No Power, No Heat, No Internet: Inside the Berlin Blackout

Hi friends, you've probably heard by now that part of southern Berlin has been without power. On social media, people are calling it the Berlin Blackout. I live in the affected area, but I got incredibly lucky.

It all started Saturday morning. When I woke up, my phone wasn't working. I couldn't send or receive messages. Stupid Wi-Fi, I thought, and switched on cellular data, but nothing happened there either. We quickly realized the phone lines were dead, too. Something seems to be up with the power, my husband said.

On my way to the bakery, a neighbor asked me, "Do you guys have power?" We did. Heat and lights were working at our place, which felt like a miracle, because just a few houses down, everything was dark. "Nothing works over here," another neighbor told me. The bakery was closed because of the outage, and so were the pharmacy and the supermarket across the street. "The whole block behind us has no power," I said when I got back home. We still had no idea what was really going on.

We had no information and couldn't get any news, so we got in the car and drove to the next neighborhood over to check the news and call friends. That's when it hit us: for some reason, we were like the little village in the Asterix comics that holds out against the Romans. Almost all our friends and acquaintances had no lights and no heat. In total, 50,000 households were affected, and at our place everything was working more or less normally.

The first reports said the nightmare would be over by 6:30 p.m. Not even close, as we know now. Hospitals and care facilities had to be evacuated, and elderly people had to be rescued from their apartments. Families had to leave their homes because it simply got too cold. How terrible that must have been for people who are old and/or sick!

People Helping People During the Berlin Blackout

But something else happened, too, and it really touched me. A wave of helpfulness took off. So many people opened their homes. Friends came by to shower and warm up, and people met up at the McDonald's in the next neighborhood to charge their phones. Community centers set up cots, and restaurants that still had power handed out hot soup.

People swapped flashlights, power banks, and candles. We wandered in disbelief through completely dark neighborhoods and stared at the dead traffic lights and the police, who were all over the place (to deter looters). The world turned very slowly. No internet, no cell service, no work, no streaming, but lots of time together. It was bitterly cold, and it snowed more than it has in a long time. When word came that schools would stay closed, the kids cheered and immediately made plans to meet up again at the sledding hill.

Suddenly we were talking to people we passed on the street. Are you okay? Do you need anything? And it got us thinking. We depend on electricity so much! It's wild how fast an apartment loses its heat. And how strange it is to be unable to communicate or get any information. And who's behind the attack?

Unlike during the COVID pandemic, this time we were allowed to be together, and that makes a huge difference. Still, the whole thing leaves me with an uneasy feeling in my stomach. How vulnerable are we all? What would it look like if all of Berlin, or all of Germany, were affected and nobody could help anymore? For so many people, this was a rough start to the new year. Let's keep our fingers crossed that it's over soon and everyday life can get back to normal.