Guten Morgen,
since we don’t publish on public holidays, you are reading this on Tuesday. My Easter break was productive: I started working on Salary trends and am happy to report that the data has good quality and that we, after a quick look, collected over 4,500 responses. 🤯 I will try to get the report out as soon as possible.
In last Monday's newsletter, my choice of words landed in a way I didn't intend, and I am sorry. The sentence in the "Worth your time” section was: “Written from a female perspective, but what if your depth is the reason you are single?"
I want to clarify that the "but" was meant to specifically invite men to read it too, and not to diminish the female perspective in the excellent article, which is why I also shared it. I always try to actively support female perspectives (and other voices who don’t get the room they deserve) because I am aware of my easy position as a white man.
Language matters, and I appreciate those of you who pointed this out. Sorry.
🗞 Berlin & Germany
I completely revamped the Handpicked website. It’s now much faster, cleaner and will be easier to further improve in the future. If you notice anything strange, do let me know. Big changes are coming to the job board, but it will take some more time.
We hosted our 3rd Insider’s Dinner Club, and we are planning more in the coming months. There is a form on the page you can use if you’d like to join the list when we open it again. Until then, I warmly recommend checking out Humble Pie for some great hot chicken and, as Chris calls it, southern comfort food.
It felt like most of the world media picked up the story that all men aged 18–45 must get a permit from the Bundeswehr before leaving Germany for more than three months. In reality, there are no penalties for ignoring the rule, and the military itself is obliged to grant the permit as long as no specific service is expected. Under the current voluntary-only system, it means always. The same regulation already existed during the Cold War, with no practical relevance. So, no new invention, but a nice topic for articles and social media.
Thaipark is back since last weekend. Each Saturday and Sunday from 11 AM-8 PM. At another temporary location, the southern end of Württtembergische Straße in Wilmersdorf. Here is the pin.
If you would prefer to barbecue yourself, here is a list of 7 parks where it’s allowed. If you’d just like to go for a nice walk, here is a list of 11 spring strolls from Visit Berlin.
Mietbremse is clearly not working. The rents for non-furnished in mid-to-good areas are, on average, up almost 70% since 2016. The most expensive is Munich with €21.29/m2.
Speaking of averages, for income we should be using the median, and the median gross salary in Germany in 2025 was €54,066, which means half of us earned less and half earned more. The tech scene of Berlin is much higher, so definitely not arm, but still sexy.
BVG invited journalists to demonstrate how the emergency brake works in its trams. Passengers can pull it in genuine emergencies, for example, when someone needs medical help, is being attacked, or something is burning. It immediately stops the tram, activates a camera, and opens a voice line to the driver. Misuse is a criminal offence, though drivers often handle it with a warning. Btw, if you pull it in the U-bahn, the train will continue until the next station.
AI-related public service announcement: I’ve read Ed Zitron before, and he will either look like a complete idiot or a genius. But if only half of what he says in this long essay is true, my advice is to burn as many tokens as you can in the coming weeks, because these prices are not sustainable.
Stats: Speed camera violations from stationary blitzers doubled in 2025 to nearly 372,800 cases, up from about 186,800 the year before. The busiest single spot was Heidestraße in Mitte with 43,108 cases, followed by the A111 in Reinickendorf (42,350) and the Britz tunnel in Neukölln (36,495). Of the 372,800 detections, 351,340 led to formal fine proceedings.
Berlin-related headlines
Sunday library openings – what happened to the campaign promise? [more]
High-rise with 1,000 apartments planned at Warschauer Brücke [more]
Escalator chaos at Hauptbahnhof resolved [more]
Meta blocks two Instagram accounts of sex-positive clubs [more]
More than half of Germany's electricity from renewable sources [more]
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🌿 Worth your time
I loved this article from Caoilainn Lander (she was also featured in the Coffee Talk last Thursday) about why we simply can and should delete people from our social media. I also found the expression “hate-follow” hilarious.
This might be related, but we have finite attention, and it does make a lot of sense to decide whose cup we are filling. It mostly happens to me on Reddit when I get harassed by a professional Redditor (you will usually recognise them by thousands of opinionated comments). Check on what gets “dehydrated” and if it deserves it.
AI broke one thing that we cannot fix: spam is getting excellent. Worth watching. I love his style.
📌 Briefly
Bad news: Quandoo (Berlin, restaurant booking) will cease operations by the end of the year. [more]
Outside interests #1: OpenAI (San Francisco, AI) closed a $122B funding round led by Amazon, Nvidia, and SoftBank. Now valued at $852B ahead of its expected IPO. They also acquired TBPN, a popular live tech podcast. [more] Related, Mistral (Paris, AI) raised $830M in debt financing to buy 13,800 Nvidia GPUs and build its own data center near Paris. [more]
Outside interests #2: Whoop (Boston, fitness wearables) raised $575M at ~$10B valuation, nearly 3x its 2021 number. [more]
Outside interests #3: Apple turned 50 and the story (and stock market chart) is pretty impressive. [more]
Congrats! Blacklane (Berlin, ride service) sold to Uber for a reported ~€500M. It's one of the largest German startup exits in recent years. Blacklane will be folded into Uber's 'Uber Elite' offering, with the deal expected to close by end of 2026. [more]
TikTok Shop (Germany, e-commerce) crossed €700M revenue in its first year in Germany. It's already bigger than Douglas or Saturn online. One in seven online shoppers has bought something through the platform. [more]
Germany's 2026 growth forecast slashed from 1.3% to 0.6% by the big research institutes, with inflation now expected at 2.8%, both driven by the Iran conflict. [more]
Related, air travel is getting very expensive. Lufthansa is considering grounding up to 40 aircraft as fuel costs spike due to the Iran crisis.
Mercedes (Stuttgart, automotive) lost (?) 5,500 employees through its voluntary severance program.
Penguin Random House (Bertelsmann) sued OpenAI at the Munich Regional Court for copyright infringement over training data. [more]
Jonas Andrulis, founder of Aleph Alpha, launched a new AI startup called CNTR focused on industrial workflows. Former Apple researcher Alejandro Molina joins as CTO. [more]
Tesla deliveries up six per cent in Europe YoY. [more]
This week's Coffee Talk will likely be postponed
But you can still expect some good career insight and hopefully a hint of the new job board. Plus events & what the community is up to, every Thursday. Free.
😅 Meanwhile
imagine what will be possible in 46 years
r/ich-iel
Weekly social and outside interests
Reddit: German students’ style got worldwide fame, and some comments were really funny. Humana core!
Reddit: How to donate or sell old books? Some good tips in the thread.
elsewhere: I was fascinated by this nighttime photo of the Earth. It’s fascinating to see the atmosphere and the southern and northern lights. It must be fun times in the flat-earth community.
Don’t miss
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