[mercer]

If anything that's an indictment of whatever Berlin is compared to!

FWIW my experience has been that it's surprisingly difficult to compare my 'home', Amsterdam, to Berlin, or The Netherlands to Germany. There's tons of things that I prefer in the latter (cost of education, civil society/engagement), but also plenty of things I prefer in the former (ease of starting a business, relative lack of (monolingual) bureacracy).

But from talking to expats to both Amsterdam and Berlin made me realize that even the shitty parts of my world are much better than where some of them came from. Most of my complaints about Berlin or Amsterdam pale in comparison to the benefits it offers to many people from other places.

(For example, the complaints about DB (Germany) or NS (Holland) are ridiculous in comparison to my experience what almost every other part of the world)