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Arriving in Berlin – A map made by refugees

72 points| chippy | 10 years ago |umap.openstreetmap.fr | reply

95 comments

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[+] distances|10 years ago|reply
This is a bit offtopic, but Berlin is really beautifully mapped in OSM. In places the details are more than what I would have ever thought of, for example the individual pillars of the Holocaust Memorial: http://umap.openstreetmap.fr/en/map/arriving-in-berlin-a-map...
[+] zo1|10 years ago|reply
Adding details to OSM is actually very relaxing. I do it to unwind and kill time sometimes. The job is never done, however, and there is always room for more detail.
[+] johansch|10 years ago|reply
For that one there should be altitude mapping.
[+] chippy|10 years ago|reply
The project about page is here: http://arriving-in-berlin.de/
[+] comrh|10 years ago|reply
This has the arabic and persian(I think?) versions. It confused me why it would be in english at first.
[+] gloves|10 years ago|reply
I love this idea, and hope the refugees settling have a happier life in Germany.
[+] Fluid_Mechanics|10 years ago|reply
[Sigh] Before parts of the comment section turn into a flame war, I'd like to ask that those with inflammatory opinions at least attempt to stay politically neutral here. I'd rather not know about the contentious political positions some of my technical peers have.

Please save any sweeping generalizations for Twitter/Facebook/Reddit :).

[+] mtw|10 years ago|reply
Nice! Was this done during the Berline refugee hackathon?
[+] detaro|10 years ago|reply
I don't think so, at least it seems to be completely managed by the two organisations running it & I didn't see it mentioned in context of the hackathon. It also doesn't use a custom-made interface, but is using the uMap service: http://umap.openstreetmap.fr (So the biggest need probably is data, not code)
[+] sccxy|10 years ago|reply
I'm living in one of poor EU countries.

I earn less money than they pay for refugees.

Our pensioners get less money than these 'refugees' with Armani clothing...

[+] tdkl|10 years ago|reply
Don't be a dick indeed, work more, so you can earn more and pay more taxes for the immigrants (if they were refugees they would stay whereever help was offered instead of storming to Germany), because those loans won't pay by itself and USA, IMF and the banks surely won't write that off.

Right now my country is stormed by them and can barely keep up. Schengen is a joke, same as the EU.

This will probably be down voted since Hacker News turned into a "safe space" (which is ironic considering all the whiplash about free speech on the internet around here), so let me just quote a character called Reality on the popular show "South Park": "You're sad that people are mean ? Well I'm sorry, the world isn't one big liberal arts college campus."

[+] Cenk|10 years ago|reply
— What refugees wear does not matter. Even if they all wore genuine Armani clothing, what are they supposed to do? Sell all their clothes and buy cheaper brands before they flee? Your idea that a person who doesn’t look destitute or poor enough should not be regarded as a refugee shows how little you understand what a refugee is. The people fleeing to Europe are from all kinds of backgrounds, including workers, the middle class and highly skilled professionals. When a war breaks out and a city is destroyed, the middle class doesn’t stay behind. They sell their houses, cars and anything else they can and spend upwards of $10K to make it to somewhere safe.

— I’m sure refugees in your country get less money than pensioners, just as they do in Germany. Are you saying that Germany should give refugees less money than any pensioner in the EU gets?

[+] sabertoothed|10 years ago|reply
Don't forget that living expenses are higher (in "richer" EU countries), too.
[+] pjc50|10 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS_St._Louis

This is what happened last time refugees were turned away en masse with no option but to return to their home country: they were exterminated. The EU was formed with a "never again" attitude to this kind of catastrophe. There are already over 4 million refugees plus an estimated 6 million displaced within Syria. People have finally noticed that they're already dying trying to escape, often in the Mediterranean. The options are to take them in or send them to their deaths.

This is probably going to happen again when Yemen goes up; it doesn't help that the country is running out of groundwater while a Saudi/Iranian proxy war is being fought in it.

[+] raverbashing|10 years ago|reply
I can understand the sentiment

However, for those who want to work in Berlin (or somewhere else) can apply for a German Blue Card (usually you apply for jobs hen the company gets you one), shouldn't be too hard

[+] dattl|10 years ago|reply
Come on, don't be a dick. You're exactly like a child that cries because the others get "more" and it's so unfair. Boohoo.
[+] gambiting|10 years ago|reply
All this statement means is that your pensioners should be getting more money, not that refugees should be getting less. Likewise, you should be making more money than you do, if your income is lower than refugee support money. I see this argument repeated ad nauseam and it's really upsetting, because it's basically saying that other people should have it worse for the sake of having it worse.
[+] chaghan|10 years ago|reply
What about the millions of eastern / central europeans that have lower wages and worse quality of life and have been denied to work in german markets when the countries have been allowed to join the EU ?

I guess nobody cares. Oh nobody cares either about people that are educated and can't get working visa because EU bureaucracy.

Thanks Germany.

[+] dang|10 years ago|reply
The combination of "what about related controversy X" with inflammatory language ("Thanks Germany") is guaranteed to produce a political flamewar. Please don't do that here.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10452885 and marked it off-topic.

[+] aikah|10 years ago|reply
> I guess nobody cares. Oh nobody cares either about people that are educated and can't get working visa because EU bureaucracy.

This. The elephant in the room. It is insanely difficult to migrate legally to most European countries.

I would say something else to the people that encourage others to basically enter Europe illegally to go to Germany.

There are people, in refugee camps, in Lebanon or Turkey, that want to follow the law and apply for asylum while staying in these camps( because that's how it is supposed to work at first place, applying for asylum in the first safe country).

What about them ? So people who break the law and cross multiple European countries illegally are welcome, but those who want to respect refugee laws by staying in camps until their status is cleared will be rejected because too many coming to Europe already and all sits are taken? That doesn't sound fair at all.

This whole debacle is hypocrite on so many level, I will never support anyone who agree with it. You're not helping those who are in greatest need to be helped ( women,children, it's obvious they are not the majority of the people walking across Europe right now).

[+] winter_blue|10 years ago|reply
> have been denied to work in german markets

That is illegal and a violation of treaty obligations on Germany's part if the countries you're talking about are part of the European Union (EU), or the European Economic Area (EEA).

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_movement_for_worker...

You don't need a work visa or any sort of permission from the German government to reside and work in Germany, if you are a EU citizen or a citizen of an EEA member. It is a right.

[+] lispm|10 years ago|reply
Germany was struggling with the reunification, having added 20 Million people from a collapsed country, the German Democratic Republic. That was difficult enough.

Currently there are no special labor restrictions for EU citizens in Germany.

[+] tonomics|10 years ago|reply
You raise an interesting point, but the refugee 'crisis' is not driven by rationality, history, culture or even morality.

It's a sad, numb and nihilistic political game.

[+] korisnik|10 years ago|reply
>What about the millions of eastern / central europeans

Have you forgotten about the Yugoslav wars? About half a million of refugees went to Western Europe (mostly Germany and Sweden) in just a couple of years.

[+] Brakenshire|10 years ago|reply
I really don't know what you're referring to. How have Eastern/Central EU migrants been denied access to German labour markets?
[+] detaro|10 years ago|reply
a) apples and oranges

b) As far as I know none of these intra-EU restrictions are still active (not that much of the numbers changed after their end, so they probably were really pointless)

[+] __m|10 years ago|reply
worse than getting killed by a bomb?
[+] pluma|10 years ago|reply
Provoke someone into bombing you for months and we'll re-consider.

You're welcome.

Germany.

[+] dudul|10 years ago|reply
The only good thing about this "refugees crisis" is that it could finally cause the implosion and the end of the EU.

This corrupted blob in which representatives are barely elected has to go away.

[+] TeMPOraL|10 years ago|reply
And replaced by what? A more divided Europe? I know UE is not the United Federation of Planets, but at least it is a step towards it.
[+] hugh4|10 years ago|reply
And its replacement by what? The Caliphate? Oh, fabulous.
[+] briandear|10 years ago|reply
Interesting. Farsi is not a major language in Syria; more people speak Kurdish than Farsi. Perhaps, and this is just a theory, that some of the refugees aren't actually coming from the Syrian civil war, but are instead attempting to simply take advantage of the largesse of the EU? If these refugees were actual refugees, they'd be in camps along the Turkish border and not applying for (and receiving) long term residency. The concept of refugee is that they go home after the hostilities. In this case, almost zero chance of that happening. It's shameful when adult men flee while many leave behind their wife and children. The women and kids ought to be the ones treated as refugees. The rest of them are simply cowards unwilling to fight for their own country.