‘In no city have I felt as unsafe as Berlin’: opera singer sues metro over racism claims

The German capital's liberal reputation has been derailed by clashes between subcontracted ticket inspectors and black people

A Berlin metro ticket controller squeezes through a throng of old-school punks, mariachi band members and burly men in leather chaps, all while jauntily humming Is' mir egal, It's all the same to me".

The 2015 viral ad, featuring Turkish-German Neukolln rapper Kazim Akboga, was a great marketing success for the German capital's public transport company, BVG: if you ride on our metros, trams and buses, it said, you can be whoever you want to be - as long as you remember to buy a ticket.