2014 Euro Reunion Tour, Day 3: Poor but sexy Berlin.

Berlin has become a major motif in my life's travel narrative, and consequently, it's quite difficult to put into words the emotions engendered by returning to the city a full 15 years after my last visit. It's a quarter-century since the Berlin Wall fell. Shortly before it was pried apart, both city and world were delineated by a geopolitical reality that may have disappeared almost overnight, but arguably left in its wake a persistent hangover of sorts persisting to the present time.

My personal state of consciousness then, as compared to now ... well, it's complicated. 29 years of age compared with 54; several different lives on both sides of it.

No matter, at least for the moment. We arrived on time at Tegel and hailed a taxi to our Airbnb room in what formerly was the western zone, and remains so in my thinking. Baggage duly deposited, it was a short walk to the U-Bahn and a ride to the "other" side, now the very same side. The day was decidedly autumnal.

The television tower is a relic of the DDR, towering over Alexanderplatz. To make a long story very short, the East Germans tried to build a "new" Berlin, sweeping away certain older monuments like the palace of the Hohenzollerns, the exterior facade of which is being rebuilt a few hundred yards away from these two.

It's the Marx-Engels Forum, and the statuary survives amid construction on all sides. A short distance from here (and our first stop) is the DDR Museum, where enough time has passed that youngsters and newcomers receive instruction in the way things were before Achtung, Baby.

A double-decker municipal bus traverses the route from Alexanderplatz westward, past the cathedral, Museum Island, palace construction site, the famous street known as Unter den Linden and the Brandenburg Gate (all DDR terrain), then past the Wall's previous location to the Reichstag, Tiergarten and Zoo Station. The Kaiser Wilhelm memorial church remains opposite the zoo, reminding us that 70% of Berlin was destroyed during World War II.

A ten-minute walk brought us back to our lodging. There'd be another stroll, and a long session at a neighborhood gastropub mere steps away from the front door. I felt physical fatigue from a largely sleepless flight, but exhilaration with a pulsating, evolving city that thinks of itself as "poor but sexy." An overstatement, surely, though a departure from the way it was before.

My brain? It was filled with ghosts. Then again, it usually is.