Berlin: City Overview

As the largest city in Germany, Berlin offers visitors more than any other city in the country. Like Paris and New York, Berlin is a city that's nonstop with bustling pubs and raucous nightclubs teeming with restless energy. The wealth and quality of Berlin's cultural life is unmatched, with world-class museums, opera and theatre, music - from classical to countercultural - and a lively art and gallery scene. Even after the ravages of war and the sad neglect of the eastern parts of the city, surviving palaces, monuments and historic structures inspire the heart and lift the imagination. Encompasing the city is a vast green belt of forests, parks and lakes. Making escapes from the urban grit and the constant pace of life, a simple matter of an equally quick ride on the U-Bahn.

The city of Berlin has seen all too well the trauma of war. Nowhere else has a city been divided in half by a brutal and impenetrable wall, its people forcibly and ideologically separated for 40 years. Once at the very epicenter of the Cold War, Berlin has become the bridge between east and west. Its physical scars are healing and progress is being made to bring the infrastructure of east and west back together again.

Berlin is a very unique city in contrast to the rest of the country. The structure of social hierarchy so prevalent in much of German society is less rigid here. What you can do is more important than where you come from. Nowhere else in the country is it easier for entrepreneurs to realize their ambitions or for people to participate culturally or politically.

As the world looks on this most dramatic city - a variety of feelings are often evoked: sometimes fascination, sometimes horror and even in deep sympathy. At the same time repellent and seductive, light-hearted and brooding, Berlin continues to be a city of extremes in both its accomplishments and its problems.

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