‘Dancing through the darkness’: How Berlin rekindled its hedonistic heyday as a home for misfits

35 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, this gloriously eccentric city has perfected the art of moving on

I was squatting, feet sturdily planted, on a street just off Unter den Linden in central Berlin. Armed with a mallet, chisel and safety goggles, I chipped away with all my strength at a large vertical slab of concrete – metallic clouts echoing off the grand edifices of Stalinist architecture. 
Even with all the power (I lifted a weight once) at my disposal, all I succeeded in removing were tiny shards of rock. It made me wonder about the level of fervour and adrenalin it would have taken for the regular people of East and West Berlin to hammer at a similar slab with all their gusto, so that – on one watershed evening at the end of the 1980s – certain parts were stripped down to the steel mesh at their core.
It was 35 years ago on Saturday that the checkpoints of what was officially known in East Germany (the GDR) as the “anti-fascist protection rampart” were unexpectedly opened – a sea of people converging in central Berlin within minutes, climbing onto a barrier that had plagued the country (and the world) since 1961. This was the start of a new act for the city, one which would see it defined not by division, but once again by tolerance, culture and a touch of hedonism.
The Westin Grand Berlin now gives its guests the opportunity – with extra safety precautions – to pocket their own piece of Berlin Wall. Opened by the East German government in 1987, the hotel was then for foreign guests only, and only accepted Western hard currency. Later, after it was purchased by the Marriott group, builders discovered an entire room behind reception where the wires from all of the bugged rooms converged. 
It turned out that even the receptionists had been Stasi agents. Now, just around the corner from the Brandenburg Gate, it serves as a launchpad into the brutalist melting pot the city has become: left-field nooks, immigrant flavours, hidden doorways, underground clubs, and smoky bars harking back to the roaring 1920s.
The literal decadence of the Weimar era is the default setting for Berlin; the city’s reputation for the unusual and debauched was not just built on a post-1989 identity. It has always been a heartland for misfits – “You are crazy my child, you must go to Berlin” was, after all, coined by composer Franz von Suppé in the 1800s. 
During the Cold War, West Berlin was a place for German men to hide from conscription, a shelter for misfits from the outside world, and, because of the army presence, there was no curfew. When the membrane of the Wall was removed, the underground clubbing scene of the West and the dissident “ost-punk” world of the East smashed together, creating a reaction which would pulse through the city. Before the pandemic, one third of all tourism was club tourism.
I walked under heavy skies from the Brandenburg Gate, the iron cross in its quadriga only restored in 1990 – the Tor was formerly situated in the communist sector, who associated the cross with imperialism; past Ampelmann shops, the GDR’s crossing light icon – based on the silhouette of Communist leader Erich Honecker – now fashioned into various merchandise, from plushies to pesto… it’s not quite the socialist paradise he’d envisioned.
Socialist classicism gave out to glass and steel as I arrived at Potsdamer Platz. Once the beating heart of a pre-war Berlin, it became a symbol of the division during the Cold War, sitting in the middle of the Death Strip, the heavily guarded area of no-man’s land between the two parts of the Wall. 
These days, it’s having a second stab at rehabilitation, and one of the new occupants is the classy, atmospheric Frederick’s restaurant. Piecing together fragments of Berlin’s history – parts of the bombed luxury hotel Esplanade and the legendary Kaisersaal – it’s modern Berlin incarnate, where the opulent past is smashed together and adapted to fuse with the present.
Talking of adaptability: a literal stumble away from my hotel, behind an unassuming door, Cookies was first established in 1994 by Heinz “Cookie” Gindullis as part of the great wave of a new clubbing culture, including the likes of Tresor, Matrix and Ostgut, which would become the world-famous Berghain. By 2014, craving change, Gindullis decided to embark on a new journey, converting the club to Crackers restaurant downstairs, a Michelin-starred plant-based Cookies Cream upstairs, and a little speakeasy for good measure, re-appropriating ingredients from the kitchen.
I’m losing count of how many times I have used “re-appropriated”, “rehabilitated”, “repurposed” and “adapted” thus far – but it is apt in a city that has perfected the art of moving on. This was apparent in the cobweb-blowing Fork and Walk tour, on the outskirts of the city centre. Reacting to a huge drain from the Soviet countries into the West, the GDR brought in workers from its allied countries such as Vietnam, North Korea and China. 
A wealth of these cultures and flavours is present in modern Berlin, especially in the old Eastern boroughs. The sprawling and bustling Don Xuan Center was not conducive to a speakeasy-induced sore head, but as guide Paul took me through his Vietnamese culture, from restaurant to restaurant, meal to meal, and the fragrant spices slowly revived me, the story came through again – adaptation, absorption, the smashing together of cultures into something colourful and vital.
I relocated to Charlottenburg, a borough once in the British sector. In another case of re-appropriation and adaptation, my second hotel, 25hours Hotel Bikini Berlin, is not only a modern iteration of the hedonism that the city has always promised, but sitting above a space which used to house the Gourmenia, a prominent art deco entertainment venue built shortly before the Wall Street Crash of 1929. 
It overlooks Berlin Zoo, which was annihilated during the war and rebuilt, along with a Cold War rival zoo in the East, making Berlin one of the few cities with two major zoos. Until a few years ago, the city also had two major airports – scars and old divisions are still visible everywhere, but somehow Berlin has managed to dance and thrive through the darkness.
The united country has definitely had growing pains, too. There is still a financial – and more recently a re-emerging political – division between East and West, all of Germany’s financial centres are still based in the cities of the old Federal Republic of Germany (FRG). But then, maybe this is why Berlin is this jagged, beautiful, ever-adapting cauldron of hedonism. Just look at 1929 – the stock markets always ruin the party.
Matt Charlton was a guest of Visit Berlin, GNTO, and 25hours Bikini Berlin. Easyjet, Ryanair and British Airways fly from London to Berlin from £46 return. The Westin Grand Berlin has rooms from £170; 25hours Bikini Berlin has rooms from £134. Private and group sightseeing tours are available at zeit-reisen.de.