A tale of 2 cities, by history

BERLIN » I’ve been to Berlin twice and seen two different cities. My first visit, in 1966, was a depressing experience. In the midst of what then seemed an endless Cold War, Berlin was divided by its infamous Wall into the repressed communist East and the brash, freewheeling West. I explored the city on both sides of the wall, but neither presented an attractive picture. Though World War II had been over for more than 20 years, both sections were still visibly damaged.

My recent visit revealed a surprisingly vibrant, glad-to-be-alive, cosmopolitan population, largely influenced by a creative, artistic spirit throughout the city — quite a change over the 23 years since the communist government in the East was overthrown and the wall was torn down.

Ironically, it was the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall that contributed directly to the influx of many young artists. Berlin’s popularity with this group was initially economic. The simple apartments of the former East Berlin were, relatively speaking, dirt cheap, especially in the Mitte district, next to where the wall had been. A few impoverished yet resourceful young talents even managed to find some digs for free.

Over the past couple of decades, this creative population became generally more successful. Today the overall feeling of much of Berlin is comparable to what I enjoyed living in New York’s Greenwich Village in the 1960s.

The German capital is now what Time magazine recently labeled a "happening place." Klaus Wowereit, an openly gay politician who was born in Berlin and who grew up to become its current mayor, summed it up differently:

"Berlin is poor — but sexy," the mayor declared.

Some observers compare the Berlin of today to the Paris of a century ago. The reunited Berlin has attracted some of the world’s most inventive souls. Artists were followed by actors, directors, writers, clothing designers, architects, musicians and others.

Some other German cities, notably Leipzig and Hamburg, have also drawn talented folks to live and work in the past few decades. Leipzig turned over an entire former textile factory complex, the Spinnerei, to the city’s artists and musicians. Hamburg’s long architectural and musical heritage is symbolized by the daringly modern Elbe Philharmonic Hall, now under construction on the waterfront.

But most agree that Berlin deserves the title as the hippest city in Germany — some say in all of Europe.

The center of all this creative energy has begun to move recently into the western part of the city, with many galleries, designer clothing shops and studios just off the tree-lined Kurfūrstendamm — the busy, high-end shopping boulevard now generally referred to as the Ku’damm. It has often been described as the Champs-Elysėes or the Fifth Avenue of Berlin.

As in Paris a century ago, many gather in the city’s popular restaurants and sidewalk cafes. Currently one of the places to see and be seen in Berlin is named the Paris Bar, a French-style bistro at 152 Kantstrasse. It appears to be among the more modest of the city’s 7,000 bars and restaurants, many of which are open around the clock.

My hotel wasn’t far away, itself a study in avant-garde, with small rooms filled with clever, far-out decorations. The funky Hotel Q, at 67 Knesebeckstrasse, assigned me an ūber-modern chamber with a bed from which I could have rolled directly into the hot tub.

On a grander level, it’s been said that there are more structures designed by prominent international architects in Berlin than anywhere else in Europe. Considering that the city was decimated during World War II, it is a logical conclusion. The city’s population had dropped from 4.3 million before the war to around 2 million, many of them refugees. At the same time, three-quarters of the city’s apartments had either been destroyed or were uninhabitable. The architects hired to rebuild Berlin had the unusual opportunity to create a modern city virtually from the ground up.

Among them were Frank Gehry, Rem Koolhaas, Helmut Jahn and Renzo Piano, who designed buildings for the renewed Potsdammer Platz, which had been nearly destroyed completely during the war. Daniel Libeskind’s Jewish Museum on Lindenstrasse, finished in 1999, is renowned for the way its expressive, jagged shapes express violent loss and isolation. Today there are special tours that cover Berlin’s architectural highlights.

American and other foreign tourists still flock to many of the city’s wartime and Cold War relics, such as the spruced up Brandenburg Gate and the site of Checkpoint Charlie — our own gateway between East and West when my wife and I visited in 1966.

Not far away is the strikingly modern Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, which includes an underground information center with the names of all the known Jewish victims of the Nazi regime. The memorial consists of 2,711 black rectangular blocks that get ever higher and more claustrophobia-inducing as you walk among them. The sloping ground beneath your feet throws you off balance, as the German Jews must have felt with the Nazis closing in on them.

Through the rows of slabs, visitors can see other people appear and disappear, but essentially each person is isolated, as the Jews were, facing deportation and death. Ironically, at certain places the Reichstag and the Brandenburg Gate are both visible — they are that close — and yet to the abandoned Jews, many of whose families had lived in Germany for centuries, impossibly distant.

The Reichstag played a major role in the war. From my first visit to Berlin, I remembered it as being heavily damaged. It was subsequently repaired and topped off with a clear glass dome, designed by British architect Norman Foster. This feature now provides visitors to the structure with dramatic views of the city. The building is generally referred to as the Bundestag today because it again serves as the seat of the reunified German parliament.

The high spirits in Berlin reflect the general optimism of Germans throughout the country, which has weathered the world economic recession comparatively well. Unemployment is low, and Germany was recently reported to have completely recovered from the financial crisis of the past few years.

As I said, I saw Berlin twice. But with the current stimulating and upbeat mood in the German capital, I look forward to seeing it again.

Travel writer Robert W. Bone, formerly of Kailua, maintains websites at robertbone.com and travelpieces.com. He now lives near San Francisco.