I went to Berlin this past weekend.  I had some expectations about the city, but all of them were shattered.  Berlin is one of the strangest cities I have ever seen.  It is eccentric.  And this eccentricity seems to be what makes it thrive.  People love being weird there.  Riding the U-Bahn and the S-Bahn (the most confusing but utterly best public transportation system in the world), I got to see some of the weirdest people.  For example, I saw one guy who was wearing a trench coat made entirely of denim pockets sewn together.  Another man had a pink mohawk and a pierced cheek.  Berlin seems to me like a city that is trying to move on from the past (the Berlin Wall, Hitler, etc.).  It has a feeling of youth and life that just can't be ignored.  There were so many young people out and about everywhere that I had to feel this energy.  Architecturally, this feeling comes through.  There were not many old buildings because of the bombings during World War II.  With so much newer construction, the city had a feel that I had never experienced before.  There were modern additions resting on top of or inside historic buildings.  There were gigantic glass complexes.  There were abstract public art exhibitions on the boulevards.  Berlin wants to be big.  Each wide avenue said so.  Spaces like Potzdamer Platz said so.  Berlin is a city that is living in the 21st century.

One of my favorite public spaces was the Sony Center at Potzdamer Platz.  It has a giant gallery surrounded by commercial space - offices, ground floor restaurants, and a movie theater.  The office space cantilevers boldly the entrances and giant steel trusses fly over the mass of the buildings.  Everyone who goes in that space has to look up at the system of sun shades enclosing the gallery.  The closest thing I could compare it to would be Milan's gallery.  I took it was a sort of modernized form of this.  Just down the street was another great public space.  Just south of Renzo Piano's Kollhoff Tower, there is a park.  This park is really just a manmade hill set at about a 30 degree slope.  But it is a great green space because it acts like a giant public bench in that people stop and rest there.  Nothing was more enjoyable then to lay down in some sweet-smelling grass after walking the city all day.  Another highlight of the trip was stumbling upon some of the coolest art exhibits I have ever seen.  I was fortunate enough to see Kunsthaus Tacheles, a World War II-damaged warehouse in the Mitte district.  Going in, I entered a different world.  The walls were covered in graffiti, some years old.  I walked up many flights of stairs, stopping at each floor to view works of collage, metal, and paint.  It was one of the coolest/strangest experiences of my life.

Ultimately, Berlin was a great experience that me see that even after a city is wiped out, it can back and become one of the most lively places on earth.