BERLIN

A CITY CREATED

BY THE MIXTURE OF

EDGE AND GRACE.

Certain places just create an instant connection with your soul. Berlin is one of those places for us. As we walked the streets, we were comfortable yet constantly challenged. It is a city that knows how to experience the complexity of life.

“Berlin, the greatest cultural extravaganza that one could imagine.”

— David Bowie

“Berlin is a city condemned forever to becoming and never to being.”

— Karl Scheffler

The 20th century was a hideous and troubled time for Berlin. There is no tidy way to sum up all of the pain and messiness that it experienced. A lot of cities would try to hide that ugliness. They would distract you or entice you to look the other way. Berlin is not that city.

“I don’t believe there is anything in the whole earth that you can’t learn in Berlin except the German language.”

— Mark Twain

It refuses to play illusionist to make you feel better. Instead it acknowledge where the city has been and refuses to forget. Next to beautiful homes or charming parks you discover memorials, monuments and museums recognizing horrors and pains experienced by Jewish and German peoples. You are constantly reminded of where the wall once stood, lives that were lost and where hatred can lead us all.

“All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin. And therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words, ‘Ich bin ein Berliner!”

— John F. Kennedy

“You are crazy, my child. You must go to Berlin.”

— Franz Von Suppé

“Berlin is more a part of the world than a city.”

— Jean Paul

“After the Berlin Wall came down I visited that city and I will never forget it. The abandoned checkpoints. The sense of excitement about the future. The knowledge that a great continent was coming together. Healing those wounds of our history is the central story of the European Union.”

— David Cameron

“In your calm is your strength.”

— German Proverb

The city feels real. It feels like life. This existence we have on earth is messy and beautiful and horrible and lovely. There is no easy way to handle the ugliness we experience, but that doesn’t take away from the joy of hearing leafy trees moving in the breeze, smelling fresh bread out of the oven or seeing the changing colors of a sunset.

Sometimes we think vacations should be fun-filled and perfect. The weather should be crystal clear and every meal should satisfy us. We shouldn’t have to experience anything that might make us feel a sense of melancholy. Berlin is a city that challenges that narrative. It says you can come here on vacation, but you must experience everything. This is how we live. This is how we learn.