John Owen

‘How sad. So young, but already blind.’ A middle-aged woman glared at me as I crossed Kantstrasse with the pedestrian light still glowing red. The everyday rudeness of Germany’s capital can jar with visitors. In restaurants, requests for things like tap water are likely to be treated with extreme irritation, and no amount of charm will stop shopworkers looking personally offended if a customer is taking up too much of their time. Even longer-term residents regularly find themselves surprised by the directness which they encounter. Anyone who has ever lived here will have a ready clutch of anecdotes to illustrate this aspect of a place more often praised for its laidback lifestyle. One group of expats runs a Facebook ‘Support Group’ to share their experiences of particularly egregious examples of rudeness in parks, shops and train stations across the city. And this isn’t just anecdotal: in the latest Time Out Index survey, Berlin emerged as the world’s rudest city. Of all the Berliners we surveyed, 55 percent described their city as rude. Yet to write Berlin off as a rude city would be to misunderstand some of the rich culture that lies behind its gruffness. Berliners are proud of their Schnauze: literally ‘snout’, but better translated as ‘gobbiness’. The Berliner Schnauze is part of the city’s working-class dialect. Marked by a staccato rhythm, harsh sounds and often hilariously direct wit, it is shaped by a belief in common-sense wisdom and a hatred of the pretentious. Deve