Ode to Berlin 2.0

This is a tale of a modern German city.

A city of four airports.

Two are seemingly open for business, one is a giant outdoor park and the fourth has a giant figurative question mark over when it might actually open.

A city that can make a mean Latte Macchiato, but whose transport may go off the rails every so often.

A city where the drink Club Maté serves as currency, and smiles are legal tender.

Berlin despises the neat, urban wrapping paper of other modern cities.  Its history is testament to its difference.

With close access to the bicycle-riding, technologically-driven Baltic and Nordic countries, Berlin lies on the crossroads of Eastern and Western Europe and therefore has become a strategic breeding ground for outside talent wishing to work on its blank canvas.

Berlin's tumultuous history has also played a role.  The unceremonious partitioning of the post-war city, in essence creating a distinct cultural divide and focusing more and more German industry elsewhere in Southern and Western regions in Germany, has given rise to a 'poor but sexy' verve - the term coined by current city mayor Klaus Wowereit.

The openly gay mayor, a walking example of the city's social liberalism, heads a city that doesn't necessarily play according to the standardised rulebook of other western cities.   The unconventionally low-rent real estate market has attracted both German and foreign graduates, artists and students while at the same time, the city still suffers from high unemployment - in stark contrast to other German cities.
Curiously, the anything-goes city is also home to the politicians that govern the country. Berlin is cheeky, and knows it.  It is why more start-ups, both Berlin-made and determined overseas firms are taking advantage of the fertile Berlin business climate.

Unlike the big traditional urban European centres, like London and Paris, where modern city claustrophobia tends to stifle young, dynamic business innovation; in Berlin, life imitates art.  The whimsical social interplay that ignites innovation allows start-up businesses to grow.

Increasingly more American brands are eschewing London as they jump the pond for expansion in Europe.  Cheap rent, international talent and a why-not business culture have given rise to the new kings of the post-Web 2.0 culture.  In contrast to other city stalwarts, Berlin represents the new.  Success in such a field is also dependent on Berlin start-ups making it big and being able to expand 'back' into the American market - a surefire way to ensure a brand's presence becomes a global phenomenon.

The chaotic intersection of Rosenthalerplatz in Berlin's Mitte district has become an informal meeting place for international tech gurus and an endless supply of bandwidth. Here, at the now famous Café Sankt Oberholtz, laptops and smartphones jostle for space as 'the next big thing' is conceived around a coffee, cake and hipster trimmings.  Relaxed, shared spaces have come to replace many business settings as the freelancing collaborative nature of modern-day tech business breaks conventional barriers.

Despite all the hype though, businesses do need capital to get off the ground.  It is why the venture capitalists see in Berlin what they saw with the break-out of new firms that kindled the technology revolution in San Francisco's Silicon Valley.  From risk comes reward.  As a testament to Berlin's new European tech capital status, the first
Tech-Open-Air took place this year - in one of Berlin's crazy clubs - Kater Holzig, of all places.

The start-up community in Berlin has seized upon social media's new grip on people's daily lives.  The social and ever-mobile smartphone revolution - where more people from international backgrounds come together to form common ideas.  For this reason the more quirky applications and enhancements have been Berlin-made.

With the hype of a city that is declared 'hip', there will inevitably be signs of resistance.  While Berlin is now by no means unaccustomed to the influx of tourists - even spuring on the proponents of alternative lifestyle with its raving party scene and underground artistic culture, the city is experiencing growing pains.

A city like Berlin is in transition and can only take so much international fever before it succumbs to the universal urban normality of any other large city.

Many other cities in the world just do not have the varied modern history of Berlin. Today it tries to find itself in its modern clothes.   As it 'grows up', those that come to it from the 'grown-up' cities yearn to find their 'childhood', their 'freedom'- to unshackle themselves to some extent from the chains of the 'normal' of so many other cities.

Berlin is comparable to the London of the 60's before gentrification took over, before rent became a daily gauntlet and the stress of modern life set in.  

The question today is whether Berlin, as this crucible for talent, collaboration and understanding will be able to withstand the push and pull of what people have come to expect from a modern standard city - that its history in some way can in the most paradoxical sense, make it remain a city indescribable with words.  

When something is not standardised, it has a hard time finding a label.

For those that do hop onto the Berlin bandwagon, will they come to Berlin and be part of the common adventure and put their stone to the edifice? Or will they leave Berlin, take what they want in the process, leaving  party leftovers and higher rents behind?

Berlin is excitement incarnate.  The young and old take from Berlin what they really put in.  

Hidden behind the next neat creations that Generation Facebook will come to consume, will be the cheekiness of a city that no one can define.