"Bear your soul in Berlin!" a Berlin Travel Page by yooperprof

Berlin is still a city where construction cranes and massive works projects are a common sight. I like how many construction projects in Berlin include viewing platforms where pedestrians can directly see the progress that is being made in transforming the city.

I have to admit: this photo was taken late on a November afternoon- it was around 5 p.m. It gets dark early in Berlin!

Like other places with a lot of history -- with a lot of unhappy history -- Berlin is a city of many ghosts. As you travel in and around Berlin, you are likely to see many memorials large and small, sober and emotional, traditional and post-modern. They are a reminder that time in Berlin exists in several dimensions, that "the present" is not the only reality here.

I suppose you could go to Berlin with a completely "presentist" frame of mind, caring not an iota about history, the past, or memory. I suppose you could be one of those people who just lives for today, who avoids thinking about anything that happened the day before yesterday. (I see a lot of those people at my university, in my history classes!) "Now-ist" people can enjoy Berlin - on the surface of things, at least. But if you _are_ one of those people, be careful what you say to Berliners and how you say it. A little cultural ignorance could easily alienate a lot of people very quickly here.

A word of advice to visitors to Berlin: read up on the history of Berlin before you get here. Don't skip the pre-Hitler years, either. Berlin's history is more than nasty Nazis and noble Americans helping out with the airlift.