Not everyone shares parents' fascination with the antics of their offspring in public, writes Derek Scallyin Berlin
IT’S A typical Sunday afternoon in Cafe Niesen, a retro-fitted cafe in the formerly trendy Berlin neighbourhood of Prenzlauer Berg. Customers have coffee and cake and chat, their conversations competing with the squawk of foaming milk and the screams of young children.
The tiny creatures run around, pulling at each other’s clothes and pushing over Lego towers while their rapt parents look on. So far, so normal in Prenzlauer Berg, the former artist-intellectual neighbourhood colonised by so many young families that it’s been dubbed “Pregnant Hill”. Cafe Niesen has developed a certain notoriety in Berlin after adding a small extra room, accessible only by separate door, on which hangs a sign: “Only for Older People”.
In the small room, with space for 10 people, customers are drinking coffee and enjoying the Sunday papers.
“I think it’s a good idea, it’s an extra room and everyone’s happy,” says Frederick – 32 and childless. But on the far side, parents aren’t pleased. “Trying to shut out children like this leaves a very bitter taste,” says Kassandra (38), with her two-year-old son Max. “The children aren’t making noise, they’re just doing what children do.”
Just last week, angry mothers occupied the new room in protest – with their children. Cafe owner Christine Wick winces at the memory. “We converted our ice-cream shop into this separate room for customers who said they wanted to be able to read in peace,” she says. “We had no idea this would be so controversial but what I don’t want at this stage is that it turns into something political.” Too late: local politicians, with an eye on their voters’ interests, have dismissed the tiny room as “tasteless” and “family unfriendly”.
The head of a local children’s charity went further, calling it further proof that Germany is a child-intolerant country.
“Children don’t make noise,” said Heinz Hilgers, head of Germany’s Child Protection Federation. “They are merely expressing their joy for life.”
Forget the wall: children are the new dividing line in Berlin. Just last month, the city saw itself forced to rewrite laws reclassifying the noise children make while playing as “tolerable”, to stop kindergartens being forced out of apartment buildings after complaints from residents.
But might the source of Berlin’s problems be too few children, rather than too many? With just 1.3 children born to each couple, perhaps childless Berliners have forgotten how to deal with children. And perhaps couples have too much time on their hands to worry about their only child, smothering it with attention? Bookshops and news-stands are filled with child manuals offering advice that is mostly contradictory and often laughable.
Like the child etiquette supplement published by weekly newspaper Die Zeitlast week with probing questions posed by people with far too much time on their hands. Question 23: "Should I tell my children about my shattered dreams?"
In Cafe Niesen, amid the pastel tones and screams of childish pleasure and pain, the tension has yet to lift. “It’s not the children that are the problem here but the parents,” says Frederick, finishing his coffee in the child-free zone. “They don’t set boundaries for acceptable behaviour in public anymore. They forget that not everyone is thrilled when a stranger’s child tips cocoa into their lap.”