What’s new in Berlin
Public holidays
There are 3 public holidays in May 2026:
- May 1: Labor Day
- May 14: Ascension Day
- May 25: Whit Monday
Make the best of those days, because German Unity Day falls on a Sunday this year, making these 3 days the last public holidays until Christmas.
Photo by Berlin photographer Claudia Hammer
Hay fever
Spring has sprung, and soon will follow the dreaded allergy season. It’s time to stock up on allergy pills and keep an eye on the pollen index. Godspeed.
Removed reviews on Google Maps
In Germany, businesses routinely get negative reviews removed. This is how famously bad restaurants manage to keep stellar scores on Google Maps. Some restaurants like Anand and Amrit are notoriously aggressive about it.
Since last week, Google Maps shows how many reviews a business got removed in the last year. It does not show the exact number, only a range with “More than 250” as the maximum.
Welcome Center
After over a year of development, the new Welcome Center website was announced with great fanfare on April 29. The website aims to be a central source of helpful information for immigrants in Berlin. Sounds familiar?
They sought my advice during the planning phase, and I made my report public. I hope it convinced them to build simpler, but better.
Fake self-employment
The pension office has released a tool to check if you are really self-employed.
Fake self-employment is when an employee is treated like a freelancer. It’s a bad deal for employees, because they lose a lot of rights and benefits. It can also lead to serious problems like rejected residence permit applications pension insurance back payments.
What’s new on All About Berlin
Better maps
I have redesigned my lists of English-speaking businesses. I made them easier to navigate and added filters. There is now a form to quickly recommend new places. I replaced Google Maps by a beautiful, free and privacy-friendly alternative.
Cannabis update
I have revamped my cannabis guide. Although recreational marijuana has been legal for two years, the legal options – growing your own or joining a cannabis social club – are still inaccessible to most. This rewrite gives a pragmatic overview of the legal and illegal options in 2026.
Government talks
I have met with the Work and Stay Agency to talk about what I’ve learned from 9 years of running All About Berlin. The WSA is a new umbrella organisation of federal agencies that want to simplify immigration. Among other things, they want to build a better information portal for immigrants.
I have mixed feelings about these information portal initiatives. One one hand, I’m glad that the government is prioritizing a problem that I’ve spent nine years solving. On the other hand, it’s frustrating to think about all the things I could do with a tiny fraction of their budget.
Automation
I have built two tools that automate my work.
One tool updates my lists of English-speaking businesses. It reverifies each business every 3 months. It updates their address, hides temporarily closed locations, and removes permanently closed ones.
The other tool updates the code when facts change. For example, if the minimum wage goes up, it updates all mentions of the minimum wage, and all calculations that use it. This tool uses AI to extract values from webpages, but it still uses real sources.
These changes are always validated by a human. Every word you read on All About Berlin is human-written. This will not change.
What I learned this month
Digital sick notes
I have used Teleclinic for the first time, and it worked fine. I got a sick note from my couch in less than an hour. It gave my flu the veneer of legitimacy needed for a trip cancellation insurance claim.
If anything, it worked a little too well. The video call with the doctor lasted one minute. He asked me how many days off I wanted, and I got the documents in my inbox a minute later.