Small change

In Berlin, there are lots of beggars, homeless people, crazies – all those people that belong to that category which doesn’t really have a politically correct title. And even if it did have a title it wouldn’t fit in Berlin, such is the nature of this genre-bending city that evades simple classification on a day-to-day basis.

Berliners-from-birth say that the ones in their Kieze are as familiar as the Post or the doner shop. And I’ve started to notice the reappearance of some in my life. There’s the crazy tree-bike man. Every Sunday he attaches half an elm to his bicycle and pedals it through the heart of town to Mauerpark. Here, he takes to the stage to dance along with the open-air karaoke, play games of hide-and-seek with thoroughly confused children, or simply ride his bike into the petrified crowd.

Then there’s the guy who boards my 7.30am train with me, staggers through to the middle of the carriage and strums his heart out on a battered guitar missing half its strings. It’s clear that he’s never played guitar before, doesn’t know any songs or lyrics, and has absolutely no sense of timing – it seems like it’s better than just flat out asking for money.

And the woman I saw today on Hermannplatz: wearing a sari, gold shoes and jewellery, wandering towards me with her arm outstretched, hand cupped - and a doll in her sling with a babybottle stickytaped to its plastic hands, masquerading as a real-life dependent.

I like noticing how the others – the ones with the homes and the jobs and the required medication – interact. Drinkers of all stripes leave their bottles on the sides of the rubbish bins, rather than putting them inside, so the people who collect them for the recycling deposit (pfand) don’t need to go picking through the scraps. There are commuters who, at the end of their journey, hand their not-quite-expired ticket to a man standing near the u-bahn entrance so he can onsell it for half the price and pocket the profit. Small, understated acts of consideration that make a big difference.