TRY a quick word association quiz. In 60 seconds, roll off the top of your head the names you can associate with Berlin. Here's a start: David Bowie, Adolf Hitler, Marlene Dietrich, Willy Brandt, John F. Kennedy, Albert Einstein, Richard Strauss, Christiane F. Nefertiti, Rudolf Hess, Nina Hagan, Berthold Brecht, Frederick the Great. Berlin is Germany only to the extent to which New York is the United States. The parallels between the two cities are inescapable. They share an alluring decadence, an affection for the arts, a bunker mentality, a gentle disdain for most outsiders and the employment of a sharp, impatient, almost insolent sub-dialect. Like most New Yorkers, Berliners discuss and argue, hail and dismiss, create and condescend. If they didn't originate it, it doesn't exist. They love dogs and don't care much for other humans. And, of course, citizens of the City of the Wall (gone in substance but still evident in spirit) feel much the same about their Munich or Frankfurt brothers as Big Apple folk feel about the plastic people 'out on the coast' in Los Angeles. You either love or hate the metropolis. But beware; if you embrace the former emotion, the affair can never be lukewarm. Berlin gets into your blood like an addictive substance. Although only 750 years old, it is, like Jerusalem, one of civilisation's crossroads. Global history has been determined within its borders. Superpowers have confronted each other, tyrants have risen and fallen, great music, art and theatre have been bestowed on man, and examples of extraordinary bravery, tenacity and optimism have been recorded. A city of fanciful myths and harsh realities, it is progressive and conservative, provincial and cosmopolitan. In all Europe, perhaps in all the world, it is unique. The first thing that strikes you is the mood of intrigue, even in post-unification days. For those raised in the trashy bosom of Western mass culture, Berlin is like a giant film set. You swear you've seen it all before, and you probably have, on screens large and small. Get down to the Glienicker Bridge and you can stub out a cigarette purposefully and stroll across it, eyes averted from the other spy being swapped in the fertile field of your imagination. Pieces of the Berlin Wall are now thought of as so much rubble to be disposed of but, when those heady scenes of November 9, 1989, were beamed around the world, the once-feared Berlin Wall was systematically dismantled by protesters, tourists and professional souvenir sellers. For one deutschemark you could hire a hammer and chisel from a proponent of the capitalist doctrine and work off some personal frustration by pounding away mindlessly. The chips eventually dislodged became a form of currency outside Germany. Offered a choice of a string of pearls or a chunk of the Berlin Wall, most people would have opted for the wall every time. Romance is a hard thing to explain, but it is a potent motivator nonetheless. Head over to the eastern side by subway train to the recently reopened Friedrichstrasse station and you slip past sealed ghost stations which haven't seen a commuter for almost 30 years. In the old walled Berlin, you would know when you had passed from a West Berlin metro station to an East German one by the magazine covers on the platform stalls - they would change from full-frontal nudes to observations on the writings of Marx and Engels. The lines are a little fuzzier these days but there is still an unmistakable distinction between the two worlds. Old ways die hard and conservatism is a trait not easily erased. A visit to East Berlin is still like a few hours at your great aunt's; thanks for the tea and the photo album, but we really have to be going. Where you generally have to be going to is the justly famous Kurfurstendamm (Ku'damm), once described by Americannovelist Thomas Wolfe as the longest coffee shop in Europe. In fact, it is a street - a long, crowded thoroughfare through West Berlin crammed with restaurants, nightclubs, cinemas, bars, porno shops, boutiques and the usual array of free world diversions. It is here you begin to grasp some idea of the colossal wealth of this post-war miracle state. Only in Japan will you see more lavishly stocked department stores and only in London will you see more garishly bedecked punks. There is a long tradition of theatrical radicalism in Berlin that is kept aggressively alive by a vibrant youth counter-culture. By and large, adult Germans are fairly solid and serious and not to be feared unless you get in their way at breakfast. Young Germans - or at least young Berliners - are another breed. There is no innocence in this city, at least in the western part. The teenage junkie prostitutes under the bridge near the Zoo station leave you in little doubt of that. When groups of squatters decide to stage a street march protest, they will as often as not do it naked. This is the generation that knows nothing of war and bombing blitzes, nothing of air lifts and starvation, but everything of rock music and sexual freedom. Since unification, Berlin has lost much of its air of total self-containment. Once you had to leave West Germany to reach the enclave of West Berlin, where a feeling of isolation never quite left you. Most goods reached the city via an extremely monotonousroad corridor. The KaDeWe department store is still the largest on the continent, with a mind-boggling selection of elegant fashion, furnishings and culinary specialities. There are 1,300 restaurants and just as many snack bars, to say nothing of another 2,000 or so pubs, bars and beer halls. Berlin, as two cities, or even as one, is surprisingly vast; it is the largest city in Germany. There are lakes, parks, farms, fields and forests within the 480 square kilometres of what was West Berlin, as well as a little over three million residents - and rising. It used to be quite possible to have a day in the country without needing to enter communist territory. There are even 20 village churches, seven built before the 13th century. Such rustic contrasts were essential to the emotional well-being of a city, which was not, in the strict historical sense, a city at all. When the Russians, Americans, British and French carved the place up after Hitler blew his brains out in his bunker and enabled World War II to finally end, the Soviets managed to lay claim to the downtown area, with its exquisite public buildings, churches and monuments. The sector that would become prosperous West Berlin was actually not much more than the outer suburbs. Thus, all one saw in the glittering western half was basically new. As it happened, the stern socialists proved irresponsible guardians of history. They obliterated the 16th century Imperial Palace, one of Europe's prized architectural monuments, in 1951 to install an ersatz Red Square known as Marx-Engels Platz - as dreary a quadrangle as one might ever care not to see. One could cry - and no doubt, some have. That is not likely to happen again now west has merged with east. The city is still trying to find its feet and accommodate the unusual and the unacceptable as part of everyday life. Admittedly, a large part of the tension and intrigue has evaporated but the artistic, bohemian, rebellious nature is still very much in evidence. Berlin will always be one of Europe's most fascinating and compelling cities. How to get there Cathay Pacific and Lufthansa fly daiy to Berlin via frankfurt. Cost $11,620. Information supplied by Wallem travel, phone 865-1777
