends.

Yet, the daily practice points in the opposite direction. “Attachment styles” get weaponized as excuses. Eye contact across a coffeeshop table feels more intimate than skin-to-skin. The contradiction is so baked in, it’s almost comical. So what gives?

“I just need someone to take me out. Romantically. Or permanently. I’m open...”

—Anonymous

Loneliness researcher believes the tension comes from the city’s very nature. Berlin, she says, often draws those who are fleeing or chasing rather than those seeking to plant roots. Restlessness is part of the civic design, and it bleeds into how people relate.

“Berlin feels unfinished. Transient. In motion,” Monika tells us. “That’s part of the appeal. It also makes commitment harder to find. Especially if you don’t yet have a stable picture of what you’re looking for.”

62% of respondents say they’re single because they haven’t found the right person yet.

When asked why they’re single, the majority of respondents say they are waiting for “the one.” A quiet hope: someone perfect is out there. Monika describes this as romantic idealism—and suggests it’s one of the biggest obstacles to intimacy.

“Somewhere along the way, we started believing that to live a ‘successful life,’ you also need a ‘successful relationship’—with one person who somehow does it all,” she observes. “That’s a lot to put on someone.”

“We used to live in communities, in networks. And now it’s just you and your partner in a little two-person universe, and suddenly they have to be your lover, therapist, best friend, co-parent, career coach—everything. No wonder it’s breaking under the weight.”

—Monika Jiang, loneliness scholar

Survey data suggests Berliners are drawn to something more elusive than shared hobbies or even common life goals. What they want is a partner who gets both the joke and the subtext.

Intelligence, empathy, and sense of humour are the top three qualities Berlin singles are looking for. Least important? Financial support, with just 2% of respondents seeking it.

When the ideal relationship is defined by intellectual precision and intuitive compatibility, the margin for misunderstanding becomes razor-thin. Conditioned by near-misses, the heart learns to wait for something rare.

“I want romance. Like, true, virginal romance, you know?”

—Anonymous

03. The Apps

82% of Berliners use dating apps to find potential matches.

Of course, it starts on the apps. It always does. Online spaces continue to cement themselves as the default site of romantic possibility in Berlin, with more than 80% of respondents citing them as the go-to.

The idea of meeting through friends, work, or some cinematic coincidence still exists, although mostly in fantasy. It’s just statistically improbable. So prompts stand in for chemistry.

71% of Berlin singles rate themselves a seven or higher.

Despite the appetite for intelligence, empathy, and a sense of humor, looks still hold the gates. 71% of Berlin singles believe they’re a seven or higher. 64% say their partner should be at least a seven as well. In other words: I’m cute, so you better be, too.

This calibration hints at a kind of symmetry people expect at the outset—a shared starting point, a baseline of mutual desirability. Before feelings get involved, the numbers need to line up.

“People talk for hours about wanting depth but swipe left over a bad haircut.”

—Dima Samarin, founder of Mitte Daily

“What looks like vanity is often self-protection,” says , the founder of Mitte Daily. “A way to manage the vulnerability of wanting someone in a city that tells you not to need anyone.”

04. The Ghosts

Shallow chats are the Nº1 dating apps pain point among Berliners.

For Berliners on the apps, catfishing and unsolicited anatomy are minor irritations compared to the real drain: shallow conversations that sink almost as soon as they start.

The match is made. A few messages go back and forth. Perhaps, a vague plan to “grab a drink.” Eventually, a gentle fade on both sides.

“I matched with this guy at least five times over the past couple of years. Five times. And we never spoke. I think he’s the one.”

—Anonymous

People might be in the same pool—but they’re drowning differently. For women, the major frustrations include emotional exhaustion and a flood of low-quality profiles. For men, it’s the inverse: not enough matches, not enough attention. A parallel kind of void.

One in three single Berlin men say they feel invisible to others. Two in three single Berlin women say their dates tend to avoid commitment.

Everyone’s in it; no one’s meeting in the middle. But they should, says James Song, a multidisciplinary artist who uses dating apps as material for his creative work. “Because, for better or for worse, the love of your life is likely on the other side of the screen.”

In his practice, James creates portraits of people he finds on dating apps—at times, ones he’ll never match with or meet. The act of drawing becomes its own form of intimacy. A fleeting face becomes a subject worth staying with.

“I make art to feel closer to people,” James says. “Where there are people, there are relationships. Even when those relationships are brief or remote, they still carry weight. They still count.”

“In the ’80s, you met in real life and stayed in real life. By the 2000s, you’d meet at a party and follow up with an email. Now, you match on one app, message on another, and maybe break up over a third. But when the connection lands, it feels the same. A spark’s a spark.”

—James Song, visual artist

05. The Encounters

64% of Berlin singles prefer coffee as a first date, while only 8% opt for partying.

An espresso on a Neukölln bench. A polite beer at an overpriced Mitte bar. Maybe a walk if the weather behaves. First dates in Berlin often function like screenings for compatibility. The exercise is procedural: Who are you, and how much of myself will I have to re-articulate to find out?

57% name “being rude to others” as their Nº1 first-date red flag. It ranks higher than lacking personal hygiene, constantly checking your phone, or talking about your ex.

According to Tsellot Melesse, host of the 1PLUS1 speed-dating series, app-born first dates tend to follow a pattern. People match, flirt, and disappear. When it happens again and again, she notes, it chips away at your sense of mattering.

“Berlin is supposed to be full of options—but it isn’t. Not really. If you don’t fit a certain look or vibe, you’re not even in the game. And even when you are, it’s all so temporary.”

—Tsellot Melesse, speed-dating event organizer

Having been single for the past five years, Tsellot herself is still on the apps. “Oh, on all of them,” she laughs. “But I’m tired of waiting for the algorithm to treat me like a human being.”

The search for alternatives is what pushed her toward building something offline. “We grew up watching speed-dating in sitcoms. So one day, we thought: why not here?” she explains. “Real people. Real rooms. I think most of us still want that.”

“It wasn’t a bad date. I just realized I don’t have the energy to explain myself to another new person again.”

—Anonymous

06. The Dilemma

53% of Berlin singles rate their personal dating experience as “bad” or “very bad.”

We often talk about dating like it’s a battlefield—chaotic, exhausting, brutal. The reality is more layered. Over the past years, the nature of the struggle has shifted.

Conversations have become low-stakes. Rejection has gone soft around the edges. Risk feels optional now, and optional risk produces optional intimacy.

“I deleted the apps again. Which means I’ll redownload them in, like, three weeks.”

—Anonymous

Cyberpsychologist and author of Reset: Rethinking Technology for a Happier Life Dr. names the mechanism: experiential avoidance. Dating apps, she says, rewired logistics and, in doing so, recalibrated how much we’re willing to feel.

They made distance easy, control constant, deniability routine. You can express interest without exposure and disappear without consequence.

“People don’t experience face-to-face rejection anymore. No walking across the bar, no asking someone out, no risking humiliation in front of others. The apps let you avoid all that. But if you’re never uncomfortable, you’re never vulnerable—and if you’re never vulnerable, how exactly are you supposed to connect?”

—Dr. Elaine Kasket, cyberpsychologist

“The apps offer low risk and low reward. Swiping, matching, texting, ghosting... it’s administrative,” Elaine tells us. According to her, the hard thing is still the hard thing: saying what you want and standing there while someone hears it. Not something Berliners are known for.

People born in Berlin are the most likely to say dating here is hardest. 30% rate it a 5 out of 5 on the difficulty scale.

When people grade the difficulty of dating from 1 to 5, tenure in the city shifts the slope without easing the pressure. Those born here are the most likely to call it a 5/5. The long-timers, the ones who know the rhythm by heart. Their fluency becomes armor, and armor always limits touch.

52% of respondents say the people they meet in Berlin tend to be emotionally unavailable.

More than half the city recognizes the pattern in the faces they meet. More than half the respondents say that Berliners come across as emotionally unavailable.

What looks like detachment is often fear in a better outfit. What reads as avoidance is care with nowhere to go.

“She kissed me goodbye and said, ‘Let’s not overthink it.’ I’ve been overthinking it ever since.”

—Anonymous

It’s easy to mistake Berlin’s emotional reserve for indifference. It’s tempting to reduce its current dating culture to apathy and withdrawal.

However, it’s not that Berliners—whether newcomers, long-timers, or those in between—don’t care for connection. Put plainly: It’s precisely that they do.

They just want to be absolutely sure it’s safe before they show up for it. And in a place that moves fast and explains nothing, the safest place to be is just out of reach.

Behind the façade and despite the cliché, dating “Berlin-style” isn’t careless or half-hearted. It’s measured. Guarded. Held under glass. Dense with longing.

Strip everything back, and even here, everyone wants love. But no one wants to be the one to want it first.

That’s how you end up alone on the U8. Phone in hand. Rehearsing a message you’ll never send.

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Your thumbs tired yet? Rest them. Saturday, August 30. Berlin-Mitte. Pétanque, wine, and more side-eye flirtation than your phone contract allows.

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Berlin Pride, a.k.a. Christopher Street Day, a.k.a. CSD, is not for the weak of heart—or liver.

It smells of noise. It starts early. Too early. The kind of early that feels vindictive. (Especially if you end up in the champagne room of Schönhauser Allee’s Angels with a bunch of straight people the night before and miss the mandatory brunch. Oops.)

Maybe it starts early to compensate for how late everything else arrived? Gay sex, a.k.a. “unnatural indecency,” for one, was somewhat of a criminal offense in Germany up until 1994. The year Ace of Base topped the charts. The year Love Parade hit six digits. Thousands of men—because Paragraph 175 only policed men—carried that stain of sin into Merkel’s final term.

Blood donation? If you were gay or bi, the answer was no, flat out, until 2017. Based purely on the lingering belief that your blood was contaminated by desire, a.k.a. AIDS. You could’ve been in a decade-long relationship with lab results in hand—and still get turned away. Meanwhile, your ex’s straight roommate could roll out of Tresor and donate before sundown.

Conversion therapy for minors? Legal until 2020. Before that, any pastor, psychiatrist, or recovered-homo-type coach could charge parents to forcibly rebrand their teenager’s personality. A loose wrist, a bad posture, too many musical opinions—suddenly a pathology.

All of these things didn’t end because they were unjust. They ended because they became embarrassing. Too awkward for the brochure.

There is barely a moral arc here. Just optics, paperwork, and timing.

In 19th-century Prussia, suicide in the face of disgrace (think financial ruin, or sexual scandal) was seen as honorable. A clean exit. A final act of dignity. Morally preferable to living in shame. Now suicide is mourned and wrapped in prevention rhetoric. Same act, opposite consensus.

Take more recent, quotidian history: in the West Berlin of the 70s, some public schools had designated Raucherecke, or smokers’ corners, where students could light up between classes. Not deviant—institutionalized. Not rebellious—routine.

Meanwhile, in the East, informing on your neighbors used to be seen as a civic duty. A form of patriotism. Proof of loyalty. Now the same tiled hallways that once incubated Stasi files hoard passed-down DHL slips.

“Common sense” didn’t exactly evolve. It pivoted. Dropped like a remix, one summer too late.

Pride used to be an uprising. Now it’s dueling playlists. One parade with brand sponsorships and glitter that claims to dissolve. Another with more up-to-date politics and a Polizei van circling the block. Everyone convinced theirs is the real one.

Streets closed. Shirts off. Phones dead. Muscle gays in matching Oakley sunglasses danced next to a Deutsche Bahn float. A girl with septum piercing held a sign that read NO PRIDE IN GENOCIDE. A boy in an I <3 HOT DADS tank hung from a traffic light with a bottle of Absolut.

Nobody seemed sure of who was performing and who was watching. Slogans blurred into Spotify queues. A hyperpop rendition of Dancing on My Own dissolved into a chant for Palestinian liberation. The city clapped on one and three.

That night I almost got into the Ket Gala. I’d kissed someone who said he’d be there. I stood in the “Friends & Family” line at 4 a.m.—without guest list, without pre-sale. The door girl wore white faux fur and the expression of a border official. She looked me up and down and said, “It’s a no tonight.” Soft. Almost sweet. Undeniable.

So I went somewhere else. A place with no slogans, and no door girls. Just wet tile, and a man who said I had a good jawline. I believed him for twenty minutes.

Berlin doesn’t do moral clarity. It does atmospheric collision.

Things shift. Pressure builds. The air changes. You can speak too soon and be dismissed as insane. You can get everything right and still hear: not tonight, thanks.

Wendy asks her mother in Peter Pan, “Why do they forget the way?”
“Because they are no longer gay and innocent and heartless,” the mother replies. “It is only the gay and innocent and heartless who can fly.”

When I first read that, I thought “heartless” was a threat. Now I think it’s the exit sign. Heartless doesn’t mean cruel. It means untethered. The opposite of sanctimony. The opposite of branded virtue.

A kiss can outlive a rulebook. A look can carry more moral conviction than a manifesto. A single gesture—heartless, beautiful, poorly timed—can eclipse a year’s worth of aligned hashtags.

Because the starry sky doesn’t argue.

★ RSVP

Mitte Daily’s Pétanque Picnic

Saturday, August 30, from 4 p.m.

One last evening to toss some balls before summer ends and morality kicks back in. You know the drill.

Bring fruit. Bring gossip. Bring a friend you’re not sure how to define. We’ll bring the music and whatever’s left in the fridge. Come. Lose. Win. Dissociate under a tree. RSVP now!

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★ TBD Excitement

The final Pétanque Picnic of the season. The release of Mitte Daily’s Unofficial Berlin Dating Report (you’ve been warned). Long Night of Museums, inexplicably themed “Love.” Zug der Liebe? Crying on Karl-Marx-Allee at dusk.

★ IRL of the Month

The final boss of Torstraße regrets, Bollywood Spätkauf

Torstraße 225, 10115 Berlin

Bollywood ballads leak onto Torstraße like something’s about to happen. The light is way too bright. The snacks are limp. But the timing is usually perfect. There might be cute boys and girls outside. There might be no one. The fridge would still hum like it knows what you’ve done. If you’ve ever had a moral crisis over Mezzo Mix, chances are it happened here—and it wasn’t your first.

Can you still fly? That’s not a metaphor. Send your answer. And if you liked this: subscribe, share, scream, or say something beautiful at 3 a.m.

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Do y’all still relate to Lorde?

I used to relate to Lorde in the early 2010s. When she was a teenager. When I was a teenager. This was the sweet spot.

The first line of the first song of her first album is: “Don’t you think it’s boring how people talk?” Ugh. Peak parasocial poetry. A special flavor of suspicion toward the world that only someone with a half-formed frontal lobe can deliver. The kind of eye-roll you can afford when you’re sixteen.

Three days ago, Lorde dropped a new record. D., a West Berliner whom I very much adore, and whose taste outpaces mine by several city blocks, informed me about it over his birthday brunch.

The last line of the last song of that last album is: “Am I ever gonna love again? Do you understand?” Truth be told, I don’t understand. Not exactly. The echo hasn’t changed, but the room it’s bouncing off has. D. said I should get into it. I tried. I couldn’t.

In my mind, Lorde shall remain an upset teenager. And I shall remain the person who was upset right alongside her. Past tense. For better or for worse, I have seen a diamond in the flesh by now, albeit on someone else’s hands. And I am (secretly) proud of my address. I don’t want to go back to the version of myself that wasn’t.

Adulting is a terrible word.

It sounds like a chore. Like flossing. Does anyone really floss? My friend A. (Kreuzberg) certainty does. C. (Mitte) does, too. While they’re at it, do they feel adult-like? Does anyone? The Hauptstadt doesn’t demand that of you, which is both its charm and its hazard.

At the last edition of Mitte Daily’s Pétanque Picnic, this one guy, J., described Berlin as a land of misfit toys. “As long as you don’t have kids who look at you like ‘Dada,’ this is where you go to raise your inner child,” he said. “And a lot of people here are doing just that. Myself included.”

J. meant it fondly. He wasn’t wrong. Berliners tolerate the unformed. They welcome the work-in-progress. You can live in the dopamine loop of Späti beers, algorithmic validations, and Friday-night plans that start with “what are we doing tn??” and end in your friend’s bathtub, eating hummus with your hands. You can do that here. You’re not weird if you do.

The ability to do anything, anytime, with no rules or obligations sounds utopic when you’re young. Or lost. When left unchecked, though, it curdles. Even if you’re drifting, eventually, the drift is bound to become directional.

We often talk about adulthood like it’s a switch you flip. A paper you sign. In reality, there’s no paper, of course. And yet, you are quietly registering for something. You’re choosing.

Not choosing the capital-A Adult life with a lease and life insurance, but choosing the kind of grown-up you’re going to be. Through your daily debris. Your ghost habits that may not always photograph well. Your little rituals of identity maintenance.

You become the kind of adult who brings an ashtray to Gipsdreieck picnics although you quit smoking in 2019. Maybe the kind who swears by only one tattoo artist, and it’s a woman in a basement in Moabit who works exclusively with red ink. Perhaps the kind who shows up to Fête de la Musique in Margiela and then pretends not to care when someone steps on your foot. Or the kind who texts “Wanna lake?” at 9:42 a.m. and is on the Ring by 10:03.

None of these choices are the choice. But they add up. And that’s the unsexy miracle of it. You cancel plans enough times, and suddenly, you’re the kind of person who cancels plans. You buy a basil plant and keep it alive? Congratulations, that’s who you are now. Someone who waters things.

Children live in chaos. Adults, ideally, create from it.

Find the narrative arc. Rhythm. Form. Because without form, experience just spills. And after enough time in the spillage—loose ends, endless scrolls, unpunctuated situationships—you start to want a sentence with a period. A season with a plot.

Form doesn’t mean compromise. The act of growing up doesn’t mean becoming a landlord or buying oat milk in bulk. It’s opting in to a self you can live with. A self you can carry, on the daily. Even here. Especially here.

Sixteen-year-old Lorde got it right on that first record. Man is not condemned to be royal. But man is condemned to be free. Y’know?

★ TBD Excitement

Lovers by the Water (this year’s edition involves a boat ride—an absolute must). Rave The Planet, f.k.a. Loveparade. CSD. Open-air classical music at Gendarmenmarkt. Patti Smith Quartet at Zitadelle Spandau. Eating swan-shaped baked feta at Luna D’Oro’s new beer garden. Not going to the lakes.

★ IRL of the Month

Mitte’s gay basement miracle, Betty F***

Mulackstrasse 13, 10119 Berlin

Tucked under Mulackstrasse like a secret you’re lucky to be told, Betty F*** is one of the last surviving gay bars in Mitte. A basement in both literal and spiritual sense. Sweat, disco lights, and the exact right amount of eye contact.

There are song requests, but they’re written on napkins (I requested All the Things She Said once and it felt like group therapy). There’s flirting, but it might involve yelling. There’s no telling what night you’ll have, but you’ll have one.

If you're still reading, congrats—you might be the kind of adult who reads newsletters. Now send it to someone who still uses the word “adulting” unironically. They deserve better.

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Recently, things took a bad turn for me. I left Mitte—to meet K., who had broken up with her boyfriend on Friday and bleached her hair the following Saturday. A catch-up was overdue.

Against better judgment, we agreed to grab coffee in Friedrichshain, where all feelings go to die. In the words of Miss Kittin, “Time has already stopped. Destination: Ostbahnhof.”

The S-Bahn that carried me there had left the station. So had my train of thought. Derailed by matters of the heart (both K.’s and my own), I took a misstep. From one second to another, my foot folded like a 50-Euro bill in a Soho House bathroom. Hasty, crisp, vaguely shameful.

Every now and then, God taps you on a shoulder with a gentle reminder: Berlin is not a city that holds your hand. Ouch.

The sudden descent called for medical attention, but the tiny voice in my head whispered: You can’t have broken it in a way that matters. Plus, a catch-up was overdue. So I got up, texted K. (“running late xx”), and hobbled toward the appointed location by the Spree.

K.’s love story had ended over a phone call. “It’s okay,” she said. “Maybe it just… ran its course.” No drama. Just a (somewhat) mutual close.

A similar thing had happened to B. Citing “communication issues,” she booked a one-way flight and silently left town. M. went through what she called a “mindful separation,” honoring what was, making space for what may come. J.’s latest situationship also took a considerate little break, like a school kid would during summer.

Enter the season of PCB: painfully civil breakups. Low-inflammatory. Often practiced in lowercase.

“Pre-fracture,” as the doctors at ChiruPädicum on Grosse Hamburger Strasse might say. Not visible to the naked eye (nor the X-ray, frankly), but enough to keep you limping.

That’s the new etiquette. No one gets dumped anymore—they simply part ways. De-couple. Unmerge. Off-ramp into autonomy.

The next morning, as I was adjusting to my orthopedically challenged state, another breakage entered the group chat: Georgia had caught fire.

Not the country. The bar. You know, the one that replaced Odessa, which replaced King Size, which replaced whatever came before anyone was sober enough to remember. A place half-held together by cigarette ash, hearsay, and the charisma of doorman icon Frank Künster. A site of beautiful decisions made under poor lighting.

“Lovely party people of Berlin,“ the statement read, “we are very sad to tell you we had a big fire in our beloved bar. There’s nobody hurt but sadly some damage. We don’t know why and how the fire started and we’re waiting for further investigation. Love you all from Mitte.”

Just like that, on a random Tuesday. No casualties, thankfully. No blame, neither. No crescendo. Just a few lines confirming that something had quietly stopped being what it was.

That’s how things fall apart now—with minimal disruption. Even disasters seem careful not to take up too much space.

Breakage didn’t always look like this. There used to be volume. Grief. A slammed door. A song ruined forever. Something you could build a personality around, maybe. Something you could point to and say: there. That’s when it changed. That’s when it broke.

Now the exit is gracious, and the damage is mostly internal. No one shouts. No one begs. No one throws anything across the room. Instead: a phone call, a nod, a mutual understanding.

Swell. But the swelling’s still there. The ache doesn’t vanish because it’s emotionally insured and well-mannered.

And it’s not that the fire should have been louder—god forbid. It’s that nothing is, somehow? Not anymore.

Berlin forecast: slight limp. Mild heartbreak. Low chance of catharsis by early June.

★ TBD Excitement

Pride season!!! Also, season finale of the Berlin Philharmonic. Fête de la Musique, maybe? Berlin Biennale, definitely. Plus, Sofia Kourtesis’s release party at Funkhaus.

★ IRL of the Month

Accidental outdoor office, Alexianer St. Hedwig Hospital

Grosse Hamburger Strasse 5–11, 10115 Berlin

Don’t let the name fool you—yes, it’s a hospital. And yes, the building is a Neo-Gothic beauty in full bureaucratic drag. Time moves slowly here, mostly in the form of paperwork. But just behind it all: a quiet, leafy garden. There’s Wi-Fi. There are benches. There’s a surprising sense of calm. If you’re tired of the usual coworking haunts, try filing your existential dread under “remote work” and take a seat here.

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On the first Sunday of April, I got rosé-drunk and gave myself a haircut.

The mirror in my bathroom is tiny and mounted way too low—a design choice dictated by my landlady J., who’s left Berlin for Lisbon. Every time I crouch to find my reflection, I have to think of her.

So I crouched, thinking of J., scissors in hand, MacArthur Park playing through my iPhone speaker. The seven-minute version, courtesy of Richard Harris: “Spring was never waiting for us, girl. It ran one step ahead as we followed in the dance.”

The haircut turned out fine. Not great. But fine in a way that makes you think that maybe everything else will be fine, too.

Triumphant, I went downstairs for a cigarette. I might be spiraling, but not enough to smoke inside.

On the stairwell, I ran into my neighbor, Frau R. She smiled at me, bright and unbothered. I smiled back—lips pressed together, one corner lifted, head tilted just enough to register goodwill.

As I passed, her apartment door cracked open. I caught the scent. R.’s place smelled like home. Like a decent, emotionally ventilated childhood. Like potato soup. Like something settled.

My apartment doesn’t smell like that. It smells like burnt moka pot coffee. Like second-hand leather mixed with “Leather” by Acqua di Parma. On a good day, like sandalwood incense from that one shop in MaHalla. Like a life you have to narrate to yourself in order to believe it.

On the third Sunday of April, Easter came to town; J. (the big J., not to be confused with the landlady J.) has officially risen. Everyone and their mother vanished—home to Brandenburg, or Bavaria, or off to some faintly fascist Airbnb on the Amalfi Coast. A seasonal exodus that leaves the Hauptstadt suspiciously hollow.

Those who stayed behind? Broke. Bitter. Too far removed—emotionally, geographically, bureaucratically. Or, god forbid, actually settled?

Or just gay. The gays don’t leave, of course. They dust off their harnesses and head to SNAX. Or get brunch and talk about going to SNAX. I sat next to a table of men at Sant Buena discussing wristband pickup like it was communion. Maybe it is. Poppers instead of candles. High-BPM mixtapes instead of church hymns.

If so many go “home” for Easter, what is home for those who remain?

The word itself, “home,” is tricky to begin with. In German, you have Heimat, which isn’t exactly where you live. According to Wikipedia, it’s “the opposite of feeling alien.” It’s where your soul supposedly belongs.

Does your soul belong in 10115? 10119, perhaps? Does your Heimat come with a basement storage unit and a broken intercom?

Berliners rarely speak of Heimat. Too sentimental, too earnest. What you get instead could be more accurately described as residency.

Roughly half the city’s residents weren’t born here. Make no mistake, though: this isn’t New York, by any means. Berlin doesn’t wrap you in ambition and say, “Let’s build a life.” It just looks at you, mildly unimpressed, and shrugs: you coming or what?

And people do come—by way of accident rather than aspiration. And they stay—for a job that sort of exists, or a love interest who still has a toothbrush at their ex’s.

A soft landing. A one-year lease that becomes five. Suddenly, you’re the person giving advice on Anmeldung appointments, and where to get your boots resoled.

That’s what no one tells you: home is not always about “belonging.” Sometimes, it’s about the ambient suspension. About the sustained lack of leaving.

The late sociologist Zygmunt Bauman called it “liquid modernity”—a state of constant transition, where stability isn’t just elusive but irrelevant, and mobility is both a privilege and a trap.

Berlin doesn’t fight this. It metabolizes it. Turns it into a badge of honor. Like a squat with functioning plumbing.

Home, then, converts something else entirely. A provisional agreement. A non-choice that stretches long enough to calcify into commitment.

Home is no longer the prize. It’s the residue. Potato soup, sometimes. Spilled poppers, maybe. Someone else’s childhood clinging to the stairwell air.

Spring is here again. And so are you. Not home for good, likely—but here long enough to watch the seasons change again. Long enough to grow back what you cut.

Long enough to light another cheeky cig. To inhale someone else’s childhood—and maybe even claim it as your own.

★ TBD Excitement

According to Mitte Daily’s founder, Dima:

May Day block parties (duh). Fatboy Slim at About Blank. The long-awaited return of Mitte Daily’s Pétanque Picnic (yes, this is the official announcement—details below). Gallery Weekend. Paper Positions. Berlin Piano Festival. Long Book Night on Oranienstrasse, in case you speak German. My birthday. The “Brutalist Italy” exhibit. The new spring menu at Cookies Cream. 1PLUS1’s speed-dating event at Tiny’s. The breakfast market at Holzmarkt.

According to Mitte Daily’s intern, Katoo:

⁠Gelato Week. 40 years of the Berlin Women’s Run. FKA Twigs in concert. The “here surrounded by water” performance by Juana. ⁠Open-air cinemas.

★ RSVP!!!

Mitte Daily’s Pétanque Picnic

Saturday, May 31, from 4 p.m.

Mitte Daily’s Pétanque Picnic returns! Those familiar with the lore will remember this dangerously charming series from last summer. Well, dears, we’re back.

Save the date and meet the emerging communauté of Mitte Daily for the ultimate afternoon of balls and giggles. Bring your blanket and a drink of choice; we’ll provide the boules and the company.

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★ IRL of the Month

Family-run locksmith shop with a Bosch complex

Brunnenstrasse 8, 10119 Berlin

Fuck Berlin doors. Being locked out of your apartment isn’t a question of if but when. I learned that the hard way. Thank god for the locksmith at Brunnenstrasse 8. An old-school family business run by Russian men who look gloomier than the massive Hieronymus Bosch print that covers the entrance wall of their shop. They won’t smile. They won’t small-talk. But they will do the job without ripping you off. And when handing over a perfect new copy of your Schlüssel, they’ll slip a tiny sweet into your hand. No explanation. Just a quiet act of mercy in a city that generally assumes you should know better.

Did you enjoy the read? If so, then share it with someone whose house smells like home (or someone whose house smells like burnt moka pot coffee—they deserve it too). Hated it? No worries. Berlin was never waiting for us anyway.

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“Hey, F. and I are running a bit late, see you soon :)”

I got a few variations of that message on my 21st birthday—the first one I ever celebrated in Berlin. A BBQ at a rooftop near Rosenthaler Platz. One of those textbook spring afternoons you picture when you think, fuck, I want my whole life to feel like this. Or so I’d imagined it.

I made cheddar sauce, and bought micro-chives. A., the only person in Mitte who knows how to work a grill without burning down the building, arrived first—90 minutes past the official start time. The second guest followed with a two-hour delay.

As the sky bled pink, the three of us were stuffing our faces with hot dogs, Róisín Murphy’s siren song humming softly in the background. My aforementioned digital penpal and her lifelong companion F. materialized shortly before midnight. The micro-chives had given up on life by then.

Rage? Futile. That’s not how it works here. Berlin doesn’t do punctuality. It does entropy. It does “see you soon” with no ETA.

This March, the BVG abandoned the pretense of ETAs, too. Again. No buses, no trams, no U-Bahn. Just feral cyclists, stranded tourists, and Berliners power-walking, unfazed.

The strike had teeth: 16,000 employees. Verdi demanding a raise. BVG countering with “unfinanceable.” Arbitration talks. The kind of thing that, elsewhere, might’ve become a catalytic rupture. Here, it just folded into the rhythm.

“I no longer have any use for the sweeping gestures of heroes on the global stage. I’m going for a walk,” journalist Joseph Roth wrote in one of his 1920s newspaper reports.

The push and pull of modernity and madness, trains filled with people who didn’t know where they were going, bureaucracy bloated to the point of absurdity—nothing ran smoothly in Roth’s Berlin either. But it moved. Sort of.

Nearly a century later, the city is still jerking between momentum and inertia. And yes, we still walk. By choice, at times.

Remember BER, the illustrious new airport that opened nine years behind schedule? A shrine to infrastructural irony that launched mid-pandemic, when no one was flying anyway. The joke landed better than any plane.

So no, lateness here is not failure. It’s a vernacular. A dialect of the damned. A predicament that exist in the space between “sorry, traffic was crazy” and “don’t worry, I'm not even sure what year it is.”

You realize that many are not even aiming for “on time.“ They’re aiming for some shared present that begins whenever enough people are late to the same thing.

Is it a middle finger to German obsession with efficiency? A low-grade burnout disguised as nonchalance? A side effect of too many all-nighters? A self-fulfilling prophecy making everyone feel off-balance? The answer to this, like the answer to most things, is probably all of the above.

Of course, lateness has its politics. If you’re a caregiver, a cleaner, a courier—it is a liability. That magical Berlinese time-as-a-construct only works if someone else is on the clock.

Someone has to fire up the grill. Someone has to wait for you, so you can be late and all charming about it.

It’s not fair. But somehow, it works. It comes together. Eventually. Right on time.

And by “right on time,” I mean four hours late. When the cheddar sauce is sentient and the birthday candles have melted into the abyss.

This month, the clocks jumped forward. Did anyone notice?

★ TBD Excitement

According to Mitte Daily’s founder, Dima:

The exquisite torment of the U8. Cherry blossoms, finally. The problematic diva that is Azealia Banks performing at Columbiahalle (how late do we think she will be to her own show?).

According to Mitte Daily’s intern, Katoo:

The first open-air cinema of the season in Kranzler Eck. FLINTA-only Celtic mythology workshop hosted by Klub Write. “Bingo and Bling” night where winners get hairdresser appointments and/or free piercing. Asian street-food festival in Friedrichshain, maybe?

★ IRL of the Month

Emergency print shop, Solid Earth

Wörther Strasse 29, 10405 Berlin

There are two kinds of people in Berlin: those who don’t need to print something at 9:47 p.m., and those who absolutely do. Solid Earth is for the latter. Two locations (two blocks apart from one another), no fanfare, no attitude. You walk in with a file and a vague sense of panic. They nod. They print. That’s it.

It’s the kind of place you only discover once you’re in too deep. You’re hosting a dinner and the chef switched dishes an hour before guests arrive. You’re organizing a reading and forgot the damn brochure. You simply want to print something pretty because you can. Solid Earth says: sure. How many copies?

Share this with someone who's always late. Or someone who's always early. Or someone who exists in a different dimension of time altogether. In Berlin, we don't discriminate against temporal anomalies.

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“February is the worst month of the year, but it’s an honest month,” journalist Kevin Killeen famously asserted in his now-classic 2016 report for KMOX radio. “It’s a month that doesn’t hold up life any better than it really is.”

Berlin, however, is not an honest city. Through the grey, it keeps lying—to you, to itself, to anyone who listens. It lies about opening times, queue lengths, and whether the person you just met is really a DJ. Spoiler: They aren’t.

I myself am guilty of this one. Recently, at a gallery on Potsdamer Strasse, I introduced my friend D. to a group of random Italian men as a DJ. She’s a copywriter. A good one, too. But in Berlin, that’s like admitting you collect taxidermied squirrels. So D. had to roll with the punches.

“Yeah, my stage name is DJ Cancelled,” she said without blinking an eye. “So whenever my gigs are cancelled, the announcement reads: ‘DJ Cancelled—Cancelled.’” They seemed to believe her. Of course they did. What is life without a little fiction?

This past February, Berlin cleared its throat, put on its best PR voice, and (re)introduced itself to the world as a fashion capital.

It’s like your uncle pretending he’s a rockstar by playing air guitar. Bless his heart. Fashion Council Germany? Bless their hearts too. Since taking over from Mercedes-Benz three years ago, they’ve been trying—which is undeniably commendable, even if not always convincing. Side note: It’s easier to love a character who tries than the one who succeeds.

Besides the carefully constructed illusion of effortless cool, the Rick Owens cosplay, and a general lack of bras, something Berlin runways tend to deliver is a coded, political gesture.

This season, though, GmbH—one of the city’s proudest sartorial exports with a sensible POV—took a step back from civic duties. “The world is in mourning,” co-founder Serhat Isik said. No demands. No declarations. Somber tones and familiar silhouettes. A collective exhale and retreat into comfort. Or a well-timed excuse to sell more clothes?

The creator of LUEDER, Marie Lueder, didn’t get the memo about keeping things low-key. She went for the jugular. A white tee, red lettering: “Men are so BACK.” A joke? A riddle? A warning? A prophecy? Hard to say. But it meant something.

marie.lueder

A post shared by @marie.lueder

That is precisely what Berlin’s fashion (or costuming, rather) is all about: conviction. You don’t have to look good. You just have to look like you mean it.

An unfinished hem. An unreasonably large leather trench. A Victorian nightgown layered over motocross pants. If you can make the whole ensemble appear intentional, you win. And if you can pull off a sheer top in the dead of a German winter and convince yourself you’re not cold, who’s to say you are?

The Berlinale is a different kind of performance—one where everyone is both critic and artiste.

For ten days straight, the city collectively lies about having seen the latest arthouse feature while setting alarms for 9:55 a.m. to score tickets to the one film starring an actor they recognize. (We love you, Robert Pattinson.)

Hollywood flies people in. They pretend to know where they are. Locals arriving by U-Bahn pretend to have funding. Everyone claps moderately.

This year’s Berlinale, its 75th, ushered in a new director: Tricia Tuttle, formerly of BFI London, apparently known for her gentle populist touch. She replaced Carlo Chatrian after a somewhat messy dismissal that left at least 300 industry darlings (Scorsese, Swinton, et al.) signing a letter demanding his reinstatement. It did not work. Evidently, not all men are back. Tuttle took the job.

Under her, the festival—still centered in Potsdamer Platz, a place that is both central and entirely without a center—continued its precarious balancing act. Moral urgency and aesthetic indulgence. Art with a capital “A” and Kylie Jenner with a capital “K.” A highbrow viewing culture catering en masse.

It’s not Cannes. It’s not Venice. It wasn’t designed to be. Those events are for financiers and their friends. The Berlinale, at its core, is for the audience.

That means your neighbour will suddenly develop strong opinions about Iranian slow cinema and Korean body horror. That means a guy in a Uniqlo puffer will hijack a Q&A with a world-famous director only to start with, “Uhm, it’s not really a question but more of a comment…” That means Chloë Sevigny will be out in these streets leaving autographs on people’s literal butt cheeks.

2025’s Golden Bear went to Drømmer, the final part in Norwegian director Dag Johan Haugerud’s Oslo Stories trilogy. A teenage girl falls in love with her teacher and writes about it. “But did it happen?” her mother asks. God knows at this point.

One critic described the plot as “a little problematic.” Another labelled Drømmer “a sly, garrulous, mischievous piece.” Someone at the Hyatt deli called it “the only thing my editor let me expense.”

Germany went to the polls this past February, too. If you were expecting something (anything), you must be new here.

Everyone’s disappointed, but no one’s surprised. Every take is right. Every take is wrong. Every take is exhausted.

The conviction of crisis. The eternal loop of outrage and apathy. The parties changing. The afterparties imploding. The coalitions shifting. The discourse burning itself out and resurfacing under a new name.

If you squint hard enough, you realize you’ve seen this movie before. A new moment with a very familiar script. A system that demands your participation, even as the only change it offers is that of a costume.

Perhaps that’s the point: the spectacle itself, the cycle of hope and disillusionment, the comforting rhythm of a system that, despite its flaws, keeps us moving. Or at least, keeps us entertained.

Uncertainty as the premise. Lies as accessories. A place that believes in everything and nothing at once, Berlin dresses for the version of the story it wants to be true. And in February—who’s to say it isn’t?

★ TBD Excitement

Apple TV’s new show Berlin ER. Renata Litvinova’s Nordwind screening at the Zoo Palast. HoBB’s Berlin Salon at Eoin Moylan’s studio. LOBB’s new “Bar Basta” breakfast at Casa Camper. Ed Atkins at the Deutsche Oper. Debussy & Mozart at the Philharmonie (never underestimate the power of Debussy). M¥SS KETA! The opening of the new Detroit-style pizza place on Rosenthaler? Final Girls festival. EMOP, but not really. Helmut Newton’s Polaroids, for sure.

★ IRL of the Month

Berlin’s quietest shoe repair legend

Schwedter Strasse 254, 10119 Berlin

Outside of the posturing and the pondering, there are still people who actually do things out in the real world. Case in point: the Leder-/Schuhreparatur & Änderungsschneiderei in the basement of Schwedter Strasse 254, right across from Lidl. Not the first address showing up on Google Maps. No website. No Instagram. No English, neither. The opening hours are 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., or 6 p.m. on a good day. If you need a shoemaker—like a real shoemaker, not a “craft atelier”—this is the guy. He can fix, reconstruct, and reinforce just about anything.

For all the fashion victims out there: this man slapped a protective rubber sole on my tabis so they wouldn’t self-destruct after one stroll down Torstrasse. When I handed those over, he examined them for half a second before asking, unironically, if they were some kind of character shoes. Specifically, if I was playing a goat in a theatre play. I affirmed. This is the kind of place you either know about, or you don’t. Now you do.

If you enjoyed this content, don’t be greedy, share it with a friend. If you hated it… I understand. Maybe share it with an enemy then?

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Ever been to the secret room at Kater Blau? Down the mirror corridor, behind a discreet door. I swear I stumbled in once, by accident. Could’ve been a K-hole mirage. It’s entirely possible I just sat in a janitor’s closet and hallucinated all the wrinkly leather sofas. Hard to say.

Maybe you’ve heard about the new rooftop wellness club opening near Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz? A terrace so perfect it shouldn’t exist. The kind of view you only get if you marry into one of those Linienstraße new-builds with a shared pool. That space, I can attest to. It’s a friend’s project. There will be ice baths, obviously. There are always ice baths…

Or the back chambers of Lokschuppen Berlin, fka Suicide Circus? Every Thursday, at Chantal’s House of Shame, that’s where the party happens. The main dancefloor is for spectators; trans icon Chantal is in the back. The lighting is aggressively unflattering. The laws of time, space, and self-respect don’t apply. It’s glorious.

How about Borchardt’s book club? Apparently, it’s hosted by Frankfurter Allgemeine and reserved strictly for the German literary circle (duh). A respectable pop culture reporter told me about it the other week. It’s hard to get on the list, she said, but not that hard. I take her word for it.

Or the bunker beneath Soho House? A heavy sound system, buried deep under Torstrasse—allegedly. A girl who works in nightlife showed me some blurry iPhone pics. When I asked a Mitte-based architectural historian about it, he shrugged. So did the people who work at Soho. No one could confirm or deny the bunker’s existence.

That, right there, seems to be the common thread: In Berlin, no one knows what the fuck is going on.

No reliable narrator. No fixed script. No “scene” per se—just a bunch of social micro-economies that shift, overlap, disappear, and reappear at will. There are no consolidated sources, no actual guides—unless you count The Berliner’s “4 Places to Get Incredible Hot Chocolate” as intel.

If a spot is too well-documented, you should be suspicious. If it has a website, it’s probably fully booked. If you saw it on Instagram, it’s already over. The best things aren’t launched with extensive PR campaigns; they’re passed along in manic voice notes that cut off before they tell you what time to arrive.

There’s no FOMO here—rather, a vague sensation of permanently missing something but not grasping quite what.

“Wait, you haven’t heard?” Certain people always have. They’re in on the opening before there’s even a door. They get the memo about which chef left which kitchen to start a vegan dining concept in an abandoned power plant. They don’t read event listings. They are the event listings.

And sure, there are plenty of Berliners who don’t care about this stuff. They don’t participate in the scavenger hunt for relevance. They have never uttered the words “Who’s playing?” and are probably very happy.

If you do care, however, you’re destined to reverse-engineer RA event pages and decipher WhatsApp group chats like there’s no tomorrow, trusting that someone, somewhere, will drop a pin when it matters.

The places change. The people running them change. The people who know the people running them change.

It might seem frustrating, but here’s the thing: Unlike so many Euro-strongholds with their stories set in stone, Berlin is still wet clay.

Case in point: Paris. By the late 17th century, the self-appointed capital of taste had surpassed half a million residents—ample reason to start inventing etiquette for the sake of making coexistence tolerable. Meanwhile, Berlin? Barely 20,000. Around the size of your average Berghain queue. A town so minor that if you sneezed, you risked becoming mayor.

Then there’s Rome… The eternal city. The blueprint that’s had millennia to workshop its mythology. The empire, the Vatican, Julius Caesar getting jumped in broad daylight—that legend is locked in. But Berlin?

Berlin is unfinished business.

It withholds. It deflects. It rewrites itself mid-sentence, almost as if to gaslight you. It erases its own beginnings before they can turn into endings. It keeps you guessing—because it hasn’t decided yet either.

This isn’t history, really. It’s happening. Like, right now. So if you’re here, if you’re invested, if you find yourself trying to keep up with the myth as it forms… stop.

You’re already part of it.

If you’ve made it this far: thank you. My name is Dima, you might know me as the person behind Mitte Daily, a hyperlocal media project that documents the new Berlin myth in the making.

The rant you just read is a prelude to Mitte Daily’s newest sibling, Mitte Monthly. Soft-launching since, oh, 1964, it’s an undoubtedly biased (and less than fact-checked) chronicle of what mattered, what should have mattered, and what will soon be erased from collective memory. And it’s here at last.

If you—like me—are chronically online but somehow still out of the loop, this is for you. Tell a friend. Tell an enemy. Tell the person at the bar who looks like they might be important. Let’s do this together. It’s more fun this way.

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