A Thousand Days in Berlin: Tales of Property Pioneering

Amazon.com Price: $10.95 (as of 12/05/2019 17:02 PST- Details)

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Description

This book captures the energy and sense of wonder in early 1990s Berlin as seen by a young property professional who lived and worked in the reunified city. A Thousand Days recalls how the city’s vibrant history and culture clashed with its traumatic contemporary past, and how Berliners dealt with the scars left by the Wall.

The book could also be a story of Berlin’s property industry rebuilding from scratch. The writer rubs shoulders with pioneering real estate giants reconstructing the built environment of the future capital. Part One, ‘inside Berlin’, includes stories of the powerful west Berlin Betonmafia, a basement full of Stasi telephone taps and a large night out on the Kempinski celebrating a take care of a Russian ‘Import-Export company’.

Part Two ‘outdoor Berlin’, recalls the broken infrastructure and pollution of the former DDR, the acrid taste of asbestos dust and distinctively sweet smell of brown coal. Travelling in the ‘wild East’, the writer watches families ordering at a McDonald’s for the first time and crowds of onlookers admiring his old Honda Civic as if it were a Ferrari.  He describes the oddities of town planning in the former DDR, with colossal smokestacks inside a nature reserve and recalls the experience of explaining supply and demand to suspicious planning officials in eastern Germany. ‘The Real Thing’ chapter is a tale, now emblematic of those unique times, of Coca-Cola’s surge into the former East and the writer’s small role in that success story.

The final section, ‘Having a look Back’, highlights the surprises and contradictions of the city 25 years after the Wall came down, and traces how the new Berlin has evolved to turn out to be these days’s city of choice for real estate investors and for young people to live, work and play.

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