A review by nicoleisalwaysreading
Berlin Now: The City After the Wall by Peter Schneider

5.0

I didn’t love Berlin when I visited. I was tired, and I was led on long walking tours throughout the city. It was strangely sunny, and the sun beat down on me with unfamiliarity. It wasn’t until the day I left, when I walked past the S-Bahn tracks and to little shops, that I began to appreciate the life that hummed under its greyness. Later that summer, I read The Wall Jumper and revisited Berlin in my mind, albeit a past version of what I had seen. I began to fall in love with its pace and the young people drinking beer on patios in Mitte and old women with head scarves and grocery bags and all the other things I had seen. I more fully felt the force of history and memorialization that defines Berlin. Reading Berlin Now had the same intimate, lyrical power of Schneider’s fictional work. Each chapter was a treasure trove of facts that seemed to uncover corners of the city. I fell in love, and I can’t wait to travel back soon.