I learned to love Berlin for the second time after the more-or-less five year long honeymoon phase in our relationship ended. It was a rough period, when the rosy tint of the glasses I had worn so far faded, and for the first time I saw the city differently.
The sight was rather terrible.
Random people barking at you because you dared to exist. Streets drowning in litter because nobody seemed to care. Getting out of U8 at Hermannplatz triggering the fight or flight response. The war movie feeling of Berlin’s New Year’s Eve celebrations becoming more stressful each year.
This phase lasted for more than twelve months, and I was not sure whether it was just a change in my mental state, with the city as it always was, or whether something real was happening to it.
As usual, it was both. On the one hand, I was not sure which direction in life to take, which brought its own personal struggle. On the other, the COVID pandemic really did a number on Berlin. People got more tense, the dysfunction deepened, while the unstoppable bulldozer of gentrification plodded forward.
For me, things improved during the second summer of the pandemic. The city adjusted and learned to cope, while I calmed down and began to appreciate a more distant but beautiful part I moved to a year earlier.
Several years later, in 2026, Berlin is a metropolis I love again, this time for what it is, not for the idealized version I was projecting onto it. It is a place where you can join an established company like Zalando, be part of a success story like Talon.One, take a chance at a scrappy startup that will make or break itself within a year. Or, try to disrupt the overregulated behemoth of the construction industry by joining GROPYUS, where I currently work.
In 2026, Berlin is still a place where you can mix intense clubbing with morning cardio by joining one of the 24h parties at 10 A.M. on a Sunday, discover incredible event spaces like Kraftwerk Berlin and MaHalla GmbH & Co. KG, or rent a small boat and explore lakes and canals in and around Köpenick.
But Berlin in 2026 is not Berlin in 2014, just like Berlin in 2014 was no longer what it was in 2002. And it is a good thing. While it still has it all - the vibrancy, the magical summers, the tech scene and the techno parades - it also transformed itself. It shed some of its essential trashiness and gentrified. It is no longer “poor but sexy”, yet it preserved the poor and the sexy aspects of its soul.
In 2026, Berlin continues to grow and mature at its own pace, like the modern, complex city it is, embracing its evolving identity and position as the capital of the largest economy in the European Union.