A subscriber shared a pretty terrible story with me about the hiring process at one of Berlin’s upcoming fintechs. This made me wonder: who else felt that they were only being used to work for free on their case study assignments? Drop a comment.

I will be joining Andrew from 20Percent and Jonny from The Berliner on a panel discussion about English media in Berlin on the 8th of April. The event is organised by WahlheYmat, which is pushing for more democratic participation by immigrants in this city-state. Register here.

No more BVG strikes this year! BVG and Verdi agreed on a 48-month collective agreement. Around 16k employees get the annual choice between an extra vacation day or up to 1.35% more pay (2027–2029), plus a guaranteed 11-hour minimum rest between shifts. There's also a one-time €150 payment for 2026 and vacation pay rising by €100 to €600 starting 2027. Related, Lufthansa also reached an agreement with its ground staff. Pilots and cabin crew are still outstanding.

It is a map snapshot only, but another proof that building more roads just increases the traffic. Since the opening of the next segment of the Elsenbrücke, the situation hasn’t improved at all (reddit post).

If you would like to see if the mattress lying in your street has already been reported to the Ordnungsamt for removal, you can check all the current reports online. The number of reports is staggering, and it makes me wonder how many citizens amongst us nurture reporting as a hobby. There’s a mobile app I’ve used before.

Related, fines increased in November and now range from €100-350 for dog sh*t, €250-3000 for cigarette butts, and €300-1500 for a mattress. But, as always, the enforcement is problematic.

Imagine what a cool use case for policy analysis fencing Görli would be. Instead, we spent €193k on private security, budgeted €775k/year for more, and burned 19.5k police hours guarding the construction of a fence around Görlitzer Park to fight drug crime. 79% of crimes in the area have already happened outside the park! 60% of drug offences obviously occurred inside, but violence and robbery were overwhelmingly outside. Critics say the fence is now just pushing the drug trade into surrounding neighbourhoods. [Tagesspiegel, €] The next big test will be 1st of May.

Expo 2035 in Berlin? City-wide "Ja zur Expo" ad campaign started last week to pressure Berlin's government into bidding. But Mayor Wegner opposes it alongside the Olympic bid and has rejected the preferred Tegel site. A final decision is due by year-end. But since we have elections, everything is possible.

I really liked this map of the Great Aldi Divide. It’s worth mentioning that both Aldi’s are successful companies in the US as well (Aldi and Trader Joe’s by Aldi Nord). Similar to Lidl. The only reason I can publish this map in 2026 is that in 1960, the Albrecht brothers had a disagreement on whether to sell cigarettes in their stores or not. (The story was disputed, but it’s still fun.) Germans can do discounters!

Stats: A strong demand despite price increases! Deutschlandticket sold 170.8 million tickets in 2025, up from 156.2 million in 2024 and 64.3 million in 2023. Deutsche Bahn executives blame it for ICE passenger losses, but critics argue it’s being used to deflect from internal failures.

New night train between Berlin and Paris launched [read]. Related, from July onwards, there is a daily low-cost train from Berlin to Amsterdam. [read]

Berlin-Gesundbrunnen: Activists protest on Rheinmetall factory building [read]

Bundesrat clears the way for gas station price rule: In the future, gas stations will only be allowed to raise prices once a day at 12 noon. [read]

Lockable boxes at Warschauer Straße and Moritzplatz: Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg gets 610 new bicycle parking spaces [read]

Berlin-Lichtenberg: Trash hotspot on one of Berlin's longest streets: 216 reports per year. Unknown persons repeatedly leave bulky waste at the same spots [read, €]

The pleasures of poor product design reminded me of the fantastic book by Don Norman, The Design of Everyday Things*, which should be a bible for every designer. Unfortunately, it seems like many don’t know it, because I run into shit design all the time. Nothing worse than not knowing which door leads to the male toilet or how to use a coffee machine, because a designer thought something looked cool.

Written from a female perspective, but what if your depth is the reason you are single?

Bad news: Enpal (Berlin, solar) is shutting down its customer service department for photovoltaic systems and laying off approximately 100 employees. Solaris (Berlin, fintech) is cutting one in five positions and pivoting to become a technical service provider for other banks.

Outside interests #1: OpenAI shut down its video generation AI tool Sora. If you use GitHub, you can opt out of them using your repos for training here. Huge: Meta ordered to pay $375m after being found liable in child exploitation case. [more]

Outside interests #2: A lot of ARR, but also a lot of fraud in the compliance space by Delve (San Francisco), once a rising YC star company. Another fake it ‘till you make it gone wrong? [more]

Delivery Hero (Berlin) sold Foodpanda Taiwan to Grab for $600M in cash, with proceeds going toward debt reduction. They also reported their FY 2025 numbers. [more] Related, one of their bigger shareholders, Prosus, is considering a sale of 10% to Aspex, which recently called for changes in the CEO seat.

Blacklane (Berlin) is reportedly close to being acquired by Uber. The deal could become one of the largest German startup exits in recent years. [more]

Isar Aerospace (Munich, aerospace) aborted its second launch attempt due to an unauthorised vessel entering the danger zone at sea. The delay caused fuel overheating. [more]

Flaconi (e-commerce), a subsidiary of ProSiebenSat.1, has halted sale plans and is considering expansion in the US. [more] They grew 27% to €651M in revenue in 2025, up from €513M in 2024 and more than triple its pre-pandemic 2019 levels. [more]

Verena Pausder from Startup Verband proposed more flexible termination rules for high-earning employees at German startups. Relaxed rules could be tied to the first years after the company's founding. [more]

Helsing (Munich, defence) is investing in a new 'resilience factory' near Munich to produce AI-powered drones. [more]

Volkswagen is pivoting its Osnabrück plant into a defence facility with Rafael Advanced Defence Systems to produce missile defence components for Europe. This will save 2,300 jobs. [more]

Deutsche Bahn transported a record 1.93B passengers in 2025 (up 3.4%) and posted €297 million operating profit (EBIT) with a net loss of €2.3B (+€0.5B year-over-year). [more]

Revolut (UK, fintech) posted €5.3B revenue (up 46%) and €1.5B net income in 2025. They want to grow even more in Germany (+800k to 3M). [more]

Google's AI Overviews feature is causing German websites to lose an estimated 265 million clicks per month, according to SEO tool Sistrix. [more]

Reddit: People discuss the most underrated neighbourhoods in Berlin. Moabit, Tegel, Tierpark and more.

Reddit: Just look at the skill and the flow of a chef at a very busy restaurant. Impressive, especially when I compare myself. As it often is the case: good preparation is key.

elsewhere: why is Hauptbahnhof shortened to HbF and not HbH? An explainer by Deutsche Bahn. It's because of Bahnhof, Bf. But it was almost Centralbahnhof. Now you know.