I’m so invested in the life in 70s Berlin.✨
Great book, great story

you've played your own song too many times

when i've first time read this book i was... thirteen? fourteen? maybe even a bit younger, around the age of Christine; now, almost a decade later, i came back to this book - older, grumpier, more tired and with much more experience and - what is probably most important - more knowledge than kid me; but even ten year ago I, as a kid, knew about drugs; they were around me. i knew people who were doing drugs, i've heard about people who were even proud of being an addict. i was growing up in a small town, not a town such as Berlin. and i knew about drugs.
i actually remember that i found this book at my sister's room (sorry sis); i don't remember anyone talking - really talking - with young me about drugs, so everything i knew was showed by prism of addicts, no negativity.
and then it was shocking.

i think now it is even more shocking.

i'm not sure who told that - Christine in a book? somebody else? somebody said that heroin takes you to the highest peak - but there is nothing comparable in your life to that, you can't find happiness after so you need to take again, take again, take again...
ive once read a comment on reddit saying that heroin will be the greatest experience in your life - and after that nothing - absolutely nothing - will be even close to that experience, nothing will give you this novelty strike - you played your own song one too many times.
it scares me, okay? not the health and social issues (i know them and on the professional hand i know how and why they are so fucking bad) but this one thing really scares me in heroin. never leaving a cinema after a such a good movie im shaking? never reading book so good that i have to give it a 5 starts - or so bad that i give it one star and i just have to write a review to say why? never have this stunning experience while seeing christmas lights around the city, the victory of climbing a mountain, never being so happy after finally being off the train? all the small and big things which make life worth living - only H would give that... thats. its literally hurting me.

okay, we know about drugs. but
i don't remember the shocking value of just the beginning of the story - broken family, abuse, alone parenting; we all know that is not the best environment for a child and for growth, so ill skip to the most shocking (after years, i knew this story earlier) part - greens. green places, places to have fun, to play, to be a child. Christine says about how she and her peers were just bored. they didn't have a place for themselves, so they went where they thought they will have. and there - drugs found them.
after this many years (like more than 40 years) we still don't listen. how we create our towns, cities - our environment is so important to growth, stress and crimes. even tho, we still build enormous concentrate units, as much as we can, only money matter. but it matters. and it reaps. it matters. there is research about environment can make us do things this or that way. why didn't we listen to Christine? this book. is. popular. why. we should listen to whole story, not only the hardest part about the heroin and sex.

sometimes while i read i already think what i would like to write in the review or what my rating would be. this time, my rating is not clearly the rating of the book - i don't feel like i'm enough of a person to decide how to rate somebody's life, their experience and way what and why they told. so these five stars - go to the all known and unknown drugs victims. kind of light for them. i can do at least it. i hope they found new songs, new experiences and happiness, wherever they are now.

Popolarissimo negli anni '80, è un libro che i miei coetanei hanno tutti letto durante l'adolescenza.
Crudo, tagliente, grigio piombo e senza via d'uscita: Noi, I Ragazzi dello Zoo di Berlino è agghiacciante. Uno spaccato ineguagliabile di una piaga che ha segnato migliaia di famiglie.
E che oggi ha solo nomi diversi, ma continua a sterminare e a corrodere il tessuto familiare e sociale.

That's an incredibly fucked up but yet compelling read.

I read it when I was a teenager and definitely it scared me off taking drugs. I felt very sorry for the main character, for what she was going through when she was still so very, very young. This book shocked me for many years and taught me. I read Polish translation "Dzieci z dworca Zoo".