P As we know, arty is always somewhere in Berlin, this winter it’s mostly slide parties because it’s snowing. The whiteness gently covers the notoriously dirty streets of the capital – this pleasant state lasts for about 50 minutes, at least in the city center area, then the snow there has turned into gray, slippery mud. Now it gets tricky, at least when it’s really cold, so the gray mud freezes at night at the latest.
In Berlin, the use of de-icing salt on sidewalks is prohibited, but it can be used on driveways. Pedestrians have drawn the bad card, cyclists are lucky where the bike path is on the street and unlucky where it leads over the sidewalk. In addition, the respective residents are responsible for clearing snow from the sidewalks – in other words: the owners of the properties in front of which it snowed. Now property owners – certainly not all of them, no offense! – at least in Berlin, they are hardly known for caring about other people’s well-being, but rather about their own wallet.
Most people don’t have the snow cleared in front of their houses, but simply spread gravel quickly and cheaply. During the day, these small black stones sink into the slushy layer of snow and the next morning, frozen in a glassy layer of ice at night, they flash mischievously at the pedestrian like little warning lights: Don’t slip! Feat! In cold, snowy winters like this one, even the ass card becomes a matter of luck: most people slip on other, more sensitive parts of their body, break bones and fill up the hospitals, which are why people who walk are better off staying at home. However, the Berlin police do not report a significantly increased number of car accidents: the environmentally harmful de-icing salt is allowed on the streets (with the environmentally harmful cars)!
It is therefore rare to see people with walking difficulties, walkers or strollers on Berlin’s often glassy sidewalks during these cold, snowy days.
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“When clearing snow, cities show who they want to protect and who they don’t,” says Finnish city planner Pekka Tahkola in mid-January in one Spiegel-Interview. German cities might not need a fleet of vehicles like his city of Oulu near the Arctic Circle: “But they should be able to remove the little snow that rarely falls.” And the expert from the city, which is considered particularly bicycle-friendly, goes on to say: “Pedestrians in particular need winter services even more urgently than cyclists, but drivers really don’t have to come first.”
Today people in Berlin prefer to protect property again – cars
In his wonderful text about the history of sidewalks, which was published in the “Handbook of Infrastructure History” in 2025, recalls Roland StimpelFighter for Pedestrian Rights in Foot e. V., to the “Republic of Pedestrians”, which during the French Revolution was a lobby organization that advocated safe and clean sidewalks for those who could not travel through the city in carriages. These “rich and distinguished people with their carriages have the barbaric privilege of running over and mutilating people on the street,” he quotes the complaint of a contemporary.
Berlin – I also know this from Stimpel – specifically introduced the dog tax in 1829 in order to be able to create “sidewalks” where citizens could not pay for them themselves. Today people in Berlin prefer to protect property again – cars: they are worth the de-icing salt. If you have to or want to walk, don’t.