BERLIN HOTELS & MORE

"Poor but sexy" is how Berlin's governing mayor, Klaus Wowereit, describes Germany's capital - and he should know. Wowereit himself is an openly gay culture-maven and party lover who's been on the cover of America's Time magazine. How many other cities can come up with a leader like that? It's not surprising that Berlin is sexy, because it is a city with a past. And what a rich, incomparable past! It was the seat of the German Empire, scene of the legendary "Cabaret" decadence of the 1920s, and then, in the 1930s and 40s, the headquarters of Hitler's Third Reich. After the Second World War left Berlin a wasteland, the city was rebuilt by the legendary "rubble women", who cleaned up the ruined city, brick by brick. Then came the Cold War and the infamous Wall, which reconfigured Berlin as a divided city, caught between the two superpowers, the US and the USSR. Berlin remained paralysed for decades, until Reunification in 1989, with its complicated and costly consequences. [...]