Mattresses of Berlin

You walk around Berlin and there are always three things. Dog shit on every corner. Empty beer bottles in gutters. And mattresses just abandoned on sidewalks, sitting there like someone might come back for them, which they won’t.

There’s an Instagram account called Mattresses of Berlin that documents these. Just endless photos of old mattresses slowly rotting in place wherever someone left them. Most have been there long enough that people have used them as canvases—a portrait painted across the fabric, a date carved in, a message, whatever’s on your mind that day. Street art on a surface nobody’s going to fight you about.

Once you know the account exists, you start seeing them everywhere. Like buying a car and suddenly noticing that model all over the city. You can’t not see it anymore. There’s always one a few blocks away, no matter where you are in Berlin.

It says something about the city, I think. About how people move through here constantly and just leave things behind without caring. A mattress abandoned on the curb is just Berlin working the way it always does—something gets left, someone uses it, something else comes along. It’s not sad. It’s just the logic of a place where nothing stays still.