Radio Spaetkauf Berlin

TV series Babylon Berlin is searching for 3000 extras, but bearded men need not apply. You must be over 1.86 meters tall and be prepared to get a 1920s haircut. Maisie is thrilled about the mass make-over of Berlin blokes. Sign up at Agentur Filmgesichter. The Berlin Wall is being rebuilt to create a totalitarian theme park in Mitte. The art project Dau will submit visitors to mild oppression and...

Our annual outdoor recording at the Mobile Kino Lakeside Film Festival at Klingemühle in Brandenburg. Now in its fifth year, the event many improvements - a new name, a new stage, more guests and more fun all round. Like playing card games while camping? Our guest Julia Weiss tells us what it's like to work for a card game company. Julia is the lead writer for Cards Against Humanity, as well as a...

Berlin's scorching summer is breaking records. Earlier this week the city experienced its hottest night ever, with a minimum of 25°C. The city's trees are suffering, and residents are being asked to go out and water them. U-Bahns are getting noisier, as there's no moisture to lubricate between the metal wheels and tracks. The drains are stinking, so the water authority is putting "drain deodorant"...

A Berlin man who has been in a coma for four months has been identified because someone recognized a photograph of his house keys. The 74-year was found unconscious in a Wilmersdorf park after apparently having an accident while jogging in March, carrying only his keys. A police operation to test all the locks in the area failed. Publishing a photo of his keys worked. It seems Berliners prefer to...

Are you paying too much rent? Probably: 70% of Berlin landlords are illegally overcharging, says lawyer Daniel Halmer of  WenigerMiete.de . He's offering a no-win no-fee service to fight your landlord for a rent reduction. He's helped people save up to €600 a month. Tricks landlords use include overstating apartment size by up to 30%. Everybody who has rented an apartment in the last three years c...

A video of black people being kicked out of KFC at Alexanderplatz raises question. Is it illegal to call police racist? Can police delete videos from your phone? We've got the answers. Support group Reachout says the incident was clearly racist. The police say they were following KFC's request. KFC is standing by their actions. Want to get fit while cleaning the city? Try plogging, a Swedish sport...

What will it take to get Berliners to pickup trash - the offer of a free beer, perhaps? The Big Görlitzer Clean Up happens on July 7. Organizer Lubomila Jordanova from the group Plan A tells us how they plan to incentivise volunteer cleaners. Empty flats in Neukölln? They do exist. Unfortunately they're being kept empty on purpose. Activists squatted several buildings to protest, but were promptly...

Sick of cars parking in bike lanes? Write own parking tickets during Falschparker Aktionswoche, which starts on May 28. Illegal parkers are fined just €20 in Berlin if caught, while the EU average is €100. You can use an app called Wegeheld to report drivers to the authorities, if you don't mind being called a Spießer. Trees in Berlin parks are being wrapped in white webs by an invasion of oak pro...

A special live recording of the fourth and (maybe) last episode. Take a tour of all four of Berlin's under-construction, out-of-use, falling-apart and over-capacity airports. Each has had a part to play in the story of how Berlin fucked up an airport. At BER, we hear the airport company's side of the story: damn high regulations got in the way, they say. Tempelhof is closed, Tegel is operating pre...

Chris Dercon has resigned from the Volksbuehne Theater, just six months into the job, and following a lot of fuss over his appointment. It seems he had failed to secure enough sponsorship money to pay the bills. Joel says he wasn't given a fair chance. Konrad says he was always wrong for the job. The AFD tried to shut down Berghain, complaining about the strange hours, sex and drugs, bad music and...

Two men who killed a goat in the Hasenheide petting zoo have been sentenced to 10 months in jail. Their lawyer said they were hungry, and argued for leniency as they only took one leg. Also, all meat eaters are animal killers, he said. Another Berlin ban has been overturned by a court. Horses and carriages will be allowed back in front of the Brandenburger Tor, despite the city government's attemp...

How much do Berlin's bottle collectors earn? Our guest Wouter Bernhardt has done the math - it's a measly €150 a month. He thinks it amounts to a form of socially accepted poverty. Wouter is host of the Berlinology podcast. Listen to the full episode of 'The Bottle Collector' here: http://viertausendhertz.de/bln02/ The Berlin Senate has changed the AirBnB law to allow people to rent out their flat...

Bike thefts are down 11% in Berlin. Just over 30,000 bikes were reported stolen in the past year, 4000 less than the year before. Has the flood of shared bikes helped? There's been a cherry tree massacre at the Garten der Welt in Marzahn. Seventeen cherry trees were chopped down on Sunday. The kirchbäume were the garden's biggest drawcard each spring during the cherry blossom season. The gardens h...

Film director Karim Ainouz tells us what life was really like for refugees living in Tempelhof airport. His documentary "Zentralflughafen THF" was filmed in the camp, which recently closed. Could public transport in Germany soon be free? The federal government suggested this as a way of reducing air pollution from diesel cars. What would Berlin be like if dirty cars are banned? Should car manufact...

BER has been built twice - the first time incorrectly, the second time incompletely. We hear from Marco, an engineer who worked on site. Employees were busy stealing copper instead of fixing the fire system. Some managers got rich taking bribes. Informers had their coffee poisoned. Joel and Jöran drive out to the unfinished BER terminal to inspect the too-short escalators that end with stairs. The...

Days away from the planned 2012 opening party, nothing seemed amiss at BER. What was really going on? On this episode, we look at how the airport managers and politicians were messing with the plans, even as construction was underway. They demanded a 70% increase in terminal space to add hundreds of extra shops, and requested special double story boarding gates for the supersized Airbus A380, even...

Germans throw out one truck's worth of good food each minute. SirPlus is a supermarket that sells groceries that are past their best-before date but are still edible. Founder Raphael Fellmer joins us with a basket of typical products from his shelves. You can visit the shop at Wilmersdorfer Staße 59. Or you can order a home delivery box at: http://www.sirplus.de Konrad Werner explains why Germans...

The number of public bikes in Berlin increased to 6200 this week when Chinese company Mobike placed 700 of their orange and silver bicycles on the streets. They're not to be confused with O-Bike, a Singaporean company which introduced 500 yellow-framed bikes just a few weeks earlier. In other cities, Mobike gives users credits for reporting broken bikes, and takes away credits for poor parking and...

Dodgy Berlin real estate deals have been discovered in the Paradise Papers. According to the Sueddeutsche Zeitung, a company called Phoenix Spree based on the Isle of Jersey has been buying Berlin property, forcing out tenants, putting up the rent, then sending the profits to offshore accounts where they pay little tax. Wondering why rents are going up and where that extra money is going? Now you...

Almost 200 cyclists blocked traffic on Oranienstraße in a protest after a cyclist was doored and seriously injured. O-Straße is the third most dangerous street for cyclists in Berlin. What would happen if we painted our own bike lane? Over 34,000 bicycles worth almost €20 million are stolen annually in Berlin, only 3.5 percent are recovered. Air Berlin's turbulent descent into insolvency has reach...

Storm Xavier lashed Berlin with winds of 120 kilometres an hour on October 5. Public transport and flights were cancelled for most of the day, and regional train lines were cut for several days. Five people died from falling trees and car accidents, and 18 flamingos at the Berlin Zoo didn't make it through the storm. How do storms get their names? You can pay €260.61 to name a storm. The money goe...

Comedian and journalist Drew Portnoy tells us about his return to Berlin after several years away. The city has grown by the equivalent of two Bonns in that time and is feeling much fuller. Berlin-based refugee rescue charity Jugend Rettet is in trouble. The organization's boat has been impounded by Italian authorities. Jugend Rettet says they are being bullied out of the Mediterranean. Are you a...

Tegel Airport fans won a referendum on whether the hexagonal Flughafen should stay open post-BER. The "yes" vote was 56.1%. But it doesn't mean Tegel won't close, as the federal and Brandenburg governments would have to agree. Renovation and residential soundproofing costs could reach a billion euros. Tegel supporters now want an U-Bahn extension as well. The referendum happened on the same day as...

Berlin is a city with over 2.4 million rats. Lately they've been sighted more frequently as heavy rain has flushed them out of the drains. Several playgrounds in the north of the city have been closed due to rodents. A slightly more unusual pest, the invasive red American crayfish, has been seen scuttling along the paths in Tiergarten. More than 3000 crustaceans were caught as part of a recent era...

Comedian Caroline Clifford signed up as a bicycle food courier to earn extra cash. But she found the income depends on cycle speed and can be €5 an hour or less, especially as customers don't tip. Germany's federal election is on September 24. So far it's a dull campaign. But as Konrad Werner explains, in today's turbulent world a boring election is quite remarkable. Chancellor Angela Merkel "repr...