Guenter Grass won the Nobel Prize for literature. The time of apologies has lapsed. The Potsdamer Platz is a forest of avant-garde architecture, with office towers for grand transnationals. The broad, tree-lined boulevard of Unter den Linden is alive with cafes. Friedrichstrasse, once severed by the Berlin Wall, is a world main drag.
Clubs rock all night.
Stephan Berchtold, a young design artist, laughs hard when asked to define the new Berlin, let alone the new Germany. That is hardly hyperbole. Building cranes are uncountable. When a Potsdamer Platz project was finished last year, Daniel Barenboim conducted a sound and light symphony for dancing cranes. On the fashionable Savignyplatz, Axel Fuhrmann chats over cappuccino with the young professionals who buy his expensive lighting.