How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love a German Arms Race
One advantage of visiting a place only once in a while is that changes appear to happen stepwise. What happens so gradually that residents barely notice smacks you in the face. So it was with Berlin. Color was my overriding impression when visiting West and East Berlin in 1986. Or, more precisely, a clash of color palettes between the two halves of the city. West Berlin was spic-and-span, shopping districts like the Kurfürstendamm a riot of neon lights. The East? Gray, soot-stained, and drab. Bombed-out buildings lingered forty years after World War II. No more. New construction has filled in the no-man's land along the Berlin Wall, mostly effacing the Cold War past. Indeed, only small traces reveal that the city was once divided. A few sections of the Wall are on display in Potsdamer Platz, complete with a huckster decked out in an East German military uniform. He's eager -- for a fee -- to stamp your passport, just like the bad old days when crossing from West to ...