THE LAST 10 YEARS
Rachel Loxton moved to Germany a year ago from Aberdeen, and quickly settled into the city so well she can’t imagine moving on.
“Berlin just feels like a city of freedom. It feels like you can come here and be yourself, and it really doesn’t matter who you are, or where you’ve come from,” she said.
“It’s not all amazing, and people do have problems, but there’s something here. I cycle through this beautiful city and there’s nowhere else I’d like to live.
“You can’t help but think back to people like David Bowie, and what they did here.
“In terms of art, music, design, the gay scene – it’s a place that pushes boundaries, and that’s why it attracts people from all over the world.”
Berlin society, according to Rachel, has moved on, but the divide remains in many ways.
“You can see the differences more clearly when you head to the suburbs, further to the east.
“I have a lot of different friends from the East. They’re really nice but they are perhaps just a little more frosty. “They’re not more horrible people, but I think they are wary after what happened.”
Although there’s little desire for the return of the dark days of the Cold War, the attitude of ordinary Berliners to the days of being divided are complicated. “People who were about four, for example, when the Wall came down are thinking about it in a new way.
“It’s not like they want it back, but they think, ‘Well, actually my parents were really shafted during reunification. They got left with no job, nothing.’
“And while they don’t want a dictatorship, perhaps they don’t feel good about what happened. It’s not as black and white as we might think in the West.”
In recent years there has been a rise of the far-right in Germany with the AFD Party, and Rachel has spoken to party members in the course of her job. But while there has been a resurgence in the idea of building walls around the world – as with US President Trump – it’s not a popular idea in Germany. “They said to me they were a Trump-style party,” added Rachel. “They’re not saying, ‘Let’s rebuild the wall’, but they do go for his brand of reactionary politics. “Most Berliners I’ve met, though, think Trump is absolutely crazy.”