Big bad Berlin

Berlin is Germany's capital and its economic, scientific and creative powerhouse - truly a well-oiled German urban machine. An immense effort to rebuild the heavily bombed metropolis after the war has endowed it with a sleek central core of stylish modern buildings nestled among several refurbished or untouched historic stone buildings. Its tree-lined streets link together an incredible number of parks and green spaces - covering nearly a third of the city's overall area.

Bicycle is the way to get around Berlin

Most of Berlin's spacious avenues have bicycle paths and many intersections are equipped with special traffic lights, making this a great way to explore the city, whose sights are relatively spread out. Rather than squashing everything into one crowded centre, Berlin has four or five smaller centres, which reduces traffic congestion and makes life much easier for pedestrians and cyclists.

It's easy to forget that 3.5 million people live here. The atmosphere here is laid-back, almost mellow, with so few traffic snarls, quirkily dressed hipsters pedaling slowly by on vintage bicycles and everyone giving each other a cheery "HALLO" to greet each other. With more galleries and museums that you could possibly hope to see in a single visit, alternative living thrives in Berlin. Grafitti appears to be tolerated, vegeterianism is popular and recycling is king.

By German standards, Berlin seems like quite a tolerant city. It is very multi-cultural now, especially with its large Turkish population, many of whom live in the neighbourhood of Kreuzberg. Besides doner kebab joints on just about every street corner, there are lots of Chinese, Thai and Vietnamese restaurants in the inner city. We were so delighted with this - and intensely craving Asian food - that we had at least three pho noodle soups during our visit.

Berlin has a well-deserved reputation for having the world's best nightlife. Groups of eclectic youngsters prowl the streets, where the party is to be had just about any night of the week. On Saturday nights the streets are packed with revellers with beers in their hands as they warm up before hitting the clubs. Its not uncommon to see devoted partiers wandering around in broad daylight on a weekday after several big nights out.

As any Berliner will tell you, its all about the techno. Its Berghain club, built in a disused power plant, can accommodate up to 1800 party people under its 18-metre high roof. As well as chic bars packed with trendy types hanging out of them, huge grafitti-soaked warehouse complexes draw huge crowds, banging out music from dusk to dawn. There is an entire precinct in the edgy eclectic neighbourhood of Friedrichshain, containing at least five separate warehouses all pumping out different types of music, as well as an open-air bar with lounges and, wait for it, a volleyball net suspended over a surface of imported sand.

The wall and the post-war occupation zones

On first glance, its not obvious how much this freakishly organised, party friendly city has been through in the past 100 years. Berlin hides her scars well. They start to show themselves when you visit the many memorials to the horrors the city's residents endured during the Second World War and the ensuing division during the Cold War.

The infamous Berlin Wall, one of the strongest visual icons of the Cold War, is still intact in parts of the Eastern side of the city. It has been opened up to artists to decorate, and the East Side Gallery as it is known, is now a series of murals, from the cheesy, to the thoughtful to the flamboyant. It stretches along hundreds of metres of concrete breezeblock that used to be topped with razor wire to prevent residents of East Berlin escaping to the West.

Like the bloodthirsty Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia or the bombings during the Troubles in Northern Ireland, the thing that most amazes me about the Berlin Wall is that this bizarre, inhumane situation occurred during my lifetime. I was 10 years old when the wall came down in 1989, a bit too young to understand the significance of it all. To me it looked like Berliners were having a giant rock concert on top of some concrete slabs and doing a lot of graffiti for fun.

It has been an incredible experience to get a close up view of the wall and learn more about the events surrounding it. This year is the 50th anniversary since the wall was constructed by East Germany to stop an exodus of its citizens amid falling wages and rising poverty in contrast to the increasing prosperity of the West. The Checkpoint Charlie museum - the border crossing used by Allied personnel since the occupation of West Berlin after the war - has amazing stories of escape, bravery and tragedy as East Berliners hid in cars, swam across the river and in one case even invented a light aircraft - in order to escape the communist regime.

Checkpoint Charlie

The museum was created shortly after the wall's construction by historian Rainer Hildebrandt. It has cars with hollowed out sections, a chair lift, a hot air balloon and a small pedal powered aircraft used to cross the border. Those caught trying to cross into West Germany would be shot on sight. As many as 600 people were killed trying to cross the Berlin Wall in between 1961 and 1989.

A peaceful tree-studded park adjoining the bank of the Spree River plays host to a Russian war memorial, commemorating the estimated 26.6 million Red Army casualties in WWII. At one end of a long pitch are twin marble structures boasting hammer and sickle communist symbols. An imposing black statue of a soldier dominates the other end - he is carrying a sword, which is pointed at his feet which is cutting a swastika symbol in half.

Russian soldier breaking apart a swastika

Even more stirring is a visit to the Jewish memorial and museum. The memorial is quite a strange design - a series of rectangular concrete slabs rising unevenly out of the ground, across a large plaza. I'm not sure what the significance of the slabs are - they could represent graves or how the concentration camps looked perhaps. The museum itself is downstairs, and besides being modern and equipped with all sorts of multimedia exhibits, tells this horrific story of the Jewish Genocide remarkably well. There is a section on various Jewish families from different parts of Europe, with information on what they did before the war, where they were taken to and what happened to them. There was a surprising amount of documentary evidence - letters, photos and videos which made the exhibit much more personal, instead of having to present long passages of text about what occurred.

The main touristy area stretches from the historic Brandenburg gate (where Ronald Reagan made his famous speech imploring Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down the wall) through to an island on the Spree river studded with museums to the funky shopping district Alexanderplatz. Its not always easy to tell on which side of the former wall you are standing on just by looking. Some of the utilitarian soviet-style constructions aligning main drag Karl MarxAllee (formerly named after Stalin) are a dead giveaway. Berlin has great neighbourhoods filled with cafes, restaurants and bars on both sides of the river, particularly Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg. We discovered lots of cool clothes shops and cafes along Oranienstrasse as well as along Kopernickerstrasse in Kreuzberg.

We were fortunate enough to stay with some friends who live in Berlin, who gave us a great lowdown on things to do, lent us bicycles, cooked us delicious vegetarian food and helped us understand many things about the great lifestyle that people in their city enjoy. And we were completely charmed by their beautiful 2 1/2 year old daughter Leyla, who kept us entertained throughout our stay.

A mural on part of the remains of the wall