Waste not that broken vacuum. Berlin will pay you to repair your stuff.

A sad army of broken electronics sits in my shoulder bag.

It’s a rainy fall weekday in Berlin, and I live in a city that has decided to pay people to repair stuff to reduce waste.

I mentally survey what I lug carefully across the wet cobblestones of Metzer Strasse. The plates on the flat iron that press frizz out of my hair no longer lie flat; the motor on my black household fan, which shuts off after a few minutes; the iPhone whose battery depletes itself in an instant.

Berlin’s  won’t be a windfall