I love Berlin. My favourite city in all of Germany. Though I’ve not visited others. Its a funny place really. Not staggeringly beautiful, like Vienna or Prague, not picturesque like Venice or Paris, its more like a cross between Burnley and a council estate in Croydon. Nice.

Ok, it does have some nice old(ish) buildings but as over 90% were lost in the war bombings, those have all been rebuilt subsequently. It also has the remains of the Soviet years in the East, horrible blocks of flat, stone, bland, ugly apartment buildings. Those in the West ain’t much better.

Yet Berlin has a great feel about it. And great shops, bars, restaurants. And an energy. Which is mainly spent considering its past. And what a past.

Mainly, the nazis and then the cold war. More recently the Wall and Volkswagen.

Germany is really cool about the war. In a seriously good way. They are genuinely sad and remorseful about their nazi past and have memorials everywhere for the atrocities of Krystalnacht, the Holocaust, Hitler in general. His famous bunker is not open to view so you have to stand 8.5 metres above it in a car park, and piss on the grass and feel better.

Very few buildings survived the war. So there’s a lot of ‘this is where ***** used to stand’. Which is great. The war obliterated the nazi horrors and no-one was in any rush to replace them or remember them.

Great.

Then the Russians arrived. And the oppressors became the oppressed. East Germany, including East Berlin, which became the living embodiment of the total failure of Communism on every level.

Lots of nice cars here. Oddly, a lot of German cars. Including VWs. And Trabants. Remember Trabants?

Happy Sunday

A xxxx