“Swampy stagnation on one side, and the order that makes it possible to escape on the other: this is the tension that defines Berlin.”

Emerging scarred and wounded from World War II and the division of Germany, Berlin woke up as an alternative city where nothing was forbidden. Today it’s a magnificent sprawl of art, history, industry, and immigration where the rearguard coexists, mostly harmoniously, with the cutting edge.

Norman is a West German who came to Berlin just as the Wall was falling and decided to stay, intoxicated by its atmosphere of passion and possibility. Three decades later, over the course of a weekend—which means Friday to Monday, for Berliners do nothing mildly—Norman sees his city through fresh eyes as he traverses it with his new friend Bihter, a young Turkish medical student who moonlights as a BDSM consort. Together they explore its many strata: the opera house and the techno club, a boat ride along the Spree and a swim in the Wannsee, never far from the traces of an embattled past but not far from a warm conversation or a great meal either.

Lively, gently irreverent, and not quite jaded by so many overlapping strata of high culture and kink, Ohler’s Berlin is a gripping history lesson intertwined with a titillating narrative set against the backdrop of the capital of the future—a city that is somehow both very German and a universe unto itself.

Translated from the German by Marshall Yarbrough

Part of Travel with a Writer, The Walking Tree's global literary travel series pairing acclaimed writers with the cities and places they know intimately. Combining literary essays and fiction, original infographics, curated walks, and beautiful design, each volume is a literary companion to place, designed to be read in a single sitting. Together, the series forms a growing literary atlas of the world.