Readpolitik: The Character of Berlin

I grew up in Berlin in the late 60s and early 70s, and returned to live in the East after the Wall fell. One night in the pre-unification summer of 1990, some friends and I went to an illegal rave in an abandoned subway station underneath the border. The streets above were strewn with piles of cobblestones, impassible even by a tank. But a stoplight nearby still worked. After we emerged, at dawn, picking our way through the rubble, my tweaked-out, sweat-drenched, illegal-party-going German friends suddenly stopped. They were waiting at the intersection for the red light to change. It was five in the morning, and there was no possibility of a car (or