Berlin

Now I know I have been writing disclaimers on almost all of my posts to indicate just how patchy my treatment of these cities has been, and I know that false modesty and self-consciousness and all that can get old really, really quick. But hey, I am trying to learn German here, this is no time for further self-improvement. So this time I am going to go one step further and blatantly plagarise someone else's thoughts on Berlin cos I reckon they're onto something, and said it all much better than I could.

Eighteen years on from the collapse of the wall and the city is in the thrilling throes of making itself up, deciding what it’s all about, creating a future out of the collected lessons of an unusually turbulent past. It’s an intriguing and beautiful mess of left-wing activism, naïve idealism, stomping capitalism, a struggling economy, dizzily shifting demographics, national pride, national shame, identity politics, scholarly debate and blooming creativity. It’s a city of contrasts and counterpoints – it’s both rough and refined, multi-cultural but scarcely multi-ethnic, and the art and ideas produced here range from the sublime to the ridiculous. There is a lot of rot in Berlin that passes itself off as alternative, but there is much of worth and, importantly, the city affords everyone the time and the platform for self-expression, rot or not. With cheap-rents, a low cost of living and abundant physical space to manoeuvre, it’s no wonder that slews of Irish people, British people, Americans and Australians are moving in to take a break from the culture of work-sleep-work-repeat and to immerse themselves in the cultural, political and artistic genesis of an exiting new capital.
It’s an important place, physically and psychically at the centre of the new Europe; and the pace and force of change here make Berlin an invigorating city to be in and infuse a sense of history being made by the day. So now is the time to take a look.

Indeed. I've been looking and all of a sudden I am pretty much in love.