Topi Kettunen

German Unefficiency and Living Without Internet

As some of you might know, I’ve been living in Berlin, Germany for a few years now. Wonderful city! Just what I was looking for couple years back when I moved here. City definitely has its flaws – like does every city in the world – but I still enjoy being here. City is definitely massive. Each district having their own life, own people and own quirks. Spectrum is wide from somewhat poshy areas of Mitte and Prenzlauer Berg to more hip and trendy areas like Neukolln and Kreuzberg to more suburban areas around the Ringbahn. Of course, since I’m mainly into various hip and trendy activities – what some might call them – most of my time has been spent lingering around and roaming the streets of eastern Berlin, mainly Neukolln and Kreuzberg since those were the districts I used to reside. Due to its sheer size, there’s no way, I’ve been able to experience all the city has to offer. Despite this, I feel that the city has offered me tremendously.

While I’ve really enjoyed living in Berlin, one thing I can’t praise at all is how things work in this country. So this is not necessarily Berlin’s fault, although, I feel its also partly due to that. But more or less everything seems to be difficult here. At least in a bureaucratic sense. Difficult in a sense that nothing really works efficiently or effortlessly, or that’s how I at least feel coming from Finland to this country. I’m not saying Finland is perfect in how country should operate, far from it. I’m just saying – using a simple and common example – that if you want to move from place to place, making this sort of address change to your government shouldn’t be too difficult. In Finland for example, if you want to move, there’s one URL that you go to, fill in your new details, and send the information. Pretty easy. In Germany, if you want to Anmeldung, you need to print your papers necessary, fill the forms, book time in your nearest Burgeramt, go there physically, just so someone can put some stamp in your papers. Sounds pretty unefficient, right? That’s because it is.

I also just recently read from the news how Germany was excited to have digitalised their medical patient information so that more stuff would happen digitally instead of manually. Making it easier to share medical history from doctor to doctor. Sounds amazing! Of course, something like this has been implemented in many different countries for 20 or so years, but hey, Germany is in no rush!

This sort of a ranty-detour gets us to the whole topic of today’s post about living without internet. So I just wanted to write some words down on how I feel after some undisclosed amount of weeks that I have been without internet at home.

This all started mainly due to the fact that I just happened to move into a new place and naturally I wanted to move my internet contract into the new address. Of course, naive and blue-eyed me thought that it would be pretty straight-forward. I just change the address, configure the router possibly in the address in case something needs to be done and that’s about it, right? Well of course not. Turns out, for some reason, there needs to be a internet technician come to your place and turn on the connection for you. Okay, sure. Interesting that it couldn’t be done remotely, but hey let’s go with it. But of course to make it not so easy, the technician isn’t able to find my home, which is interesting again since they know the address. Also, of course they could’ve just called me but that’s too much to ask I guess. So there’s an another try, but with the same result. Oh, and did I mention that there was two weeks between these attempts so it not like that they tried it again in a short period of time.

Okay, I start ranting again. Back to the topic. I wanted to jot down some thoughts that I’ve encountered while living without an internet. Turns out, I have really enjoyed my time! I’ve written in my blog about my “struggles” with for example social media and how it used to grab my attention almost wholly. But generally speaking, it feels that everything I tend to online, tends to be more on the excessive end of the spectrum. Call it excessive use of YouTube or other various places filled with endless amounts of content. I just feel that I tend to sink vast amount of hours in these sort of places, without getting much in return. While I’m not saying they are all bad, they certainly have good bits and pieces here and there, but the vast majority just feels – like someone might’ve put it already – brain-rot.

With these undisclosed amount of weeks that I’ve now been without internet, naturally, I’ve been away from all them. Even the cellural signal is quite weak in my new apartment so I haven’t been able to use them via it even that much. Fortunately, I’ve been able to keep in touch with family and friends with the little signal I’ve had at home and in case I’ve really had to use internet for something, I’ve had just to leave my home to find Wi-Fi, which also has been quite good for me, since I’ve a habit of going “monk- or hermit-mode” quite often.

I also recently changed jobs so fortunately I haven’t been in on any on-call rotation so I haven’t really had the need to work from home. Also, the new apartment has been quite close to the new office, so it hasn’t been too big of a hassle to go there daily. Even that – to my surprise – hasn’t been too bad. Why it’s to my surprise is the fact that before this I really never went to the office. This employer or the previous ones. I wouldn’t say the office that we have currently is something extra-ordinary that I would really want to spent time in there, it’s still nice, don’t get me wrong. I’ve never really just seen myself as this social butterfly who can effortlessly manage themselves mingling around in an office environment. So, I’ve always just enjoyed working from home more.

The lack of internet at home has really shown itself in my life in the form of vastly increased productivity on the stuff that I value. I’m not saying that some sort of ultimate productivity is something that everyone should strive towards – which seems to often be the case in various toxic “hustling culture” ideas – but I’m more so approaching the topic from the point of view of how much time you really can use in the stuff that brings something positive and beneficial to your life. In my case, it has shown itself in the form of increased productivity for example in exercise, making music, writing, reading and also programming passion projects. I.e. more or less most of the stuff outside personal relationships and health that I find to be important in my life.

So now I’m just spitballing with the idea of really not just getting any internet to my home. Of course, if the current job situation would allow something like that. Considering all the good effects I’ve seen in my life AND considering the fact that it would be just one less thing to worry my head in German bureaucracy, I don’t really see negative side in this.