Eastern Germany

Sexy poor Greek Berlin

Maksim says Berliners 'are nuts', Emil only wears vintage 'because appearances count' and Paul views the city as a huge entertainment park for artists across Europe. Hearing so many hippy points of view seem to confirm that the German capital remains the Barcelona of Germany. Hailed within this adage to the city is the acceptance of its fashionable 'sexy poverty' – but on the social and economic scale, poverty remains poverty, and no-one can run too far with the idea. Unemployment, creativity and crisis are complementary stars in the Berlin sky. One enhanced vision of the latter is the so-called Greek crisis which separates Greek and German communities – read the articles dedicated to the next installment of a monthly cities reporting mission, 'EU crisis on the ground'

• Read the special edition Sexy poor Greek Berlin
• Melancholy in Berlin: views of three foreign writer residents
• To be or to be in Berlin: poor but (creatively) rich
• Irish artists in Berlin, a city 'always and never in crisis'

An East German childhood: ‘People took off their clothes to express their freedom’

West Germans often subscribe to a pretty grim idea of life growing up behind the wall in the German Democratic Republic (GDR). Yet although East German children had few toys and less holidays, were they really less happy than their western counterparts? Eik, 29, recalls his Soviet upbringing

by Bruno van den Elshout @ // 17/08/09

eastern germany, childhood, 1989, holiday, school system, germany, berlin wall