The Art of Doing Nothing: Embracing Berlin’s Slow Chaos

May 8, 2025 Atelier Manganel

Berlin doesn’t rush. Not really. The trains try. The startups pretend. But the city itself moves at a different pace—somewhere between a cigarette break and a soft existential crisis. It’s not lazy. It’s intentional. Slow chaos. Purposeful drifting. The quiet rebellion of not doing much, and somehow doing everything that matters.

In Berlin, plans are suggestions. Deadlines blur. Meetings start late or not at all. The bureaucracy might take three months to approve your address, but your neighbor will spend an hour talking to you about the correct way to compost coffee grounds. Everything takes longer here. So you learn to adjust. Or you leave.

At first, it feels inefficient. Frustrating. You’re ready to go, but the city isn’t. You’re trying to get things done, but Berlin just hands you another espresso and shrugs.

And then—something shifts. You stop fighting it. You sit longer. Walk slower. Start noticing things.

Like the guy on a bench sketching the same pigeon for twenty minutes. The friend who insists on talking about life for three hours instead of replying to emails. The café that never kicks you out, no matter how long you’ve nursed that one flat white. Berlin teaches you to waste time beautifully.

You begin to understand that not everything productive is visible. That rest can be resistance. That staring out a tram window counts as spiritual practice. You’re not bored—you’re absorbing. You’re not behind—you’re unplugged.

And somehow, amidst the stillness, things happen. Art gets made. Friendships deepen. Protests appear out of nowhere and vanish just as fast. You stumble into a courtyard gig with a guy playing modular synths to four people and a dog. You have conversations that change nothing and stay with you anyway.

The city isn’t lazy. It’s alive on its own terms. It lets people exist without constant output. Without performance. Without hustle-as-identity. You can be between things in Berlin. Between jobs. Between dreams. Between breakdowns. And no one asks for a five-year plan.

Here, doing nothing isn’t failure. It’s texture. It’s presence. It’s freedom with frayed edges.

So sit in the park without your phone. Skip the gallery and lie in the grass. Spend a whole afternoon watching boats on the Spree like they might reveal a secret. This isn’t wasting time. This is Berlin, teaching you how to live with it.