With the advent of the digital age, the question of whether print media has any future has been a recurring and ongoing one. However, Berlin is one of those rare cities where independent print journalism is still thriving. I didn’t initially come to Berlin expecting an internship in the editorial team of the largest English-language magazine in Germany, Exberliner, but I suppose things never happen as you expect them to.

The German print media market is currently the largest in Europe with 360 publishers, ranking fifth globally after India, China, Japan and the United States. With Berlin’s thriving, underground and alternative scenes cataloguing the freshest and cutting-edge zeitgeist of today, I believe it’s not much of a coincidence that most magazines and bookstores here are still independent.

Despite it being still challenging to survive in the market without certain financial backing or commercial products, there’s a large audience in Berlin that seeks the authentic, the independent and still uses analogue.

It is with that audience that I came to integrate Berlin and that made my lack of German not such a nuisance at first. Yet as I started being assigned tasks that connected more closely to investigative journalism such as interviewing locals from Neukölln on the closure of a bookstore and asking what they thought of it, I realised how important my German classes were to facilitate my integration and make me feel less like a stranger.

Funnily enough, Exberliner works as a monthly and our recently completed issue focused on identity politics, and one of our main pieces was a research we did interviewing several Berliners, from 80-year old East Germans to Turkish kebab shop-owners or American expats who’ve lived here for a number of years, what they thought qualified a Berliner.

One of their most recurring answers? Learn the history and learn the language! Although I’m still very far from considering myself a ‘Berliner,’ I can feel a bit more comfortable with my association to the term to the fact that I’m actually making an effort to learn the language to in turn appreciate the culture and the history furthermore.