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Comment by arethuza | Hacker News Reader

"Berlin is the _least_ German Germany city, by far."

Isn't that a common complaint in the lot of countries - people complain about London in the UK in a very similar fashion?

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It's a very common complaint in countries where one city is disproportionately dominant (London for the UK or Dublin for Ireland, say). It's arguably a bit more surprising for Berlin, because Berlin isn't so disproportionately huge (Berlin's metro area is 6 million out of 80 million, versus London's 15 million out of 70 million or Dublin's 2 million out of 5 million), and because Germany has other comparably sized cities (Hamburg's metro area population is about 5 million). You'd expect it to be a bit less of its own place just on that basis.

Nah, there is a very strong reason to support the "Berlin ist eine Insel" saying. Are you forgetting the fact that Berlin was literally isolated from the rest of Western Germany and controlled by 4 other countries until some decades ago?

Let's not forget East Berlin with its 1.2 million population and as the capital of the DDR that was very nicely integrated into the DDR. While both parts of Berlin were obviously isolated from the BDR, West Berlin was supervised by 3 countries. Just to avoid any misunderstanding by people who were not able to visit both parts during those historical times.

IDK if it's a complaint about London per se, but it's definitely not typical of much of England.

And yes, you can say the same about e.g. Amsterdam vs. The Netherlands. And others.

But also, neither of them were literally isolated like West Berlin.

Yeah, "Moscow ain't Russia" is an idiom.

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