To wrap up th

e remains of last weeks fash­ion week, we headed to the annual Wed­ding Dress fash­ion show exhib­i­tion in Brunnen­straße. What looks like a rather white-bread event — I mean, it’s fash­ion week, every­one and everything is on dis­play right now, why bother with a dinky little flea mar­ket — is actu­ally a con­tinu­ing effort in the pro­cess of mak­ing Wed­ding more pop­u­lar and push some diversity into this for­got­ten district.

I’m still torn. When I moved to Ber­lin, I decided to live in Wed­ding. It was close to everything, it was cheap, and really I didn’t have much of a choice because I couldn’t find another flat. I wanted to live in the scenesters’ heav­ens of Kreuzberg and Friedrich­shain. In the end I got some­thing much bet­ter: I found a piece of Ber­lin that would’ve been hid­den from me if it weren’t for Wedding.

It’s dirty, it’s poor, it has noth­ing of the urban chique its coun­ter­parts Kreuzberg and Neuk­ölln have. Ser­i­ously, it feels empty and ugly but that’s actu­ally how most of Ber­lin feels like. I won­der if people have ever even crossed East Cent­ral and Mitte to dis­cover what else Ber­lin has to offer? I won­der: would I have ever crossed those invis­ible bor­ders if I hadn’t learned to love it? Would I have ever seen that Ber­lin is not only dirty and poor and hip but also tra­gic and sad and lov­ing and beau­ti­ful because it has so many dif­fer­ent more stories.

And what’s there to love, you might ask. Well here’s one: I love that it’s authen­tic. There’s no scene, there are only fam­il­ies and hard work­ing people, along with the real poor and the real fucked up junkies. Nobody is try­ing to pose. Nobody is tak­ing your pic­ture. You have all the free­dom you want here (you might get beaten up enjoy­ing your free­dom here though, so take care). Those who couldn’t help liv­ing here (like me) go to the other dis­tricts to act out their rock­star (or social­ite) lives. In Wed­ding, ‘mul­ti­cul­tural’ does not mean the best falafel or a new African per­cus­sion band; it means people from all over the world who barely speak your lan­guage and try their best to make a good liv­ing. Some fail­ing, some succeeding.

All those pos­it­ive things aside, Wed­ding has a shit hole image for a reason, and I appre­ci­ate every step towards a more invit­ing and friend­lier pos­ture. If it takes a flea mar­ket and a fash­ion show to achieve that, then hell, sign me up. A first step was taken with the art­ful usage of the Stattbad, and now slowly, clubs, bars and events are spread­ing. I like it, I hate it. I love Wed­ding. I’m scared of it, too, some­times. I think it’s got char­ac­ter. Do I want it to shine, do I want to show every­one how great it is? Yes. But do I want to share and risk hav­ing it changed? No.

See. I told you I was torn.