“70 percent of customers are crazy, 30 percent normal”
You don’t even have to prove that Berlin (felt) has overcome the pandemic. In the evening the tables in front of the restaurants are full again. There are so many people on the Admiral Bridge that one fears for the balance of the bridge. The Weserstraße looks like a parade of romantic high school graduates who want nothing more than to fall kissing in a Neukölln corner pub, which preferably also has an article in the name (“Das Ä”, “Das Tier” or “Das Gift”).
Tourists post on Facebook how free they feel in Berghain. Hostel visitors flock to the clubs on the Spree. And on Wrangelstrasse you hear Spanish again, as if you were in an alley in Madrid and not in West Berlin. Everything back to normal in the capital.
But what does normal mean in Berlin? Normal here is when the pulse gets out of control. Especially at night. Because nightlife is the stage for Berlin’s madness, where the true identity of this city and its delicate nerves can reveal itself. You only have to walk through Neukölln, Kreuzberg, Friedrichshain on Fridays after 10 p.m. to understand it.
A new perspective on the dirty Berlin look
But there is another way. You can also get in an Uber car and have the madness told to you, as happened to me the other day in Neukölln, after 11 p.m. Life was raging outside. A German-Turk picked me up and we quickly struck up a conversation. He introduced himself as a native Berliner who grew up in Gropiusstadt (“Not nice! Still a criminal!”). What made me like him was his arrogant and know-it-all attitude towards students. I got the impression that he wanted to make fun of me as well.
“I can’t understand how these students can go into these shabby bars in Neukölln, sit at these shabby tables, drink this cheap beer and then pay a lot of money for it. Fuck it!” I looked out the window, peered through the shutters at the pubs, and wondered if maybe the Uber driver was right. In any case, it was a new perspective on the sleazy look in Berlin.
“It’s just really annoying”
Tongues were loosened, we had about 15 minutes of driving ahead of us and the Uber driver was in a chatty mood. That was rather unusual, he said, because he often finds his talkative passengers annoying and it’s as if he can’t speak German at all. It was already hinting that he had a complicated relationship with his uber-driver job.
I wanted to know: “Why are you doing this job?” The driver said that he was a butcher but now unemployed “because of the Ukraine crisis” because Ukrainian meat was no longer delivered to his plant and the company had to file for bankruptcy ( or so). And how does he like his new job as an Uber driver? He said succinctly, “Not good.”
What followed caused me genuine pity. The driver couldn’t stop telling anecdotes. There were insights into Berlin nightlife from the sidelines. “I only drive in the evenings and at night,” he said. “And that’s just the most terrifying time for any Uber driver in Berlin.” He took a deep breath. “Especially when you are in Neukölln or Kreuzberg. The customers are crazy, on drugs, drunk, want to stress or chat. It’s just really annoying.”
A lot of uber-customers are crazy
I got suspicious. Was the Uber driver job really that bad? “Yes, man,” said the tall man in the driver’s seat, nodding. “Only crazy people!” Now I wanted to know more about it, I leaned forward. “How many customers are normal and how many are crazy?” The driver answered very precisely, quickly without thinking: “70 percent are crazy, 30 percent are normal. And the worst are the ones who call an Uber on a Friday or Saturday night.”
The drunks? “Yes.” My driver gave a few examples to support his thesis. “I’ve been doing this job for a few weeks. And I can say: I’ve experienced the craziest things. A customer threw up out the window. Two party tourists from England licked my right ear while driving. She doesn’t stop touching me.”
Another evening, a family man ordered an Uber. When my driver went to pick him up, the customer with five children stood there without child seats and insisted on a ride. When my driver said it was too dangerous and against Uber policy anyway, the other man freaked out and vowed to complain about my driver to Uber at corporate headquarters. “That sucks. Because the customer is always right with Uber. You get a warning quickly and hardly have an opportunity to justify yourself.”
I wouldn’t want to change my job
My Uber driver looks ahead, bitter and yet slightly amused. He spoke of drunks, of drunkards, of the crazy, of a milieu that hangs around Berlin in the evenings in order to forget their worries while drunk and then, when all the husks have fallen off, in a state of mental derangement, in the Uber, putting aside all the rules of civilization lay.
Sometimes the driver calls again before he picks people up to make sure that there aren’t six people standing in front of the pub wanting to be picked up, but a maximum of four. And what was the worst experience ever? My Uber driver didn’t have to think long. “Two people had sex in the back seat. And another man was so high on drugs he shit all over himself. That was my personal low point.” Oh yeah.
I felt sorry for my Uber driver. And yet I envied him a little for the adventures he experienced and the intimate view he got on the side stages of Berlin’s nightlife. But now I understood very well that the job is exhausting and should demand respect. So better than ever.
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