my view down Lottumstraße from the Schönhauser Allee apartment where I am staying

…is not preventing me from being excited to be in this town that I have not had occasion to visit in years (I actually happened to be here right after the fall of the Berlin Wall on December 23rd, 1989 which was the first day that West Germans and West Berliners were allowed visa-free travel into East Berlin), also being such a fan of the Isherwood, Auden, Spender accounts of the between-the-Wars 1920’s gay days in Berlin – but now the city feels like such a strange mix of extremes with a new global art community headquartered in a place full of ghosts of old horrors and hedonistic pleasures.