145 BERLINER EXTERIOR [Notebook for 5 days, loosely based title] I happened to be in Berlin for the first time many years ago, for work, and only secondarily for sightseeing, in my spare time for a few days, without high expectations and almost unwittingly. I landed for the first time in May, reaching the city when it was in summer plumage: a palette of bright colours, breathing tranquillity for the streets, and while everyone seemed to be sans souci (I am allowing myself a cite from Fredrick the Great). Since then, for me, Europe became an inclined plane that slopes towards this geographical point: wherever I am, gravity brings me back here. It was then that I decided not to fight this force, and to make this place my base and my scientific observatory. Berlin is not actually a city. Berlin is an archipelago drained of its ocean, created by the destructive force of tens of thousands of tons of metal and TNT falling from the sky between 1943 and 1945. Its islands are in slight relief, a topography created by the accumulation of the debris of destruction. But senses can't perceive this at first experience. Only a slow and steady exploration can lead to understanding that what seems compact, in fact, is not. Senses alert and the panorama unfolding, it reveals itself in its many variants, in the variety of settings. In few cities in the world you can cross a square kilometre and find such a density of testimonials. And then, those who are patient enough to understand how lucky they are being able to catalogue, in one very restricted area, one of the masterpieces of neoclassical architecture by Karl Friedrich Schinkel¹ like the Altes Museum, the Television Tower, the huge spine in the heart of town and the sci-fi film masterpiece of the Deutsche Demokratische Republik, and a glaring example of the time gone by: the giant yard of the Berliner Schloss, copy of the destroyed castle which, in reconstruction, loses a Baroque face to acquire a monotonous modern one. If the strength of each ecosystem is the degree of biodiversity, then this urban habitat can only be the best to embark on a journey of research and cataloguing. ¹. senses and the City
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