Moving to Berlin
- Prenzlauer Berg, the breeder capital of the known universe, was a complete
accident. For someone who is completely
anti-reproduction (I mean c’mon—look at all the global overpopulation, shitty
governments and lack of food and work for the existing people), being
surrounded by the squeals and squalls of infants all day long is some sort of
existential hell on a Sartrean scale.
Foreigners in Germany
don’t have a lot of options as to where to live--unless they are the typical yuppie manager
transplants working for an uberconglomerate company (or trust fund hipster
douchebags). Most of us just take our chances with the real estate riff raff; most
of the time we are lucky to take whatever we can get. I have been told both implicitly and overtly
that I was not welcome as a foreigner: “Too much hassle, paperwork, credit
risk, yada yada sieg heil yada.” It could be worse: I could live in one of the cheap shitholes
passing themselves off as the New Artist and Hipster Hoods; neighborhoods with
names rhyming with Schmeukoelln or Schmedding.
So we took a flat in ubergentrified Prenzlauer Berg, where
prams push us off the sidewalk and into traffic (with sneers). In warm weather
we open windows for air; ahhh, the fresh smell of shitty diapers and
screeching newborns. We’re so lucky to be part of the swirling cosmic cacophony
of creation. In P’berg they shit out new
babies every month and leave them by the open windows to screech their little
lungs out. Just when one baby stops crying,
another scheissmaschine in another fenster takes its place. Rarely are they ever synchronized.
Rather than complain (too late?), I decided to do a bit of
research. Apparently, German parents are
privy to die neue Schule of child psychology, which simply states: ‘Let them cry. Do not give in to the child’s every whine and
whim. Leave them alone for hours and
they will be better citizens for it.’ I
believe the child care professional they follow is Dr. Josef Mengele. He too chose to ‘test’ an infant’s resolve,
its alleged need for parental attention, by leaving it alone for days at a
time. His research proved that, left
alone long enough, an infant would stop crying altogether. He was a groundbreaker, that bastard.
It seems pretty obvious that Berliners are being paid to
breed. I can’t figure it out
otherwise. I personally don’t see using
my down time and underemployment as an opportunity to bring a screeching little
mini me into this fucked up world. But
Berliners do. They get paid to breed, and
no number of children seems to be too much for the system. Sounds like a government think tank at
work: solve the massive Berlin
unemployment problem by PAYING PEOPLE TO BRING MORE FUCKING UNEMPLOYED PEOPLE
into the picture. I hate U.S.
government policies, but Jayzus, Europe seems to be
willing to throw the baby out with the bathwater when it comes to social and
fiscal policies.
‘But db,’ you might ask, ‘what makes you think that these
P’berg parents are merely white trash breeders out for a quick government baby
buck every nine months? What if they are
middle-to-upper class working parents with single moms on maternity leave?’ Glad you asked. Well, the simple answer is: the middle class is too tired and worn out to breed; upper class yuppies don’t breed anything but more material
possessions. The parents are both too
career driven to think of having children and too stressed out after their
stupid, meaningless jobs to procreate.
Procreation takes time. It’s a
full time job. You’ve got to try every Kama Sutra position from morning til night to guarantee progeny payload every nine
months.
And who has that much time on their hands but the
unemployed?
