Berlin

Go to Berlin when it’s chilly. That’s when the atmosphere of the Cold War, which lasted from 1961 until the Berlin Wall was torn down in 1989, still lingers, especially as you cross the bridge which marked the former borders of West Berlin at twilight and recall those movies in which spies in trilby hats were swapped from one side to the other. It’s about 20 minutes drive on the road to Potsdam from the centre of the city.

1989 and a city divided before that seems a lifetime ago for Berlin’s younger residents, but for the rest of us, the memory of the wall coming down seems much more recent than 17 years. Today there are just a few fragments left as well as a long line of bricks set into the highway to mark where the wall once stood. As for Checkpoint Charlie, the booth declaring “You Are Now Leaving the American Sector,” is now just a little shed in a gleaming high street surrounded by stores and new buildings.

But history lingers in a grand and imposing city, rare in Europe also because it feels so empty. Berlin, built to be the German capital, as it is once again of the united Germany, has a diminishing population as those from the East travel to the more robust economies of German cities further West. As a result, rents are cheap and the art scene is booming. Life is still a cabaret here, old chum, as the nightlife is unfettered, uncensored and as wild as you want. You’ll see people that look as if they have walked out of Otto Dix paintings; long, angular faces and women sporting radical haircuts. It’s fabulous.

You are constantly reminded of art and movies in Berlin. Wim Wenders is a Berliner and his masterpiece “Wings of Desire” is set here. A fellow Berliner is the model, muse and artist Veruschka, born Vera von Lehndorff, daughter of Count Heinrich von Lehndorff, a key member of the German resistance and a brave member of the plot to blow up Hitler, which failed in 1944. Having escaped capture twice, he turned himself in when his family was threatened. He was tortured and executed. The young Vera lived hiding in the woods for a while and understandably left Germany as soon as she could. She has only recently returned to live in Berlin.

I stayed at the Hotel de Rome, a serious grand edifice dating from 1889 The hotel opened nine days before I checked in. The building used to be the head office of the Dresdner Bank until 1945 after which, stranded, it sat empty. The concierge, Benjamin, could not have been more helpful. The rooms are huge, the bathrooms get 10 out of 10 and the towering lobby was spectacularly and stylishly anointed for Christmas. Apparently the lap pool is superb too, although I ran out of time to take a dip.

You can walk for miles in Berlin, which we did, first taking in a large hot chocolate at the famous Cafe Einstein on Unter den Linden before walking through the Brandenburger gate, once marooned in no man’s land behind the Berlin Wall. We doubled back to enjoy Museum Island. Berlin has some of the finest museums on earth, many of them on a spit of land in the centre of the city where two rivers meet - with the world famous Pergamon as the highlight.

Just walking the streets is wonderful especially when one walks through an arched doorway into such gems as the art-nouveau style courtyard of Hackesche Hofe. Although this is such a modern city, it has so much history, much of it extremely grim of course. Suddenly one comes across Rosenstrasse where hundreds of Christian Berliner women stood in defiance of the Nazis and in brutally cold winter temperatures to demand the return of their Jewish husbands who had been rounded up to be shipped to Auschwitz. Miraculously, after they had stayed in silent vigil all through the winter, Goebbels himself ordered the release of their husbands in March 1944. The Neue Synagogue with its gleaming gold dome has been beautifully restored after the horrors of Kristallnacht in November 1938 and later desecration by Nazi thugs. The Reichstag, burned in 1933 and nearly obliterated after the war by the Soviets, reopened as the seat of German parliament in 1999 and is now topped by a spectacular glass dome by Norman Foster. Alas the queue to get in was too huge - both at 9am and 9pm at night when I was there. Apparently the trick is to secure a restaurant reservation to the pricey joint up at the top which means you don’t have to queue. With the plan I’d just order a salad, I tried that to be told it was completely booked out. Waving an international press card didn’t help either.

Berlin has the usual mix of homogenous fashion labels from round the world as well as funky local labels. The local star is Wunderkind, which despite the youth implied in the name is the new baby of Wolfgang Joop, now solidly into his sixties, and the man behind the enormously successful worldwide Joop! label until he sold his final 5 percent a few years back. Richer than rich, he can now do what he likes and what he likes is to create actually very beautiful and romantic clothes in an historic villa on the lake at Potsdam - right across from Schloss Cecilienhof where Clement Atlee, Harry Truman and Joseph Stalin met to decide the future of post war Germany by confirming the decisions made at Yalta. Potsdam, the former Prussian Royal seat is truly spectacular (no wonder former super model, Nadja Auermann lives on the lake here).

Not to miss should you go to Berlin in the festive season, as the Christmas markets where you can walk round with a steaming mug of Gluvein, which you’ll need because when the sun goes down it is extremely cold.

Sleep

Hotel de Rome, Behrenstraße 37, 10117 Berlin. + 49 30 460 60 90
http://www.hotelderome.com/

Eat

Café Einstein, Kurfürstenstrasse 58, 10785 Berlin. + 49 30 261 50 96
http://www.hotelderome.com/

Shop

Wunderkind Boutique, Gendarmenpalais Markgrafenstrasse 42, 10117 Berlin. + 49 30 28 0405 85
http://www.wunderkind.de/

See

Pergamon Museum, Bodestrasse 1-3, 10178 Berlin. + 49 30 2090 5555
http://www.smb.spk-berlin.de/

Reichstag, Platz der Republik, Berlin-Tiergarten.