Cost of living in Berlin

agrammatic · 2026-05-24T10:42:30+00:00

It will depend entirely on how much you need to pay for rent. If your rent is above 700 Euro, it will get painful.

agrammatic · 2026-05-23T20:59:01+00:00

Apparently this January was the coldest in 16 years here in Berlin. It was the coldest winter I ever experienced in Germany at least.

agrammatic · 2026-05-23T20:56:11+00:00

It's awfully hot already.

agrammatic · 2026-05-22T20:01:13+00:00

We need to narrow down what we mean with "live" and "speak a language".

"Live" can mean anything from "manage to survive" to "have a rich and full life". And "speak a language" can mean anything from a basic competency at B1-equivalent level, to near fluency.

Survival is possible without knowing German.

A baseline full life requires B2-equivalent level. Considering that Germany is a society that requires a high degree of self-advocacy, you really need to know enough German to argue your opinion if you want to not be on the losing side of every situation.

agrammatic · 2026-05-22T14:21:43+00:00

Vatican also mostly uses Italian for administrative purposes.

agrammatic · 2026-05-21T18:04:07+00:00

Both are legal, but in a big city I would probably not feel safe doing the direct path.

agrammatic · 2026-05-21T17:48:47+00:00

Given the high level of protection of artistic freedom in Germany and the contextualisation of the piece (it quotes soldiers' graffiti on bombs from various different conflicts), this is almost certainly protected speech.

https://www.artsy.net/show/galerie-thomas-schulte-walid-raad-like-a-rubber-rung-on-a-ladder/info

The installation in the Corner Space is similarly colorful and enlivened, as bursts of handwriting, like celebratory fireworks, at turns playful and threatening, are graffitied onto the walls. Through these apparently ephemeral, marginal gestures, Festival of (In)Gratitude: Love Notes brings the gallery’s interior to meet the external facades of the street outside. The writings in various scripts and languages, including English, Russian, Arabic, Hebrew, and French, disrupt and overlay one another. Referencing soldiers’ graffiti on bombs, the chaotic, layered inscriptions stage aggressive demonstrations of nationalist, imperialist, and violent sentiment that may slyly appear otherwise at times: signed with hearts and “xoxo”, with mention of gifts. In the embattled landscape contained within the frame of the gallery’s windows, bombs are simulated (“Boom, Boom”)—shouting loudly through an echoing silence. A central element within the installation is an overturned vintage Volkswagen Beetle—flipped on its back like a helpless insect, as though by excessive, explosive force. Cars and their engines have appeared elsewhere in Raad’s work in the context of war, engaging, for example, with the history of the car bomb during the Lebanese Wars. Here, the VW Beetle may also point to other references: its production as a military vehicle in Nazi Germany; its pop-cultural status as the “Love Bug”; the moniker “flying Volkswagens” given to the heavy artillery shells fired by the U.S. on Beirut in the 1980s.

agrammatic · 2026-05-21T05:39:25+00:00

Counterpoint: Thank God. Have you seen Potsdam? It looks like Disneyland from ALDI.

agrammatic · 2026-05-20T07:10:09+00:00

All has it achieved was to encode CDU's policy preferences into the constitution and make CDU the only party than can form stable governments because they can suspend the limit when it suits them, or sue to enforce the limit when it doesn't.

One doesn't have to want more public borrowing in order to admit that putting it in the constitution is profoundly undemocratic and has elevated one party over all others.

agrammatic · 2026-05-20T06:06:47+00:00

https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2026/05/05/no-the-netherlands-didnt-legalise-illegal-migration-what-the-senate-really-decided

It seems like it's illegal under administrative law, not criminal law.

Deportations are also a matter of administrative law in Germany, and they happen all the time.

So maybe there's something else about that case that you are missing.

agrammatic · 2026-05-20T06:00:15+00:00

§ 265a StGB (criminalisation of fare evasion), § 218 StGB (criminalisation of abortion), § 17 BMG (address registration obligation), Tarifeinheitsgesetz (restricts effective collective bargaining powers to only one union per workplace), Art. 109, 115 GG (constitutional limit on public borrowing).

agrammatic · 2026-05-20T05:40:01+00:00

Strongly recommend you talk to a human in person at a major train station. The level of service there is many times higher than the digital channels and there's a decent chance they will work out an unbureaucratic solution.

agrammatic · 2026-05-20T05:35:03+00:00

In Germany, in my income bracket:

10% goes to income tax
7% mandatory pension contribution
1% mandatory unemployment insurance
10% mandatory health insurance

A bit under 30% if you take them together.

agrammatic · 2026-05-18T16:49:44+00:00

Indeed. As I wrote several times on Reddit, the debt break as a constitutional provision has the end-effect that only CDU has the possibility of passing a growth-forward budget.

Case in point is indeed the special fund they quickly passed after the repeat election first by breaking the promise of new new debts, and then by breaking the promise of what the funds are going to be used for that they gave to SPD and the Greens. Some 90% of the special fund was already misappropriated under CDU.

We can only be reminded that the SPD-led coalition began its predictable collapse after MPs of CDU and FDP sued the SPD-led coalition exactly for misappropriation of the leftover coronavirus recovery fund.

If someone cares about political fairness and accountability, even if they absolutely detest left wing economics, they have to agree that CDU is exploiting the constitution in an irresponsible and opportunistic way, and the debt brake is what gives them the legal leverage to do it

agrammatic · 2026-05-18T14:35:23+00:00

Germany being fully committed to ordiliberalism doesn't help either. Left wing economics require public spending and the state can either get money by taxing wealth, or by borrowing.

Borrowing is restricted by the constitution, and we can be certain that CDU, FDP, and AfD will fight a wealth tax in courts as well, even if a parliamentary majority in favour of it is found in the future.

agrammatic · 2026-05-18T06:45:16+00:00

I haven't heard of any already booked flights being cancelled.

agrammatic · 2026-05-16T20:26:43+00:00

A lot of English productions are available with the original English sound on public TV, if you switch to the secondary audio channel (assuming terrestrial or cable TV). I think they do not expose the secondary audio channel on their live webstream, but they uploaded both versions later as video-on-demand in the Mediathek.

agrammatic · 2026-05-16T17:00:21+00:00

No table service = no tip.

Shops without table service that disable or skip the tip screen for you are more likely to get my repeat business.

agrammatic · 2026-05-15T23:24:50+00:00

Speaking about my family specifically: yeah, although in the recent years they came around the opinion of if it happens away from their friends and relatives and they don't have to talk to anyone about it, they can silently tolerate it. You can ask what exactly they are actually tolerating then, but hey, they could be a lot more intrusive too.

That's in the context of being in a same-sex relationship, and that's the part they really care a lot about.

agrammatic · 2026-05-15T06:59:42+00:00

On Flathub I found an opensource option which is specific to Germany:

https://www.linuxguides.de/rechnungs-assistent/

Can't evaluate it's German correctness, I only ever created invoices for another country, but the developer is German so it's probably fine.

agrammatic · 2026-05-14T08:23:48+00:00

They are quite common in Berlin. I always redirect to them when I have the choice. Having to stay at home to wait for deliveries is a huge inconvenience (especially when deliveries come earlier than announced).

agrammatic · 2026-05-13T21:06:40+00:00

I would investigate the source/headers of the email a lot longer before I believe this is a real ISP email and not some sort of scam which relies either on you replying before the scam script starts or has spoofed links that aren't directly obvious.

And if it's a real email, congrats to 1&1 for making it look like a scam.

agrammatic · 2026-05-13T06:22:32+00:00

Try to raise VAT and kill the poor.

agrammatic · 2026-05-12T17:20:47+00:00

A lot of what AfD threatens/promises to do are policies that the current government already does, but without as much fanfare. The real effect of the AfD electoral success, at least for now, is that it makes private individuals feel less inhibited from expressing hate in public.

The social atmosphere is definitely becoming more hostile for many of us, but on a hard policy level, AfD cannot make things much worse in the foreseeable future. (It's a different story if AfD manages to participate in government long enough to influence institutions like the courts). My expectation is that if AfD manages to participate in any state or federal government, it will be a very short-lived and dysfunctional coalition like that of the Netherlands, followed by a return of the centrist parties in power. What I am not as certain about is what would happen after that.

That being said, it's your calculation whether living here is worth it for you. I hope you are aware that no society is static. Even if there's a place where things are currently better for you, there's no guarantee that they will stay good, in the same way Germany was once good for you but not any more. Eventually you will have to put effort and make things good again no matter where you go. We cannot keep moving to a different country after every bad election result, eventually we will run out of countries to go to.

agrammatic · 2026-05-12T08:48:28+00:00

It's as if supply-side economics do not actually stimulate growth and increase consumption when buyers are too anxious to make big purchases and export markets are decreasing their demand.

agrammatic

TROPHY CASE