Visited Berlin for three days over the Easter weekend. I'd always liked Berlin, but I'd not been there properly (not counting a one-day in-out for work) since the wall came down. Berlin was always for me an almost mythical 60s/70s destination - the cradle, virtually, of "Alternatives Leben und Wohngemeinschaft", a natural collection point for artists, poets, musicians, deadbeats, oddballs and panhandlers, Baader-Meinhof "sympathisanten" and burned-out hippies. It's different now, of course, with reunification and reconstruction, but one still gets an impression of a city of promise and possibility. Urban, sophisticated, intellectual, resourceful, ironic, clever, garrulous, in a state of restless movement and constant metamorphosis, Berlin is relatively free, one has the impression, of that self-conscious awkwardness and stiffness one so often encounters in provincial Germany. Unsolicited conversations with taxi-drivers and shop-girls seem quite spontaneous and natural. If you say something "clever" you know you're going to get the same back with interest! People going about their business are, one feels, human beings first and social functions only second. This gives the city a strange "conspiratorial" feel, which is oddly liberating. While traveling on the U-Bahn, for example, our carriage was "entertained" by what were possibly the World's Worst Buskers! The reaction to our two beer-sodden, slouch-hatted, one-chord wonders singing "Country Road" off-key in a ludicrous accent was not one of irritation or embarrassment. No, everybody just laughed right out loud, taking pleasure in the shared sense of the ridiculous.

Another emblematic experience occurred on the Hackescher Markt. We were sat at a terrace enjoying the spring weather and our sausage and beer lunch, when, out of nowhere a character appeared in a clown's red nose and, walking in step behind insouciant pedestrians, proceeded to imitate their mannerisms. Peals of laughter from the pavement alerted the poor innocents to the fact that something was going on - literally behind their backs, but as they turned round, the clown would turn round in synch, and it would take some time before they finally twigged to what was happening. The satire was horribly cruel but fiendishly accurate, ruthlessly pointing up people's vacuity and pretension. Our laughter set in a grimace as we reflected that it could easily have been us.