Thick blankets of black clouds covered the streets, buildings and cars as if they were fragile Christmas Tree decorations resting in an old shoe box. The air temperature quickly dropped by 10ƒC as the strong wind shifted mountains of sand from the construction sites and was only too happy to give flight to the dozens of chairs, tables and umbrellas picked up from the outside cafÈs and bars.

I was sitting behind the wheel of the parked Opel, which was rocking and rolling to the tune of the roaring wind. Tree branches of various caliber were falling down on the car and its windshield was covered by a thick layer of dirt barely diluted by the light rain. The darkened street had swallowed my wife who had stepped out from the car a few minutes ago to see if yet another hotel would deny us their hospitality.

It seemed that we chose the wrong time to arrive in Berlin. Firstly, all hotels were booked solid in anticipation of the upcoming Love Parade - an enormous music festival annually attracting millions of 'rave' enthusiasts who had recently reached their puberty. Secondly, a rare tornado has touched down in the city, further complicating our already frustrating search for the shelter and separating me from my loving companion of the past 23 years. I imagined her being carried away by the twister and wondered whether she would ever be able to travel down the Yellow Brick Road without our Chihuahua, who was trying to hide her trembling tiny body under my seat. "It, certainly, ain't Kansas anymore", I thought peering into the vicious chaos a few centimeters away from the window.

Suddenly, the passenger's door flew open and Elena crawled onto her seat. Her eyes were full of sand and her bleeding ankles took a few hits from the flying tree branches. But she did manage to fight her way through the storm, by clicking the heels of her Prada shoes, I suppose. And a good thing it was, for the storm was getting more violent and ended up killing seven people, shutting down the airports and uprooting countless trees.

This damage, of course, pales in comparison with the city's destruction during The War of 1939 - 1945. History played a cruel joke on Berlin and its liberal-minded residents, who were forced to play a leading role in Hitler's rise to the power and his subsequent demise. During the 1932 election more Berliners voted for the communists (31%), than for Hitler's NSDAP (25.9%). Other cities, such as Munich and Nuremberg, loved the Nazis a lot more than did Berlin, but the f¸hrer chose the latter as the capital of his Third Reich. Initially, the city benefited from his choice - it became a major industrial center, held the 1936 Summer Olympic Games and happily celebrated the early military victories of The War. June 22, 1941 was just another beautiful day in the capital. While the Panzer Korps were tearing apart the Russian flesh on the Eastern Front, Berlin was hosting the country's soccer Championship Final between FC Schalke 04 and Rapid Vienna (won by the Austrians 4:3). Soon enough, however, the city was reminded of its tragic role in The War by absorbing the non-relenting bombing raids - the Allies dropped over 50,000 ton of explosives on Berlin. The capital lost more than 20,000 people as a result of the air campaign, which turned the city into 'the largest continuous ruin in Europe' according to a post-war study.

Luckily for us the war-time ruins have long been replaced by the most wonderful buildings, including the ultra-modern hotel on the Kurfurstendamm Straşe where we managed to rent a cool penthouse apartment. Thus, having secured a great base in the posh shopping center we decided to spend a few extra days in Berlin, which quickly became the highlight of our Central European auto rally. For starters, we were impressed by the fact that the electric power was not lost during the terrible storm, due to the cabling system laid out below the street level. Then, we saw how quickly the city crews were able to remove the fallen trees and crushed cars underneath them. The heroic cleaning feat was repeated after the Love Parade left thousands of empty beer cans, used condoms and drunk bodies on the city streets.

We walked for days through Berlin's enormous western part and marveled at the wide avenues, glittering shops and beautiful buildings, each one unique in its unconventionally futuristic architecture. Somewhat surprised, we encountered multiple groups of entirely nude people working on their suntan in the city parks. We drank the traditional sweet concoction of beer and fruit soda near the Brandenburg Gates, circled the Reichstag, and paid our respect to the somber memorials to the Soviet soldiers who had fallen during the final battle for Berlin.

In the early 1945 the western Allies decided to avoid capturing Berlin head on and went after the much softer targets in Bavaria. The dirty job, as usual, was delegated to the Soviet Army, which had drowned the huge city in the blood of its 200,000 dead, wounded and missing in action soldiers. The Soviets started the final offensive on April 16, 1945. True to his predatory habits, Josef Stalin created vicious competition between Marshal Zhukov and Konev with the goal of raising the Red Flag atop the Reichstag in time for the May Day holiday. Indeed, the Russian soldiers captured the Reichstag on April 30th and covered its walls with the 'spicy' graffiti. When the Reichstag was refurbished in the 1990's to accommodate the returning German lawmakers, some of the graffiti was preserved. With messages like 'Death to Germans' and 'Serves you right, you sons of bitches,' saving history has prompted yet another moral struggle over how Germany should live with its past and get on with its future.

On May 2nd the last commander of Berlin defense (General Weidling) surrendered the city to General Chuikov. On the same day, the photographer Yevgeny Khaldey organized a carefully staged scene of raising the Red Flag over the Reichstag and took his world-famous picture. The WWII, however, continued until May 8th, when the Act of Military Surrender (signed by General Jodl and Admiral von Friedeburg) went into effect. At Stalin's insistence, the full version of Germany's Unconditional Capitulation was signed in the Soviet Headquarters in Berlin on the following day. This explains why the Western World celebrates the V-E (Victory in Europe) Day on May 8th, while the Russians celebrate the same event on May 9th.

One of the Soviet war memorials is centrally located in the Tiergarten, a stone-throw away from the Reichstag. It was erected as early as November of 1945 (while the rest of the city still laid in ruins) and features a large sculpture of a Russian infantryman flanked by two freshly painted T-34 tanks. This monument is well visited by the hordes of tourists, who leave their buses here for the obligatory tour of the Reichstag. However, as soon as we entered the scene with our Chihuahua in tow, all Japanese tourists instantly turned their attention away from the monument and started to  snap away meters of film focusing on the little dog.

The second memorial is hidden far from the glitzy shopping malls, deep in the blue-collar quarters of East Berlin. It is barely mentioned in the city guide books, yet every Russian knows the gigantic figure of Sergeant Masalov, holding a child in his left arm and a broad sword in his right, smashing the fascist swastika. We just could not miss it, even if it meant enduring a long cab drive. The enormous Treptower Park doubles as a final resting place for five thousand Red Army soldiers. It was chosen by the German anti-fascists as a site for the memorial, which was unveiled on the fourth anniversary of V-E. On the day of our visit the park was virtually deserted and it took some effort to find the memorial. A lonely Turkish worker was sweeping the pathways as we approached the solemn structure on the hill. Let the cynics say that we're getting exceedingly sentimental in our advanced age and let the record show that we've visited quite a few heart-scraping sites, including the Vad Yashem Holocaust Memorial in Israel, Babiy Yar in Kiev and the Dacha¸ concentration camp in Bavaria. However, it was difficult to hold back the tears as we came near the Eternal Flame burning inside the structure. A few loose flowers were thrown around the Flame, next to a dried-out official reef.

There is another mass grave near Wraclaw in either western Poland or eastern Prussia, depending on where and when your map was printed. That cemetery doesn't attract foreign tourists and doesn't feature beautiful parks with massive monuments. Instead, there is a standard-issue military memorial with a red star on top, naming the Soviet soldiers buried here in the winter of 1945. One of the entry reads: 'Captain Yasnogorodsky, Israel Isaac (1908 - 1945)' - my own grandfather, who volunteered for the infantry in June of 1941 and was killed in action on February 7th, 1945 - just three months before it was all over. He, and countless others, paid the ultimate price for giving our generation an opportunity to wage its own wars in the improbable twenty first century.

We walked back for hours - it just didn't feel right to haul a cab. We crossed the Spree at the Oberbaumbr¸cke Bridge - the site of many escape attempts from the East by swimming across the river and the first 'family reunion' visit from the West during Christmas of 1963. We had a beer on the East side, then walked along the remaining stretch of the Berlin Wall, which used to run for more than 100 km and surrounded the entire city of West Berlin. Actually, there were multiple walls, sandwiching the 'death zones', 'dog runs' and mine fields between them. What remains standing now is a 1.5 km section called the East Side Gallery because it is covered by some very interesting artwork. Our favorite piece shows Leonid Brezhnev and Eric Honecker embraced in a passionate kiss, which was Brezhnev's trademark greeting of the foreign leaders. The Russian caption reads: 'Lord! Help me to survive among this deadly love'.

We didn't go out that night - we were drained, both physically and emotionally. Instead, we discovered a large Russian food section in a local supermarket and took home every delicacy there was for sale. It turned out that the smoked sausage, fish and an ice-cold bottle of 'Wheat' vodka was just the right prescription to digest today's events.

The Russian legacy is still very strong in Berlin. First of all, there are tons of Russians living permanently in Berlin and supporting dozens of Russian food stores and restaurants in the city. Then, there is a large contingent of Russian tourists and business people visiting Berlin - Germany is Russia's largest trade partner and investor. Actually, a group of Russian computer engineers and salesmen was staying in our hotel while attending a Hewlett-Packard training seminar. And finally, there are many sad examples of the Stalin-era architecture and urban planning visible everywhere in East Berlin. For instance, the infinite Karl Marx Allee (one of the most desired addresses in the former GDR) is identical to Moscow's Kalininsky Prospekt. East Berlin displays the same boring type of apartment buildings, cinemas, and infrequent stores that can be found in any Soviet city that was rebuilt after The War.

We were sitting on a bench near the Soviet-style apartment building, under a Russian birch tree, near a boxy Lada car imported from Russia 10 - 15 years ago. The huge boulevard in front of us was completely deserted during a normal business day. I can only assume that all of the East Berlin inhabitants were busy working and shopping on the west side of town.

Which brings up an interesting point: one of the most famous gates between the two Berlins was a sand-bagged guard booth called Checkpoint Charlie. Prior to August 13th, 1961 the 'Iron Curtain' was just a figure of speech, coined by Sir Winston Churchill in 1946. But on that fateful Sunday, the 'Curtain' became the 'Wall'. And for a good reason - by 1961 GDR had lost more than 3 million people (or 20% of its population), who voted with their feet and escaped to the West. If this trend were to continue, GDR would have become a desert in just a few years. The decision to build a barrier along the GDR border was too simplistic and not very original - a similar solution did not help the Chinese to hold back the Mongol herds. But then again, the walls continue to be built even in the twenty first century - just take a look at the high-tech multi-million dollar barriers along the US-Mexican and Israel-Palestinian borders. 'Those who ignore the history are condemned to re-live it', or something like that.

When the Wall was being built (it was never really finished), it became apparent that there is a need for a dozen crossing points to let the diplomats, military personnel and spies to move from one Zone of Occupation to another. The US Army operated a few of these checkpoints named after the first letters of the phonetic alphabet. The Alpha and Bravo checkpoints were located far from the city center and, therefore, had to surrender all the glory to their third cousin - Charlie. In just a few months (in time for my first birthday, in October of 1961) Checkpoint Charlie was involved in the first direct confrontation between the former allies, when the US and Soviet tanks played 'chicken' over some silly document checking procedure. Incredibly, no shots where fired and the WW-III was delayed until a later, yet to be determined, date.

And so it went on here for almost 29 years. The conflicts flared up only to be extinguished, the Presidents gave speeches only to be ignored, the caught spies were exchanged only to be replaced by the others, and the US soldiers bought beer for the survived GDR escapees in the nearby bar on Friedrich Straşe. In 1990 the checkpoints were removed as obsolete and armed MP's at Checkpoint Charlie were substituted by Turks peddling the Soviet Army memorabilia. What remains is a replica guard booth, a museum, and the world-famous warning in four languages: 'You are leaving the American sector'.

The young Berliners, however, do not seem to be preoccupied with history. Unlike Rome, which is full of frail well-dressed people, the Berlin crowd consists predominantly of members of the X-Generation. They wear oversize clothing, facial jewelry (pierced everything), multi-colored hair, and ride their skateboards as if they were wild mustangs in the prairie.

We were (un-) lucky to be a part of Berlin's version of the Carnival - a music festival called Love Parade, which attracts millions of 'rave' fans from all over Germany and Europe. The party started early in the day, when thousands of cars and buses began to arrive in Berlin. Their passengers didn't wait long before launching the tailgate parties and consuming vast quantities of beer. Thus sufficiently refreshed, masses of people started to drift toward Berlin's Central Park - Tiergarten, which by the nightfall turned into a gigantic discotheque. The usual traffic was diverted away from the city center, and the streets became flooded with the fully and semi-nude bodies, competing for the most outrageous attire and hairdo. By nine o'clock in the evening nobody was feeling any pain - one can only wonder about how many tons of ecstasy, pot and alcohol were consumed that night. Teams of volunteers were handing out condoms and the moon-lit Tiergarten meadows became the modern Sodom and Gomorrah. The 'techno' music blared from the most powerful speakers installed all over the park and a number of star DJ's took turns in spinning their favorite mixes, which, in my humble opinion, did not really differ from each other. The city didn't go to sleep until the early morning, when the sunrise exposed the destroyed park and filthy streets.

But then again, given a choice between the 'brown shirts' burning books and the 'no shirts' making love on the streets of Berlin I will take the latter ones at any time.