“The toppling of the Berlin Wall in 1989 recast daily life, as the two halves of the country awkwardly reunited. A capitalist gentility took hold in the historic Scheunenviertel, a district of the old East Berlin, as courtyards along Sophienstrasse and elsewhere were tidied up and residential buildings converted into showcases for art. Today, what Prague and London were in the 90’s, Berlin has now become: a magnet for anyone who wants to live and work in a city that is humming with cultural energy and, by contrast with the rest of northern Europe, an insane bargain.”