book: Berlin - Portrait of a City

As I'm visiting Berlin in beginning of June, my path lead me to city library to search for books on Berlin. One of them is in particulary interesting: Berlin - Portrat einer Stadt - Portrait of a City - ... (french traslation).

All the texts are written in 3 languages: german, english and french. This way one can read some of the original texts from german as well. There are more than 600 pages in large format. On the pages, there are usually big photos of the city/people. Content is divided in few periods of time, like before the WW, in between the WWs, end of WW2 and consequences, after the wall fell till today. Each chapter begins with some introduction (text) to this period, describing political situation, life of the people, cultural life, ...

Photos are amazing! On each of them are short comments what does it show. The book is kind of photo album showing Berlin in whole of its timelife. It's great to see both images of various people as well as buildings and famous and unfamous places. Pages contain quotes about Berlin and its citizens from various people, usually famous ones.

So much one can learn about this city from this book. By the city, I include people and their lives as well, their emotions. I feel like I fell in love with Berlin and still I haven't been there. It would be nice if I could travel to some periods of time to see & feel all this by myself as well. After all this, I hope Berlin today will be as fascinated as in the past. Different for sure, as this is one of the characteristics of Berlin.

This kind of books are like traveling itself. Already in the past I was considering to explore more unknown areas by reading books and web sites. It brings impression of travel itself in times when one doesn't have that chance to go to some city. And google maps and wikipedia could help exploring other ares than the cities. I could pretend I'm traveling there soon.

I'm also thinking about portaiting. It would be interesting to collect stories about people. I like geting to know them but it's not easy to make them open themselves. I wonder would people be more open if I would approachem them with clear vision of getting to know them and writing some kind of portait?