Das Ist . . .

Berlin, with my love, was bitterly cold. We ran from restaurant to café to bar like our lives depended on it. Warming our numb fingers, holding hot coffee and spiced wine, we watched fireworks delineate the night sky. We took refuge in museums filled with pilfered treasure and trespassed the ruins of a long, broken wall.

Returning in the summer we crossed from Switzerland, through the Black Forest with its twinkling sunlight to Freiburg, and out again via the Porta Negra of Trier. We were struck on the rebound by the contradictions. The invisible lines that dissect the country and its capital. Roman and modern, Teutonic and touristy, fiefdom and state. Regional flavours as distinct as the meats and the wine, the recipe still somehow holding.