Going Deutsch in Berlin

It's 3am on Sunday and we're trying to fit in with Berlin's hippest crowd. My friend Amalia and I are raving in a disused coin factory in East Berlin. In the bare, hollow space we must look like a colony of ants on acid, collectively striving for cool. This is no mean feat in a city that, according to hype, is

The night had begun at Tausend, the exclusive club in the central Mitte district, where we joined Sebastian, an East Berliner, and his Westerner friend Andreas, both management consultants by day and hardcore clubbers by night. A favourite with Ben Stiller and Leonardo DiCaprio, Tausend does its best to keep out the unworthy; the steel-door entrance is tucked under a railway arch and you have to ring a bell before being vetted and then, hopefully, admitted to the dimly lit, tubular bar.

Over miso salmon and cucumber gin and tonics, Andreas, who could have stepped straight off the Burberry catwalk with his styled mop of blond hair and his jeans tucked into trench boots, told me about his family's jubilation when the Wall came down in 1989. He was six at the time and remembers ransacking the deserted watch towers, together with his friends, collecting old electrical fittings. In con-trast, Sebastian, the son of a former East German Communist minister, recalls how his family, who were obviously more privileged than other Easterners, resented the collapse of the Wall and refused to visit the West for a year afterwards.

We left Tausend just as a GI Disco with remixed 1940s music was getting started but, given the company, we had bigger techno shapes to cut, so we headed to the 15-hour electro-rave at the coin factory. Compared to Tausend, the door policy was fairly forgiving. According to Andreas, this isn't always the case at Berlin's clubs. Berghain, in trendy Eastern Friedrichshain, a techno-mecca considered one of the best clubs in the world, is renowned for its cut-throat policy. This is thanks to the notorious bouncer Sven Marquardt, recognisable by the barbed-wire tattoos across his face (he can be YouTubed). If you're lacking in edge, there's no chance of getting past him. Groups of boozy foreigners, threatening to dilute the club's reputation, are turned away.

We had experienced our first hit of Berlin chic arriving late on Friday evening at the new Soho House outpost. Occupying the former Communist party head- quarters in East Berlin, this huge concrete shell has been stylishly souped up with Damien Hirst graffiti, ping-pong tables and a retro playground roundabout. The space is cool because it's unfinished and unfinished because it's so cool.

We saw in the weekend up on the hotel's seventh floor at the 'Club' bar, surrounded by hot Berliners in S&M heels and cashmere jumpers lounging next to open fires and drinking Bling Bling cocktails (chilli, sugar, cucumber and 'bubbles'). Settling for a Pilsner and peanuts, we planned our weekend route from the balcony, the city pulsating below.

On Saturday morning we walked down Berlin's main artery, the boulevard Unter den Linden, named after its row of lime trees (Linden) which, come springtime, provide a lush canopy. Running from Museum Island in the River Spree, where the city was born, to the Brandenburg Gate at Pariser Platz, the boulevard is like a confused timeline. The neo-classical Berlin State Opera stands elegantly next to the Bibliotek, a poignant underground memorial to the Nazi book-burning that took place there on the Bebelplatz in 1933. Like many others in the city, the memorial, a white room lined with empty bookcases, is eerily sterile but the sense of history is hard-hitting.

A visit to the museum at Checkpoint Charlie, which houses artefacts recounting remarkable stories of escapees over the Wall, marked our first steps into West Berlin. The transition wasn't immediately noticeable, but just a few avenues on and the glistening skyscrapers of Potsdamer Platz, a shopping and entertainment hub, mark a cosmopolitan watershed between East and West.

But one of Berlin's greatest attractions remains its clubbing scene. Berliners are happy to party anywhere, any time; the more obscure the better. Filling the dancefloors are the capital's young creatives who, in a country of intense industry, operate in a currency of culture rather than euros. Compared to soaring rents in London, Paris and New York, the cost of living in Berlin is relatively low. As a result, shady artists and louche actors are flocking there, attracted by Mayor Klaus Wowereit's unofficial motto: 'Berlin is poor - but sexy.'