Mao II

in kreuzberg, you are either Turkish or not, on social welfare or not, and, these days, student or not. in mitte, life is by far not so polarized. you can be an intellectual on social welfare, artist and Turkish on top of that, and nobody would care too much. there was a time in mitte when simply everybody told you that he/she is an artist, a statement as remarkable as "I am going to buy flowers today", slightly sympathetic and merely a code for belonging to a certain group of individuals. the social structure in mitte seems to be much more homogenic, but I would assert this for a large part results from a general tendency not to strech too much the differences between yourself and the rest of the world (although everybody tries to show as individualistic as possible; which is only but a sport).
but true, mitte is going down and might be fully commercialized and drained of all intellectual ambitions within the next few years.