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Berlin - capital of the breakdowns: Why there are such big problems in the metropolis

2021-10-15T10:15:52.611Z


Airport disasters, election chaos, everyday catastrophes and the Hertha crisis: Berlin's got the worm right now. Story about a metropolis on the verge of madness.


Airport disasters, election chaos, everyday catastrophes and the Hertha crisis: Berlin's got the worm right now.

Story about a metropolis on the verge of madness.

Berlin - Modesty and humility are unquestionably not among the characteristics that Berliners are ascribed to.

Former Governing Mayor Klaus Schütz is said to have said the following: "If Berlin had mountains, they would be higher than the Alps."


City leaders are also reluctant to admit mistakes.

In the icy winter of 2010, Klaus Wowereit countered the suggestion of a reporter that the technical relief organization might help the city clearing ice surfaces by stating: “We are not in Haiti.” Outside, many of his citizens slipped broke one or the other bones in the process.

Chaotic conditions are a perennial issue in the capital.

That didn't change in 2021 either.

You even get the feeling that it's getting worse and worse.

A brief overview of current bankruptcies, streaks of bad luck and mishaps.


Berlin Airport BER: Whoever flies needs a lot of time

Lufthansa briefed its customers with a record-breaking notice of possible delays in handling.

Passengers should please appear at the airport 240 minutes, i.e. four hours before departure.

That was a reaction to the chaos at the beginning of the autumn holidays on the Spree.

The new airport was already overloaded with the first major rush.

There were long lines at the check-in desks and hours of waiting.

Some passengers did not make it to their plane in time despite their early arrival.


The airport company rejects all guilt.

Check-in is a matter for the airlines.

But the Verdi union speaks of a blatant staff shortage.

One in four employees on the ground quit in the pandemic and there is still short-time work.

However, an old report from 2012 already foresaw that the airport, although beautiful, was not planned in a practical way.

After years of delays in the construction of the airport, this forecast is proving to be accurate.


Berlin at the polling station: Help, the ballot papers are missing!

Voting at the end of September was an exhausting affair for Berliners. Because at the same time the annual marathon took place, for which large parts of the city center are cordoned off for hours. Perhaps it was because the ballot papers were missing in some polling stations and could not be delivered quickly enough. Long queues formed here as well. In some places, they were so long that voters went home or turned up long after the planned closure at 6 p.m. Ballot papers also accidentally ended up in the wrong district.


Interior Senator Andreas Geisel reports difficulties in 100 of the over 2,200 polling stations. As if that weren't enough, the first results of the election were identical in many places. At first they were simply appreciated. After all, the ballot papers for the Bundestag election and the simultaneous election to the House of Representatives were actually counted. According to the Senate, the many disagreements do not change the distribution of mandates. The election chaos is the "icing on the cake" of a general administrative failure, the former Senator for Construction Wolfgang Nagel criticizes the previous state chief Michael Müller in a kind of accounting.


In the meantime, the regional election control has announced that it will object to the results of the election to the House of Representatives on September 26th.

The reason: In the two constituencies of Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf and Marzahn-Hellersdorf, there are said to have been serious violations of the electoral law.

It is now known that there were irregularities in 207 polling stations.

"That is a number that must frighten us all and must also annoy us," said the regional returning officer yesterday.

Berlin: Citizens' Registration Offices in the German Capital?

250,000 appointments in arrears

The Berliners feel this failure in many official matters. The extension of the identity papers at the citizens' office is adventurous. The appointment booking should actually work online. But anyone who visits the booking portal is often disappointed. Free dates are in short supply. Last summer it became known that a backlog of around 250,000 appointments had accumulated due to the pandemic. Often, instead of in the town hall of their district, citizens can only find what they are looking for at a local authority office far away. With new hires, some districts promise, capacities will be increased. Verdi spokesman Andreas Splanemann doubts this. "Unfortunately, there is still no central personnel development planning for the public service in Berlin," he complains."Warnings about the impending age-related decline in staff went unheard."


Berlin's educational system: many teachers are fleeing from schools

The lack of staff also affects schools.

There is a lack of teachers everywhere.

The situation is so bad that Berlin relies on lateral entrants who are trained in school service in a short legal clerkship.

These forces are then used, especially in focus schools.

In this school year, half of the newly hired teachers have no regular training.

One reason could be that Berlin is the only federal state that does not employ teachers.

Many educators therefore move to Brandenburg or even to more distant federal states that pay more.


Living in Berlin: A flop called Mietendeckel

The state government is not to blame for every misery. In some city districts, rents are rising faster than anywhere else in Germany. The prices have reached heights that lead to the displacement of the ancestral neighborhood residents. It takes revenge that the city privatized a large part of its housing stock in 2004. Almost 70,000 apartments went to the Deutsche Wohnen company. Today a referendum, confirmed by the majority of voters, calls for the expropriation of this stock. It will probably not come to that. The result of the referendum is not binding on the Senate and the future governing mayor, Franziska Giffey, rejects expropriation. The previous red-red-green state government wanted to stop the rent development with a rent cap. But the law flopped.The Federal Constitutional Court took the lid because it does not fall within the national competence.

One consolation: at least the real estate bubble is not as heated up here as it is in Frankfurt or Munich, for example.

Hertha BSC: relegation battle in the Bundesliga instead of "Big City Club"

Hardly any figurehead stands for the inadequacies that exist everywhere like the Hertha BSC football club.

There is a wide gap between claims and reality for the Bundesliga club.

The Herthaners want to be the “Big City Club”, and despite their millions investor Lars Windhorst, the kickers are actually playing against the sporting decline this year as well.

Some fans take it with humor, like blogger "Tommy".

"If you then imagine that we might really be successful one day, then you quickly realize that something might be missing," he practices sarcasm: "the dissatisfaction."

An outlook: There is still hope for Berlin - the positive counterexamples

The list of shortcomings could still be continued.

S-Bahn trains fail again and again, crime is high and traffic is aggressive.

And yet everything works somehow - the residents of the capital accept most of the problems without complaint, even the long waiting times for an appointment at the citizens' office.

The serenity is only partly due to a certain lethargy.

Another reason are the successes that Berlin can boast.

The economy is booming, cultural life will be resurrected after the pandemic and there are positive counterexamples to Hertha even in sport, such as the smaller Club Union or the top basketball players from Alba Berlin.

And a look at the history books shows that this juxtaposition of success and failure, of rich and poor on the Spree has always existed.


Source: merkur

All news articles on 2021-10-15

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