London’s "Observer" salutes Berlin as "City of Cool"
Oct 7th, 2007 by Paul Moor
Oh, you poor dear people who have to live anywhere else in the world except Berlin – for me by far the most fascinating of all the fascinating cities I’ve managed to live in, and those others include New York (seven years), Paris (two), Munich (five), and San Francisco (thirteen), before my belated awakening to the fact that if I had a home-town feeling about any place on earth, I had it about present-day Berlin.
As far as I know, the USA has no weekly newspaper comparable to The Observer in London; I guess the rich Sunday edition of The New York Times comes closest. Unlikely as it may seem, I have a distinct recollection of an off-hand mention by an English teacher at El Paso’s Crockett Grammar School almost a lifetime ago that some British newspaper called The Manchester Guardian had attained a world-wide reputation for the highest journalistic standard anywhere. In time, its reputation and influence became so powerful that it dropped the Manchester and settled into London’s Fleet Street as simply The Guardian. It seemed only natural that it join forces with the separate but equal weekly Observer, as it did some time back. It remains my favorite of all daily newspapers, in no matter what language, and thanks to the bounty of my favorite of all home-page websites – http://www.aldaily.com/ – I have constant access to it simply by clicking on “Newspapers”.
Kate Connolly of The Observer recently pressed a visit on our fair city, and her report of that sojourn fairly bursts into song. Some purely chance encounters (which even a gung-ho Berliner like me could hardly claim as characteristic) made such an electrifying impact on the lady that she uses them as her article’s lead:
“It’s not, is it? Clint Eastwood downing a beer in the Helmut Newton Bar, John Cusack cycling along a cobbled street, Matt Damon strolling through a courtyard of fashion boutiques drawing on a cigarette? Nearly two decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the cultural life of the city has suddenly exploded again and is propelling it on its way to becoming the new New York.” Her London’s editors have headed her piece “America’s creative élite invade Berlin, city of cool”, and the sub-head starts to explain why: “Affordable rents and the cultural buzz are luring top-level US talents to a reborn German capital”.
But why put up with me as a mere go-between bearer of good tidings instead of providing you direct access to that unabridged original by simply by clicking here….
