Mein Gott! I just spent thirty-six hours in my favourite city in the whole wide world (Berlin Germany) and all I could do was write about President Trump! I guess it speaks to his allure. Anyway, I’m going to take a break from the politics for about five minutes to write about a serious subject that affects almost everyone almost everywhere.
I can say without hyperbole that I’ve been to Berlin over a million times and I’ve written a million words about a million different things that are awesome about this city, but before this trip there was this one thing I had never noticed about it.
Dogs are allowed in bars and restaurants!
I’m not making this up. They have to be accompanied by a parent or guardian – they can’t go in alone – but they are totally allowed to go to breakfast, lunch, brunch, supper, and happy hour. [Some Berlin trivia for you: if a dog attends a bar’s happy hour, they are required by law to call it “Happier Hour” (Glückliche Stunde). The reasoning behind the law is that the mere presence of dogs makes everything better.]
I have no idea why I never wrote about (or even noticed) this before, but I was only in Berlin for a day and a half and there were dogs in almost
every
single
bar
that I went to. I couldn’t have been happier.
And this experience has made me even more disappointed with the city where I live (Ottawa) that bans the practice altogether. I’ve racked my brain for many hours and I haven’t been able to come up with a single non-sarcastic reason why it’s like this. And I think it’s time for that to change…
Full disclosure: I think that the dog in the first photo might actually be a fox – and if that’s the case, it just makes Berlin even cooler.
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