Berlin can feel quite American if one only spends time in the central part of the city where the wall once stood. There are wide streets, mostly new buildings, some stubby towers in Potsdamer Platz, which is a much more vibrant, far more pedestrian-oriented version of what Boston is building in the Seaport.
Beyond that area, to the East, is the area around Unter den Linden Strasse that was built as an early grid in the 17th century. It, too, is mostly an eclectic mix of buildings dating mostly from the 19th and 20th centuries, and its streets are by and large wide. The buildings in that part of the city do tend to have a sort of uniform height and grey stone build, though, so of all American cities, it feels most like DC.
This street was closed off due to post-9/11 security concerns at the British Embassy. The American Embassy at the time had blocks and blocks around them closed off...the fortified feeling of these streets in 2004 must have come as a surprise to those who witnessed the demise of the border...
Leafy Unter den Linden itself can feel quite "European," at least where some concrete East German behemoth doesn't intervene.
Some parts of this area have been turned into squares and plazas that do betray a certain European appreciation for public space and even whimsy, though:
The Hilton in the background is a spectacular example of East German postmodernism. Communist architecture wasn't uniformly ugly, it just tended to flag in following Western trends. Lots of buildings like these went up just in East Berlin before the Wall fell.
So Berlin certainly lacks a traditional European "Old Town" at its center. Outlying neighborhoods tend to have more of a European flair, but at most it's like Paris with less ornate architecture and lots of postwar kitsch mixed in.
Sometimes a building that's otherwise quite "American" looking will reveal clues as to what part of the city it once lay in, though. I remember being delighted with this find:
As for the Wall - all the 20th anniversairy nostalgia is really curious to me given that, when I was studying abroad there on the 15th anniversary, the city basically looked the same as it does now. The most sweeping changes in the city took place before the year 2000 - basically in a ten year span. I really wish I'd visited before then to get a better sense of the division. And I really, really wish I could remember the fall of the Wall...my first memory of "world affairs" is really the Gulf War, a couple years later.
Preserved fragments of the Wall in northern Berlin
