![karma chameleon](https://cdn.magzter.com/1450523306/1707143997/articles/0jeg4KPQZ1707217521759/KARMA-CHAMELEON.jpg)
I first landed in Berlin in the late 1990s, in the heady years after the fall of the Wall. I was aware enough of its licentious reputation to startle a teacher by announcing plans to run away there and open a club. But that first night my girlfriend and I chanced on a bar owned by the Glaswegian cousin of queer artist and filmmaker Derek Jarman. I DJ'd with a pile of scratched 78s, he took us to a party in an after-hours record store run by Russian émigrés, and we ended the morning at a techno night in the basement of a mansion block on Karl-Marx-Allee, sweating among the Stalinist decor.
I've been returning ever since. It's a city that exists in a state of constant flux and reinvention, its patina of history and subcultures overlapping like club flyers on a street wall. I've tried to get a handle on it from the revolving top of the Fernsehturm, clapping for the raggle-taggle performers at Mauerpark's Bearpit Karaoke, browsing gallery shows at the KW Institute for Contemporary Art. Like New York, it's a city whose cultural depictions blur with reality. It's hard to cycle under the Victory Column in Tiergarten without glimpsing Bruno Ganz's angel from the Wim Wenders movie Wings of Desire, or to walk past a late-night corner shop spätis without cutting in a Fassbinder scene. George Grosz caricatures peer from the walls of crowded bars.
Denne historien er fra March 2024-utgaven av Condé Nast Traveler US.
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Denne historien er fra March 2024-utgaven av Condé Nast Traveler US.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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![The Slow Road - Rather than rush from Tokyo to Kyoto by train, as most visitors to Japan do, Tom Vanderbilt chose to bike - coasting down country roads, spying snow monkeys, and refueling with hearty bowls of soba](https://reseuro.magzter.com/100x125/articles/12188/1797065/lMTjBZqcT1724309506842/crp_Japans-Gifu-PrefectureJapan-travel-bike-traverl-Hakusan-National-Park-Shirakawa-gocyclistsTosuke-no-yu-Fujiyacycling-gearRaid-Cycling-Tokyo-Kyoto-luxury-bike-trips-brike-trip.jpg)
The Slow Road - Rather than rush from Tokyo to Kyoto by train, as most visitors to Japan do, Tom Vanderbilt chose to bike - coasting down country roads, spying snow monkeys, and refueling with hearty bowls of soba
Rather than rush from Tokyo to Kyoto by train, as most visitors to Japan do, Tom Vanderbilt chose to bike - coasting down country roads, spying snow monkeys, and refueling with hearty bowls of soba. At the peak of the day's heat, I pulled into the tiny hamlet of Hirase, in Japan's Gifu Prefecture. I'd just climbed a twisting, waterfall-lined road several thousand feet through Hakusan National Park before descending into the shimmering fantasy landscape of Shirakawa-go, an almost Tolkien-esque village (and UNESCO World Heritage Site) comprising centuries-old farmhouses with peaked thatch roofs.
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SHAILENE WOODLEY on FIJI
I was in Suva, the capital of Fiji, making a film, and our crew took over half of the Grand Pacific Hotel.
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easy does it
Beyond the bubble of Queenstown, New Zealand's majestic Otago region offers the kinds of adventures you can truly appreciate only by slowing down
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gather round
The secret ingredient in Philadelphia's lauded food scene? The empathy of the locals behind it
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SANDS OF TIME
Sculpted by millennia, Chad is a place of ancient geology and epic grandeur. Aminatta Forna finds her place in it all
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THE PAST IS PRESENT
Beguilingly complex Istanbul has done a lot of soul-searching in recent years. Lale Arikoglu digs into the city's modern identity - while tracing the roots of her own
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Creation Story
Modern-day craftspeople are bringing back traditional Arabian arts in Jeddah's Old Town of Al-Balad
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Continental Drift
For her first trip to Africa, aboard an HX Hurtigruten cruise ship, Sarah Greaves Gabbadon confronts her assumptions about what a homeland means
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On the Rise
With new hotels, climbing routes, and biking trails, Colorado's low-key, high-elevation Western Slope is ripe for adventure
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Antiques Road Show
After buying a second home, in France, the designer Claire Vivier called up fellow designer Kate Berry to go on the ultimate shopping spree