Berlin winter is hard on all of us, grey skies, grey facades, rain and that icy cold. We turn into thousands of grumpy cats grunting at each other in the subway. A deep depression slowly sets in, melancholy, self doubt: Why did we decide to stay in this city in the first place? At some point at the end of February after listening to that gloomy ‘Bon Iver’ record for the two-thousandth time we are actually that close to throwing in the towel. “That’s it! I quit! I am moving to Sevilla!”
But then, it happens: The sun and warm temperatures find their way back to Berlin. And its inhabitants react with some quirky behavior…
It’s this one day at the end of March. The weather forecast has predicted a sudden rise in temperatures for weeks but the whole city stays in disbelief. “Wait what? 24 Degrees? No way. How does that even feel like? Can’t be!” It’s that one day when you wake up, open your blends and the sun light just hits you in the face. You look at your phone and in a frenzy of happiness various friends in 20 group chats don’t seem to be able to articulate more than: “You Guys! This weather! This weather! Look at this weather!”
You step outside and it feels like the whole city is turned upside down. Gone are the grumpy cats, outside everybody oddly smiles at you like they’re on a sudden vitamin D high. The streets are overpopulated, Spätis prepare for panic buying, parks are in a state of emergency and the city is covered in smoke by thousands of barbecues. At once, you see all the things you haven’t seen in months: Sun glasses, shorts and all that naked skin. Kotti or Cote d’Azur? It doesn’t make a difference! The first warm sunlight hits the capital and Berliners seem to have a “Drop everything!” situation going on. They fall into a starfish pose or squeeze themselves onto tiny Biertischgarnituren just to close their eyes and happily apathetically direct their faces towards the sun.
Any tourist visiting Berlin in mid-July might even be a little bit confused by thousands of people in odd poses beaming into the sky. Everybody just seems to be like: “Yeah, I’m gonna stop right here, right now, drop to the floor and carpe that sunny diem!” In other metropoles warm weather might be considered a status quo but we are pretty damn aware of the transience of summer. We only have these three or four months time. So, we gotta make every second count and catch that sunlight. For this reason, Berlin summers have this amazing, energetic atmosphere.
