Due to popular demand, our AI workshops are back. We redesigned them, so you will now build two products that will help you really UNDERSTAND how AI works. This means avoiding vendor lock-in for you in the future. Very limited spots. Ask for L&D budget at work. Saturday, 10th and Tuesday, 13th of October.

Thanks to the AI, people like me, who show a bit of interest in local politics and maybe run newsletters, can now browse all the deliberations and decisions made and not made on the district level: here is Rateo. Very interesting.

As we correctly foresaw two weeks ago, the Olympic bid is dead. Berlin withdrew its candidacy after finishing last in the evaluation (74.6 points vs 87 for Munich and 85 for Cologne-Rhine-Ruhr). No strong support and a potential referendum surely didn't help.

Isn't it bizarre that in this city we are arguing about parking spaces? I mean. The traffic administration postponed the Kantstraße rebuild from 1 October to 7 October at the earliest. The plan: cars park on the right lane, with a bus lane open to cyclists next to it instead of the protected bike lane (apparently also because of fire engine ladders). And this will go back and forth and back and forth, while the real problem is probably that the city is totally broke and that people fall for basic propaganda. Wait... maybe we are supposed to argue about this instead of...? Rant over.

Fresh Berlin apartment data by Guthmann: resale flats average €5,230/sqm (-1% YoY), new builds €8,440/sqm (+3%). Mitte is the most expensive at €6,620/sqm (-6%), Spandau the cheapest at €3,380/sqm. Average asking rents are €18/sqm net cold for existing flats and €22/sqm for new builds.

Last week the world's most important rail fair, InnoTrans, happened at Messe Berlin. 175k visitors saw the Deutsche Bahn rebranding (also a way to spend your money, I guess) and several announcements: Flixtrain will run hourly trains between Berlin and Hamburg from 2027. Berlin start-up Nox will launch a night train between Hamburg and Munich in March 2027. And S-Bahn Berlin's occupancy display, which shows how full each carriage is, is now available at 14 stations, with all 50 Ring and Stadtbahn stations coming by the end of the year.

Rogacki, the legendary deli on Wilmersdorfer Straße (founded in 1928!), closed in 2025 after owner Dietmar Rogacki's death and insolvency. The brand is probably coming back in 2028, first with a crowdfunded cookbook of 64 original recipes.

The idea sounds great: from €100+ you fund solar panels in Africa, Asia and Latin America, and you get 5.5–6.5% interest annually. But a reader emailed me about Ecoligo, the Berlin crowdfunding platform behind it. Several of its issuers missed interest and repayments at the end of April and July, and Stiftung Warentest warned that investors in the subordinated loans have few rights. Ecoligo has now sent investors its first estimate of how much they can still expect back after restructuring; if everything goes well, the repayment will likely stretch over 10 to 20 years. Ouch.

A sign of the times to come? The town council of Heidenau in Saxony banned new Stolpersteine based on a decision by AfD and CDU (13 for, 6 against). Here is a map of Stolpersteine in Berlin. Each stone includes a biography.

Delivery Hero (Berlin, food delivery) is moving its tech platform Pandora from Berlin to Singapore, with 200 employees affected [more].

Planet Labs (San Francisco, satellites) is opening a satellite production site in Berlin, pitching itself as a dependable partner for European customers despite its US base.

Choco (Berlin, restaurant ordering) founder Daniel Khachab is handing the CEO job to former sales chief Dave Howgego [more, €].

Meta (California, social media) was found liable by the Frankfurt regional court for scam ads using Finanzfluss and founder Thomas Kehl's face. The ruling is not yet final.

Vonovia (Bochum, housing) and subsidiary Deutsche Wohnen shares fell to their lowest since 2023 after Linke's Berlin election win. The two own around 138k flats in and around Berlin.

ImmoScout24 (Berlin, property portal) is threatening legal action against Berlin's Mietenscan, the Senate tool that automatically checks online rental listings against the Mietspiegel. ImmoScout24 wants the scanning to stop and its name removed from the Senate's letters to landlords, arguing the tool has no legal basis and works with incomplete data [more, €].

Related and probably much more to come: union-affiliated Hans-Böckler-Stiftung published a study that socialising private flats can be economically viable [more]. Please read for more context.

It ain't easy to be a student: 3.3k applicants on the waiting list: too few student dorm places before the new university semester in Berlin [more, €].

Replan (construction tech) won €25k in the City Challenge Berlin for a platform that coordinates Berlin's construction sites [more]. I'm guessing that the idea is to help/replace the voluntary position held by Jörg Seegers, Berlin's construction site commissioner, whom I wrote about in July.

VBB plans to raise ticket prices from 2027: the Berlin AB single ticket stays at €4. Prices go up 3.72% on average, with the Berlin AB four-trip ticket rising from €12.40 to €13.20 and the monthly Umweltkarte subscription from €81.30 to €84.30 [more].

easyJet (UK, airline) is expanding its flights at BER next summer to Ljubljana and Rimini [more].

Tagesspiegel: these are Berlin's youngest MPs after the election [more]. (spoiler: 22, Asya Senyüz from Linke; 23, Richard Gamp CDU; 26, Klara Schedlich from the Greens, second mandate)

Tagesspiegel: AfD man Julian Adrat, newly elected to the Abgeordnetenhaus, has previous convictions for assault and insult [more].

Kununu: Ines Schwerdtner (Linke co-leader) earns €11.8k a month, but doesn't keep all of it [more].

Tagesspiegel: a terribly nice big family, or why the Remmo clan seeks closeness to politicians [more, €].

rbb24: cameras at Kottbusser Tor are being installed, with a test run in four weeks [more].

rbb24: Berliners are marrying less than they have in decades [more].

It’s a long video, and I still don't fully subscribe to his humour, but Barry Ferns explains the parasocial relationships extremely well in this video: Diary Of A CEO Responded To My Takedown. I Wasn't Ready For This. YOU and I most likely also have a parasocial relationship. That's why we need to meet in person more, and I was delighted to see how many of us agree on the net negative effects of social media. See the poll results below.

There is a room in Stockholm that the economy can't see. We had plenty of such rooms in Slovenia, and I still remember that in the early 90s community mattered much more than today, more or less a relic of socialism. Could rooms that the economy can't see be part of a solution?

I personally adore the sound of Brazilian Portuguese, but it didn't win as the most attractive-sounding language (a paper from 2023). The winner was Tok Pisin, an official language of Papua New Guinea and here is how it sounds:

Reddit: Berlin between 1180 and 1979. Imagine you bought the land in 1200! (jk)

Reddit: the best gyros in Berlin with a little piece of trivia that in gyros pita was the Döner of the 80s. Strong consensus for the kiosk on Bergmannstr.

Instagram: Protein Tatort to practice your German. Did you hit your macros today?

Wow! Last week I asked you if social media is a net positive for society: 46% said more harm than good, 37% corrosive and getting worse, 10% an even split, 6% more good than harm, and 1% clearly positive.