Klammerauf.org

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The other day I read a manifesto about modern-day hedonism. I never realised there was so much to write about it and I’ve never been a fan of all these over-romanticised views on life either. The manifesto or however they called it basically said things like “If getting back into the real world on a Monday morning is hard for you, then this is a clear sign that your real world sucks and that you should change something. You obviously prefer your weekend to your week. Why shouldn’t your week be as great as your weekend?” I know this is all very corny and cheesy and you could as well add a few #YOLO hashtags to it BUT the whole getting back into the real world stuff kinda got me. I do feel like this. A lot. If you’ve spent all your weekend in a “different world” with different rules and where most of the things that bother you during the week simply don’t matter, it’s weird to be back in your office, dealing with real-life problems and normal things that you successfully managed to forget for about three nights and two days.

Ok, I admit, this sounds pretty cheesy, too. It sounds like I don’t wanna grow up which I’m pretty sure I do or have already done a little, for that matter. I was so glad when I was finally on my own, in my own four walls, with my own life and even my very own fucking bills. It was what I’d wanted ever since I can remember. Yet, after a few years of adulthood I guess we do realise it’s not all that great and do all kinds of things to become children again, if only for a few hours. I’m convinced drinking for instance is one of them. It makes you stupid and irresponsible and that’s the point, you go to parties with glitter and bouncy castles and refuse to go to bed at night, you fuck yourself up so much that you’re finally back to where you were as a three-year-old.

Recently, I have been thinking a lot about different concepts of life. I know people who are responsible, productive and ambitious. I envy them because they get shit done and more importantly, know what shit they want to get done. I also know people who live for the day and have created a life for themselves where they only do what they enjoy, even if it doesn’t mean actively contributing to anything or doing something particularly productive. I envy them too because they have something they enjoy and decided to just do it. I keep thinking, if I had something I would rather do than this, I would go out and do it, for sure.

“Is there anything more important than having fun? Why are there so many rules that dictate us how to do it? If you don’t obey, you’re one of ‘those people’, those who do things that normal people don’t do.” Really? Do we really feel good when we do what we call “having fun”? Going to the same places over and over again, with the same people, the same music, the same routines? Isn’t that just as bad as what we are trying to escape? I’m sick of hearing kids wallow in self-pity while trying to impress everyone else with their level of self-destruction, something they’ve been practising for years. “Go hard or go home”. A smug “Don’t become like me, darling” and yet I know, right now you feel superior because you have been up for five days and because your body can take more than mine, because you don’t eat and because you won’t give up. You say you live dangerously but in fact you secretly have a wank over how glamorous your life is. Please, go fuck yourself with a cactus, I’m out of here.

I want to find out what really matters. One day I will only spend my days doing something I truly enjoy. I will find out what it feels like to enjoy something, to feel good about what I’m doing, to have a reason to get up in the morning except for my conscience telling me I’d be screwed if I don’t. I want to spend time with people who mean something to me and I want everything else to just be an addition, not a distraction. And until then, I will just continue doing what I’m doing because quite frankly, it could be a lot worse.

Alright, I haven’t done one of these in ages and I don’t even know where to start. I have to admit Berlin gets pretty beautiful once it’s sunny outside – I started leaving the house a lot more again and I’m also staying outside again a lot more. I’m just trying to keep myself busy and stop thinking so much and it actually works. The more time I spend outside doing things, the more energy it gives me. And energy is one of the things I need so badly. I’ve been to bars and clubs and friend’s places and even more clubs and outdoor parties, I went to the opera for the first time in years (The Magic Flute by Mozart, with the best seats ever) and spent a day eating nice food and chilling outside while my friend read this amazing book to me, trying to convince myself that sleep is definitely overrated.

You can view all of my Instagram photos here & on Twitter or simply search for my username “cleveraintwise”.

I saw Frank Turner again last night and it was fucking amazing. After all these years he’s still my favourite singer/songwriter, I love the new record and it was just great to forget everything and just sing along at the top of my lungs for about two hours straight. I didn’t even care I went to the gig on my own, I didn’t care I wasn’t a part of the front row or the moshpit, I was just there to have a good time and it was perfect.

Michi drew us in our flat and it couldn’t be more accurate.

After a very crazy encounter and clash of my current life and my online past last year I finally took things to the next level: I met up with a bunch of people from the internet, some who I have known for almost ten years. Only online of course. Like, twenty people. When we first got to know eachother, we were teenagers, now we are young adults so needless to say the weekend turned into a big intoxicated mess somewhere in the middle of Neukölln. It was almost shocking how well we all got along and how much we really had in common.

My theory: If you spent your youth on the internet in the 00s you will inevitably have developed in a certain way by the time your reach your early twenties. True fact.

When we started, being online was a lot less common and you had to learn how to use it, how it works and how to communicate. We were not the cool kids from Tumblr, we were just a bunch of nerdy teenagers. I mean, come on, when I was young it was considered fairly “uncool” to spend a lot of time in front of the computer. Nobody I knew “in real life” got what I was doing there. I have no idea how they spent all their free time after school (seriously, we got home at like 2pm every day, what the hell did everyone else do with all that free time???), all I know is that nowadays we don’t hang out anymore and have nothing in common.

I still remember the first time I met somebody from the internet, I must have been around 13. Julia lived near Frankfurt, we were active on the same message boards and had been chatting on ICQ and it took a couple of phone calls between my parents and hers and a lot of convincing until I was allowed to buy a train ticket. We spent an entire weekend at her place gossiping and fangirling about our favourite bands, listening to music, taking photos and eating candy. It was pretty funny and innocent and it convinced my parents that the people from the internet were in fact real and not hairy old paedophiles.

Fast forward ten years, I’m now 23 and way too old for any paedophile to be remotely interested in me. I have my own life, I’m not that shy anymore and have become pretty good at faking self-confidence. Yet I feel slightly nervous on my way to Alexanderplatz where I’m meeting the first girls from the group. This time we drink vodka, Pfeffi and beer, hang out in a flat round the corner from my house, order pizza with spaghetti on top to nurse our hangovers and for a couple of hours one of us brings her baby, the first baby, who is making funny noises and rolling around on the white carpet that will later be soaked in beer and other liquids.

It’s a weird world, meeting people you have known for SO LONG for the first time in real life and instantly getting along. Realising how everybody looks exactly like they do on their photos (while making up silly excuses why I don’t) and that instant feeling of familiarity and friendship even though you have literally just met a couple of hours ago. We all wear our “Hello my name is” stickers, listen to trashy music, yelling goats and Youtube remixes, bleach parts of my hair, film our very own Harlem Shake video and wallow in almost ten years of inside jokes. Now the internet has finally become real.

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The language debate in Berlin is not a new one. Ever since I first came here, people have been speaking English and you could easily get by without a word of German. The people from all over the world have made the city what it is today and without trying to sound too corny, some of them made me who I am today. Even though I’m a born-and-raised German I live and work in the expat scene and yes, I probably actively take part in gentrifying this city. At least 80% of the people I surround myself with are not German, not even German speaking. I speak English at home, I speak English at work and whenever I’m out with international friends, we usually speak English.

In her rant “Sorry, no German!” Julie Colthorpe, an expat herself, writes:

Don’t get me wrong: nobody’s expected to know the der-die-das of it all the moment they step off the plane. The problem is the blasé nonchalant attitude that some expats adopt when it comes to speaking the language of their adopted country: they don’t.

The rant is followed by a rather lengthy discussion between expats and the occasional German, some agreeing, some disagreeing. And for a long time I thought, as a German I wasn’t even allowed to actually comment on this situation.

I would never judge anyone for their language skills and I would never make a bland statement like “If you live here you should learn German!”. Why would I? After all, it doesn’t affect me, I speak both German and English and I certainly get along in this city. I help my friends with their bureaucracy problems, translate their letters and show them around Cologne during the carnival. And I’m sure there’s people out there who would do the same for me.

But I’ve also met people who’d spend all day complaining about situations that happened to them over here and it became very clear it was all because they did not speak the language. If you get robbed on the streets, that’s shit, yes. Quite frankly, this can happen anywhere. But if your local barista can’t take your order right because he only speaks basic English, that’s your problem. Yes, German bureaucracy is known to be complicated and trust me, I sometimes struggle with it, too. Finding a flat is hard and yes, you will need a lot of documents. I don’t agree with the way public transport is organised either but well, it’s the way it is. If you don’t have a ticket, you get fined. If you don’t pay your rent, they will send you letters. Some people might not instantly understand your problems and not everybody is aware of expat issues (yet). What you might perceive as intentional rudeness could just be a lack of understanding.

People keep over-romanticising the city as some sort of crazy paradise without work and commitments which totally works for you if you’re using this as a place to escape. But sometimes I just want to get up from that filthy house party sofa, throw my bottle of Sternburg in the corner and yell: “DUDE, THIS IS A CITY!”

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While it was fairly obvious and predictable that an opinion piece like that would provoke very strong reactions, a lot of them being negative, I was also surprised by a couple of very contrary comments calling for people to show their “disrespect for Germany” by speaking English and characterising all languages that are not English – the “lingua franca” – as tools of nationalism.

Are languages tools of nationalism? Or merely another aspect of the huge diversity of cultures rooted in the history of Europe? Well, maybe in a few hundred years Europe will have merged into one big whatever-language-speaking bubble but for now, being born and raised in Germany and at the same time being around so many different people from all over the world for a big part of my life has made me realise how “German” I am. Not in a nationalist way, I have simply become so much more aware of the culture and its influences. We’re not all the same and that’s a good thing, isn’t it?

I’ve always disliked cultural and national generalisations, though. I don’t even know why it bothers me to read about “THE Germans” everytime I see yet another viral Top 10 list of random things Germans do pop up on my news feed. Most of it only boils down to this anyway: Germans are rude and stare at people on the u-bahn, Germans love to lecture others, Germans eat Wurst and Sauerkraut and can’t pronounce the “th”. Maybe I just feel misunderstood. Maybe I would just as easily throw around generalisations about THE Americans or THE French. Maybe it’s just the frustration when you realise that “Why do people think I’m a nazi? Why do people think I’m rude? I’m not!”

But hey, I can totally see myself moving to a foreign country and not instantly learning the language. Absolutely. All expats I know who ever learned German, though, now matter how much, told me that it absolutely enhanced their experience of living in this city. And I definitely believe that. Wherever I went, I wouldn’t want to miss out.

I finally got the photos from my birthday developed, only took me two months! For some reason I also remember a second camera but it disappeared. But these are definitely the best ones – the same people as always (i.e. my friends), pineapples, Jesus, Die Ärzte cups, my white room and way too many empty bottles.

By the way, I interviewed Tocotronic for the lastest issue of Exberliner & we talked about their new record, “Wie wir leben wollen”, Berlin in the 1990s and the big joke that is the School of Hamburg. Quite fittingly, the issue itself is all about the German man – you can get it at newsstands & cafés all over Berlin.

Update: The interview is now also available online.