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Vice Blog

BERLIN – CELL PHONE BARGAINS

No matter how drunk you are, there are things you simply should never do in Berlin. One of them is falling asleep on the last circle train during a weeknight with your cell phone in your hands. When this happened to me last week, two guys stole my phone, only to return it five minutes later. I was standing in front of them at a deserted station platform: confused, disoriented, and waiting to be ripped of my wallet too, but no.

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Apparently stealing my old, fucked-up cell was not worth the negative karma to this pair of shady gents with their pant cuffs stuffed into their socks (a commonplace Berlin gangster fashion). I couldn't come up with another explanation for their strange behavior. I felt insulted, too: My phone wasn't worth anything? My phone is a part of me! My pride was hurt, so I went to the shady neighborhood of Neukölln to find the true value of my cell phone, and, myself by proxy.

On Sonnenallee, one of the main boulevards of Neukölln, you can find tons of second hand cell phone stores. TONS. According to the Income and Consumer survey conducted by the German Federal Statistics Office in 2008, there are 60 million cell phones in Germany distributed over 39 million private households. This means every private household owns roughly one-and-a-half cell phones. On Sonnenallee, there's a cell phone store in nearly every other house. Aside from phones these stores sell mostly flashing, buzzing electronic crap - the sort of stuff more likely to be stolen than purchased. I went to those shops and claimed to have "found" a cell, asking each store if they would buy the phone from me. Here is one example for how it typically went down:

I walk into the store that focuses on cell phones and video games. The sales clerk is sitting behind his desk, playing PS3. He has the kind of bad breath that easily bridges any distance between you and him.

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VICE: I found a cell phone, can I sell it here?
Clerk: Sure, why not? Show me. He scrutinizes the device. How much do you want for this?
Forty?
Forty?! You serious? Look at this, man! I have to put all new cases on this. Ten, that's what you get.
Only ten?
Let's look inside… Is it compatible with all SIM Cards?
Should be.
Oh my… Look how these things are built! How can I get the battery out? No button, no grip, nothing… Applying moderate brutality he hammers my cell phone on the desk so the battery will pop out. With his right hand he still manages to operate his video game at the same time. Well, well… So you found this thing? You're lucky! You know, people say, you don't find nothing anymore these days. He tries his SIM-Card. OK, card's working, camera's working. I make it fifteen, last chance.
Let me think about it.

I try a bunch of other stores. It turns out staff in a lot of these places have bad breath. One guy doesn't know which numbers correspond with which keys by heart, so I have to show him, because on my cell phone the numbers are all worn off. In one shop I walk into three different store owners at the same time. One of them, a massive bald guy even offers me twenty Euros. But nobody really makes an effort to close the deal:

Clerk: Twenty, that's how much I would give you.
VICE: Twenty? I think that's not enough.
Look at it, all worn off…
You need better cell phones?
What…? Twenty… Not more.
Do you want me to get you some better phones?
OK, twenty-five, that's my last offer.
Eh… OK.

Twenty-five. That's not too bad actually. So, my phone IS worth something. I AM worth something. And the two guys apparently just felt sorry for me. Seems like Berlin isn't really the tough place they always make you believe after all . I'm touched. Kind of.

MALTE BORGMANN