The girl from Ipanema

One of my very good friends- Copacabana Else asked me recently to point out the very special way of german lifestyle or what I might think about it.
When I arrived during my recent stay in Berlin I was really afraid what might happen and to be honest- its worst case!
Not only that it is fucking cold, the peoples behavior is more than rude, but one could say that this is the very special charm of the city- so never mind. As I still own a small place in one of Berlin's so called hip quarters (by the way- if you wanna rent it, please drop me a line) I should have the "back home" feeling, but I do felt uncomfortable. I just dropped my stuff and went for a walk through the small streets around to see what might changed and how people behave in their environment. It seems to me that people especially in "my" area reached a certain level of lifestyle which one could call bourgeois, but indeed these peoples understatement creates a new form of well educated, family oriented, organic food buyers ghetto guys. Yeah you got it right- these people create their very own ghetto- even so people just thought ghettos are exclusive to jews or poor people!
The funny thing is that people in poor areas pretending to be rich when buying Dolce and Gabana copies and in famous ghetto Prenzlauer Berg they do buy rough looking outdoor clothes (fucking expensive!) for their next big track to the coffee shop around the corner. People here are not extraordinary rich (compared to other areas in the world for sure yes), but even within Berlin the ghetto guys of Prenzlauer Berg are mainly middle- class oriented and they arranged them self in their small world. I guess none of them took once a train coming from the suburbs in the morning. Their point of view is "straight" through in depth reports on real life in newspapers and magazines like Spiegel, Faz, or Sueddeutsche. The only "real" contact to the outside world is for example to get in touch with the vendors in the bakery shops or your dry cleaning.
My mum told me once while she visit me in Jakarta: "you can just understand peoples lifestyle if you feel the dust, the air pollution and the heat with your body!"
There is no heat, no air pollution and no dust in Berlin any more- so what should I feel?

Stay tuned for my upcoming in depth report on "sternburg"- ghetto Berlin Friedrichshain