Germans and Jaywalking: An American's Perspective on the Berlin Tech Scene
davidlitwak.com
davidlitwak.com
The jaywalking analogy is stretched. Like, the source of it is partly true, but it's a pretty boring social convention. There are enough places where Berliners proudly flaunt the law that make Californians seem like straight-laced prudes.
However, what the argument gets right is that the issue is more cultural than structural. There are a lot of things that come together to make German startup-culture somewhat tamer than the US variety, among them less of a drive for polarized go-big-or-go-home attitude, the historical strength of the German Mittelstand (medium sized companies) and less tolerance for risk.
Also, the thing on data and Google Maps seems off. I'm not sure why Google Maps has only recently started to integrate Berlin's subway data, but there are excellent apps for Android [1] and iOS [2] that accomplish the same (and are not published by the local transit authority, and I can't imagine that solo app authors have more clout to get at the data than Google). It seemed a bit lame to assume that since Google Maps doesn't have the data that it must be the city's fault.
[1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=de.schildbach....
[2] https://itunes.apple.com/de/app/berlin-brb/id409357982?mt=8
Many people here work at music technology firms, and those lead the world. Ableton and Native Instruments employee 400 programmers total. Emagic was from Hamburg. Soundcloud of course. Somehow these are never mentioned in articles about Berlin.
There's a lot of activism. wiki leaks has or had many core people here. We protest and riot without permission. The squats are slowly being evicted one by one.
And yes, we jaywalk. Maybe not up in prenzlauer.
But my favorite story comes from a friend, an American who lived in Germany in the 90s. To paraphrase:
A firetruck is in front of an apartment building where, evidently, there had been a small fire. The scene is basically calm now, the situation dealt with, and several of the firemen are waiting to climb back into the truck and leave. But a firehose still runs from the truck, across a bike lane, over the sidewalk and into the building.
As my friend walks by, she hears crazy, incessant ringing. Turns out it's a man, on a bike, irate that the bike lane is blocked, demanding that his path be cleared.
What gets me about that story isn't that the man is batty, not at all. In fact it reminds me of lots of similar experiences I had in Germany where someone's iron-clad, inflexible attachment to rules and order created a totally absurd situation.
Actually I don't care about traffic lights all that much while walking/on a bike. Except, you know, if kids are around. The attitude I see here is that you really don't stop 'for the sake of it', but (and isn't this, if we want to talk stereotypes, kind of american) you .. think of the childen.
In all seriousness: You _will_ get nasty looks/comments if you're ignoring a red light while small kids are watching and the scenario you described sounds perfectly fine (and my moral compass says that you did something baaad too).
Here are some reactions: Jaywalking - I definitely do that and in Berlin of all cities, I saw folks jaywalking all the time. But yes - generally, there is more discipline to wait for the green light, like in Japan, Korea or China.
"multimillion dollar round was not given in one big check". This is what I heard is common practice in the valley as well. When a company raises 10 million, my understanding was never that the VC just transfers 10M cash to their account but that this investment would be rolled out. We should definitely review/discuss this.
Also, I agree with the appreciation with something fitting into a puzzle. That probably stems from system thinking, growing up in a European community where Germany is only a part in the whole of the continent and its political and economical bodies.
Who owns data... mhhh. I think that depends on the industry. Oeffi (http://oeffi.schildbach.de/) for example leverages the public transport schedules of public local agencies as well as Deutsche Bahn. Pretty awesome!
On the other hand, data can be very proprietary in the States too. Take for example movie showtimes. There is NO public, free API for that you could build apps on. But yes, overall, you might be right.
In in case you want to see other impressions, US-Americans have in Germany, I totally recommend this blog: http://www.nothingforungood.com (seems it got hacked but hopefully will be up again ;-).
In other words, the more people respect "zebra crossings", the less drivers have to worry about driving 15 bloody mph in some residential area cause the folks there see no problem in just jumping across the street.
What the German example shows us is that: if we all abide by the rules -- with no exceptions -- we can all have nice things.
(like driving your Porsche @150mph on the freeway cause we are actually adults)
Some might call that an environment for progress and innovation :)
regardless, it's an example that I saw and thought represented the general mindset, and reflected what I saw and heard from Germans themselves about the state of the startup ecosystem.
Of course jaywalking does happen (at least here in Frankfurt, and I'd guess it's the same for Berlin), but it's discouraged (Think of the Children[tm] [1]), and personally I see no harm in waiting the additional minute if I'm not in a hurry.
[1] http://www.muenchen.de/rathaus/Stadtverwaltung/Kreisverwaltu...
I know Germany has very strict driving laws. I think you can't use your horn for no good reason, can't give other drivers the finger, etc, or you'll be fined. And I think fines are proportional to the value of the car.
I am not sure how much of this strict and high fine system extends to walking on the street rather than driving. But I suspect this type of system instills respect for the law.
And Germans are rumored to be among the best drivers in Europe.
In contrast Belgians, and most Southern Europeans are rumored to be bad drivers. Usually this is then blamed on culture. However, I think it's simply laws and regulations.
The country I am from does not set fines based on the value of the car, does not fine "trivial" things like honking without reason, and actually the system to collect ticket fines is so broken that most of the time you don't have to bother. Shockingly we are known as bad drivers.
And crossing a street when there's no light and no zebra crossing is not jaywalking - that's just crossing the street, and it's the legal way to do it as typically there is no light or a crossing around. And of course many people jaywalk all the time. I don't even but the think of the children argument -- if a kid is responsible enough to walk around in public traffic, they ought to be responsible enough to judge whether crossing a red light is safe, otherwise how would they deal with cases where there is no light? But I might be kidding myself there, and I usually don't jaywalk when there's kids around out of politeness if nothing else.
For the typical pedestrian commute through Berlin you don't even have to cross a significant number of lights, if any at all, when traveling by means of U&S-Bahn and know which side of the station you have to exit on.
> The <nationality> like <stereotype>.
As if you can analyze a whole nation by seeing them jaywalk (or not)... pfft.
I see people doing it constantly, and no one gives a fuck. Not as much as in New York, but it's hardly some profound cultural divide.
But there are differences in culture, so I guess if referring to the "Germans" as a whole offends you there is nothing I can do.
Three weeks looking around and always telling yourself "HA, anotherone NOT jaywalking!" is hardly substance.
It definitely makes a difference where in Berlin you stay. Jaywalking is highly localized and time depended. (The hilarious construction site crossing at Unter den Linden, which many are forced to walk for the lack of an operating U-Bahn is not the norm.)
The red light phases here are actually manageable to wait through, no comparison to feeling the you-shouldn't-even-think-about-walking-here attitude pedestrian traffic regulation radiates in most of the US.
The real equivalent to jaywalking is crossing the red lights by bike, if you opt to going by foot you're not in a hurry in the first place. And yes there are quite a lot of bikers out there, even in the current perpetual winter.
That said Hamburg's comparably long pedestrian red-light phases seem to be way more nerve-wracking to the average Berlin trained pedestrian than I ever imagined.
> Standing at a street corner I was shocked that no one jaywalked. There wasn’t a car in sight, yet Germans young and old stood there obediently, waiting for the green walk signal.
I am from Berlin and I jaywalk all the time :) I think people who were actually raised in Berlin are very likely to jaywalk. Looking as to how you visited ITB I suppose many people you've seen were not originally from Berlin (also many startup founders are not originally from Berlin but from all over Germany)
/nitpick
But yes, it's anecdotal evidence, observed continuously over 3 weeks. And it's an impression, that's all, never claimed to have done exhaustive research :) Like I mentioned in other comments, I obviously realize there are plenty of people who probably jaywalk, in a city of millions that much is certain. But I thought that particular observation reflected a lot of what I had heard from Germans themselves.
In the UK at least this rule is sometimes commented upon as a notable characteristic of America. You can cross where and when you please in the UK, I think, and indeed everywhere I've been to in Europe the same rules appear to hold. (UK English has no native term for jaywalking. You just cross the road without using a designated pedestrian crossing.)
The usual disclaimers about generalising from large diverse groups apply.
Yes, my family was German. And she'd lived in Los Angeles for decades.
I also think that this mindset is a bad thing and has larger ramifications in a world that appears to be changing at an ever increasing pace than most people realise yet. Germany as an economy is highly dependent on the ability to export innovative premium products due to the relatively high costs of labour. Mechanical and chemical engineering are two of the main contributing sectors when it comes to exports. The extent of this becomes obvious if you take a look at the 30 stocks in our DAX index most of which stem from these sectors. What is also obvious is the distinct lack of IT companies. There is SAP and then there's Infineon, that's it and those are neither new nor particularly innovative companies. SAP is a 40 year old enterprise software company. I've never used their products but everybody I know who has, hates it. They may be very well on the forefront of companies ripe for disruption in the coming years. Infineon is a chipmaker that was spun off by Siemens (yes, THAT 165 year old Siemens). They have been struggling for years and had to spin off some of their departments which subsequently filed for bankruptcy to save themselves. There is really no company in Germany that would compare to the likes of Apple, Google or Microsoft in size or innovative potential and this looks like a major deficit in our economic structure to me. What I find notable is that nobody in Germany seems to be noticiing or even talking about this. Given that in the future IT will probably become even more important, this may very well come back to bite us.