Hello

Flat hunting here is bad enough that I ended up building a tool for it. It's a Telegram bot that checks about 38 sites every few minutes: State-housing, big corporate landlords, most of the Genossenschaften, plus Kleinanzeigen and WG-Gesucht.

You set your filters (max rent, min rooms, which Bezirke, words to exclude like WBS or möbliert) and it messages you when something new shows up. It also drops duplicates, since the same flat usually gets posted on three portals at once.

Took me 3 weeks to find my own place with it, and it's the first time an apartment I actually want to live in.

I know similar bots exist. I mostly built this because I was already deep in the flat search and wanted something that worked the way I wanted. Putting it up in case it's useful to someone.

Free, no account, you just fill in a form and connect Telegram: https://www.aparterminator.de/

It's a scraper running on AWS Lambda and DynamoDB and costs very little. Feel free to try it and give me feedback. If it's useful for others as it was for me, I will invest more time in it.

New town hall (Rathaus Mitte) being planned next to Alexanderplatz. Will include a library on the ground floor and a panorama cafe on top floor.

A few months ago I shared DailyMetro, a daily game where you guess a U-Bahn station using hints.

Until now, there was only the classic Wordle-style mode. Since people seemed to enjoy it, I added two new modes for Berlin:

• Guess the station from an entrance picture 📸
• Guess the station from a map 🗺️

Some of the entrances are pretty easy. Others are much, much, much harder (maybe too much? tell me)

How many can you get right?

Hope you enjoy it, and if you spot any mistakes or weird inconsistencies, let me know :)

My e-moped was stolen in June. Plate and all. Police report filed, insurance notified. The insurance assessed, settled and paid within five weeks. Remember that number.

Then I tried to deregister the thing. Online, obviously — i-Kfz exists, it's 2026. You just need the security code.

The security code is printed on the licence plate.

The licence plate the thief took.

So the digital route works for every situation except the one where the vehicle is actually gone. Sell your car, ten minutes from the sofa. Get robbed, report to the counter.

Fine, appointment it is. Next day, credit where it's due. Other side of the city, an hour each way, during working hours — for a process where I can hand over literally nothing that couldn't go in an envelope. There's no plate to unstamp. There's only paper.

I asked whether it could be done in writing. No answer to that question. Instead: hire a registration service, they'll just need my ID card. The original. So I should hand my identity document to a stranger, because proving who I am matters too much to skip, but not enough for me to be there.

Meanwhile a letter arrives — not about the theft, nobody there knows about that — but because my registered address is outdated. With a note about a possible fine and a ban on operating the vehicle. A vehicle that is somewhere in Eastern Europe. Ban away, I rarely try.

It's going by post now. With everything they could possibly need, and a friendly note that they're welcome to keep the papers.

TL;DR: Moped stolen with plate attached. Online deregistration requires a code printed on the stolen plate. Office insists I appear in person to hand over documents that fit in an envelope. Bonus fine threat for the wrong address on a vehicle I no longer own. My insurer handled the entire claim in the time it took to get one email answered.

Wie kann man so Leben? Berlin liefert einfach keine Lebensqualität mit diesem dauer grauen Wetter. Der Sommer war wirklich Müll. Und jetzt sagt nicht wie toll ihr es findet das es nicht heiss ist. Geht mal raus wenn es Sonne draussen gibt und schaut euch die Gesichter der Leute an wieviel zufriedener die Gesichter sind wie wenn es grau ist. Sonne und gutes Wetter ist der grösste Lebensqualität Faktor, das merke ich desto älter ich werde und wenn man einmal in einem Land lebt wo es so schlechtes Wetter gibt wie hier. Ich schaue mir die Temperatur in süden von Europa an, sogar Österreich hat Temperaturen um die 30 die nächsten Tage und hier nur scheisse. Nicht ein Tag über 30. Den ganzen Sommer gab es keine einzige Woche mit ständigen Temperaturen über 30 Grad so wie es im Sommer sein soll. Es ist nicht mal Herbst und ich fühle schon die Winterdepression bei diesem Wetter.

As a regular VÖBB user, I found myself repeatedly logging into the website just to check due dates, renew books or switch between different library accounts for my family.

So I build** VÖPP,** a free and open source iPhone app that makes using VÖBB a bit more convenient.
Features include:

- Manage multiple VÖBB accounts in one app
- See all borrowed items and due dates at a glance
- Renew eligible loans
- Get reminders before items are due
- Add library cards by scanning the barcode
- No ads, no tracking, no account required

The app communicates directly with the official VÖBB system. No third-party server is involved, and your login data stays on your device. But if the VÖBB site is unreachable („Wartungsarbeiten“), so is VÖPP.

It’s mostly vibecoded, completely free and open source. A version for macOS is available as well.

https://voepp.de

https://github.com/noestreich/voebbar

I’d love to hear what other Berlin library users think. Feedback, feature requests and bug reports are always welcome.

Just to avoid confusion: this is an unofficial project and has no affiliation with VÖBB.

Hi Berliners,

One thing I’ve found frustrating about renting in Berlin is how difficult it is to understand what people around you are actually paying.

Apartment listings show what landlords are asking today. The Mietspiegel is useful, but serves a different purpose. And a lot of what we know about actual rents still comes from friends, colleagues, Facebook posts, WhatsApp groups, or Reddit threads.

If you're looking at an apartment, a very simple question can be surprisingly difficult to answer:

“What are people around here actually paying?”

So I started building GermanyRent.de.

The idea is simple. Berlin renters can anonymously share what they pay, and those rents appear on a map for everyone to explore.

For each rent, the map includes context such as the warm rent, number of rooms, deposit, furnished or unfurnished status, and when the tenancy started. Renters can also optionally add things like apartment size and other details.

You can search an area, explore individual rent reports, and use filters to compare different kinds of apartments.

No Sign-Up, Account, Name, or Email is required to contribute.

The goal is not to create an official Berlin rent index or claim that a small sample represents the entire rental market.

I see it more as an additional reference point.

Limitations: The submissions are anonymous, they are not manually moderated or verified, and I don't ask people to upload rental contracts or any other proof. So, in theory, someone can submit an inaccurate or completely absurd rent.
I don't have a perfect solution to that yet. Requiring proof would create a very different privacy and participation barrier, while leaving submissions completely open comes with obvious data-quality risks. For now, I think the best approach is to be transparent about that limitation and treat the numbers as community-reported data rather than verified facts.

If you're considering an apartment in a particular neighbourhood, you can look at what renters nearby have reported paying and get a little more context before moving, negotiating, or signing a contract.

GermanyRent currently has 206 rent pins across Berlin, with more being added over time. The median reported warm rent among the current submissions is €1,100, although the data is still unevenly distributed across districts and very much an early community dataset.

You can explore the map here: https://germanyrent.de

Let me know what you think! There is still so much more I can do with this data, and I'm curious to see where the project can go from here.

I'm an independent app developer in Berlin, and for the past months I've been working on probably my most unusual project so far: a dating app.

It's called "Berlin Audio Dating" for now, and it will initially be limited to Berlin.

The idea came partly from my own frustration with dating apps.

I've used quite a few of them over the years. Tinder was actually exciting to me when I first started using it. But eventually online dating became mostly a numbers game: look at lots of profiles, swipe, send likes, hope for matches.

Meeting someone in real life feels very different.

Walking up to someone and actually saying something requires a little courage. You hear their voice, notice how they react and get an impression that isn't based entirely on a few photos.

Years ago I used a now-discontinued German dating app that made voice part of the first contact. If you wanted to approach someone, you had to record a short audio message.

I still remember sitting there, thinking about what to say, recording it, deleting it, trying again and eventually pressing send.

One or two of those approaches somehow felt more meaningful than dozens of swipes.

That's the part I'm trying to explore again.

In Berlin Audio Dating, approaching someone starts with a short personal voice message rather than a like.

I'm also building a few other ideas around that:

When someone approaches you, you initially hear their message before seeing their photo and full profile. Physical attraction still matters - the idea isn't to turn this into blind dating. I just don't want a few photos to make the entire first decision every single time.

There also shouldn't be an endless stream of consequence-free approaches. Sending one requires a little effort, and the app isn't supposed to be optimized around collecting unlimited attention.

At the same time, nobody owes anyone attraction, a conversation or a date. You can decline, ignore or report an approach, and you should be able to pause yourself completely when you don't want to receive new ones.

I'm deliberately starting with Berlin because I don't want to launch another dating app that technically works everywhere but has almost nobody nearby.

The first public test version could be ready within the next one or two weeks, assuming I don't run into any unexpected problems.

From there, I want to get it into the hands of real people as quickly as possible. Rather than spending months trying to design the "perfect" dating app in isolation, I'd rather see what actually happens when people use it and improve the next versions based on that.

I've also started r/BerlinAudioDating as a small development journal where I document some of the decisions behind the app, including ideas that might turn out not to work.

Since today is Kiez Creator Monthly, this seemed like a good opportunity to finally introduce the project outside my own little development bubble.

If the idea sounds interesting, you're welcome to follow along. And if you think parts of it sound completely misguided, criticism is welcome too. At this stage I'd much rather hear that than pretend I've already figured out dating.

Hi, I'm the creator of https://berlin-sessions.com

It's a platform to make finding and hosting jam sessions easier, right now focusing on the finding part.

Sharing with you the latest release notes that I planned to send tomorrow but justo noticed today is Kiez Creator monthly so sharing it here early!!

Check it out and share feedback please!

https://www.tldraw.com/p/Km2lSqfBdSIxKxpEOjPCY

Hi Berliners,

Probably everyone in Berlin has an opinion about public transport: whether it’s the lack of trams in the west, buses stuck in the same traffic as cars, outer districts without good rail connections, or the eternal question of which U-Bahn extension should finally be built.

So I made a game where you can stop arguing about it and try your own plan.

In Takt, Berlin starts completely empty, no buses, trams, U-Bahn or trains. You draw your own lines, choose how often they run, and see whether Berliners would actually use them.

One limitation: the authentic U8 "ambience" is not simulated...

Underneath, the game uses real Berlin streets, population data and places people travel to. I even gave it Berlin’s current network as a test, and its passenger estimate came surprisingly close to the published figures.

Game runs free in the browser and requires no account:

https://playtakt.app

Let me know what you think :)

Hi people,

3 months ago, I posted here about my website, which got a lot of positive feedback. It featured a map of Berlin businesses that had removed user reviews from Google Maps by using the new defamation law https://www.reddit.com/r/berlin/comments/1ttaena/berlin_mapbrowser_extension_of_venues_removing/

I received a lot of feedback, and I noticed that many people shared the same thought: ratings on Google Maps are becoming less and less useful because businesses buy reviews, run promotions offering discounts in exchange for a review, and so on.

Based on map project, I decided to build TrustScope. It’s a web app and browser extension that shows you not just a business’s rating, but how much you can actually trust that rating and what’s behind it.

On the website, you can find all the businesses analyzed so far, across different categories, from restaurants to clinics and doctors.

The easiest way to use the app is through the browser extension. It displays the rating and analysis of reviews directly on Google Maps.

The analysis includes several sections:

• Trust Score
• What People Talk About
• Rating Distribution
• Reviews Over Time

You don't need to trust just trust it, you can verify the reviews behind each value, just click on it and see the reviews:

The interactive demo and full description of how it works https://trustscope.app/en/extension

You don't need to open analysis every time, you can just check the color of the star:
Green - The reviews look authentic and consistent.
Light green - The reviews are mostly credible, with some inconsistencies.
Orange - weaker signals - inconsistent feedback, thin content, or unusual timing. The rating may not tell the whole story.
Red - Something looks off. A high share of reviews shows unusual patterns, or the rating is not clearly supported by the underlying feedback

If you see this button

Don't worry, the venue is not yet analyzed - click on it and it will be done in a few seconds. The venue analysis will also be available on the website in a few minutes. So, more users - more venues analyzed.

Currently, 45k+ venues in Berlin are analysed. The analysis recalculates automatically if it is older than 21 days. To learn more about how the analysis is calculated, follow this page https://trustscope.app/en/how-trustscope-analyzes

Thanks to everyone for your feedback in May. Your support gave me the motivation to build it!

I hope all the effort I’ve put into this project will be worth it and that it will be useful to someone.

If you are a business owner and you wouldd be interested in using a tool to analyze your own rating or compare it with your competitors, or if there’s a feature you’d like to see, for example an assistant for responding to reviews, or you are interested in any kind of collaboration, please feel free to reach out to me at the email address provided or use the form via the "Partnership" button https://trustscope.app/en/partnerships