Berlin

BERLIN - part one

I had always snubbed it after seeing documentaries, photos, accounts, etc.. then the moment came, helped by its proximity to Poland, which I had chosen for this new trip of mine in Eastern Europe. I must admit that I was a fool because Berlin is perhaps the most beautiful and interesting European city. My daughter visited it last year and immediately told me that she wants to settle in Berlin to live in that city which, moreover, offers young people not only fun but also good job or study opportunities. And today I agree with her, if I had her lovely age, I too would try to go and live in this fabulous capital.

Why? Because Berlin is the most cutting-edge city in everything and is very liveable, very pleasant, not at all stressful like other European cities, no chaos, no impossible traffic, no bad air, and instead a multiethnic, open city, at the top for every aspect of modern life, well organised and administered, with cycle paths on every street (and I am a fanatic of bicycle transport, which I practise on the few cycle paths in Milan), a city alive from a cultural point of view and with great architecture featuring the best professionals who have expressed themselves at their best in this enormous building site that followed the fall of the wall. I lived there for 5 days in grand style, arriving from splendid Krakow, one of the most beautiful European cities, so I was very demanding about it, but Berlin didn't let me down, indeed it surprised me pleasantly.

It is the second largest city in the world after Los Angeles, which I know very well but which is far inferior from various points of view. I should say first that I love Los Angeles for certain aspects of it, but Berlin got inside me more, perhaps because European culture is far superior to American culture, more interested in business and appearances than in true culture.

I tried to compare it to the most beautiful city in the world, Paris, but Berlin comes out the winner too, even though I was in Paris way back in 1969 and then in 1979, so I didn't see the latest modernisations, such as LES HALLES. Berlin has the Spree, which is more beautiful than the Seine, it has museums such as the Pergamon and the Neues Museum plus the Bodemuseum and others in the Berlin museum island, which on the whole are superior to the Louvre. If Paris has Pigalle and Montmartre, Berlin responds grandly with Kreuzberg, Schoneberg and Preslauer Berg. If Paris has the Eiffel Tower, Berlin has the TV Tower, symbol of the GDR, the former East Germany. And if Paris has Versailles and Fontainebleau, Berlin has Charlottenburg Castle and those of Sans Souci and Neues Palais in Potsdam an hour away by underground.

And if Paris has Les Halles (which I haven't seen), Berlin has Potsdamer Platz, which is a triumph of modern architecture in excellent taste, thanks also to our architect Renzo Piano, but also many others of world fame