Nora Eckert is just different. A sampler translation from her memoir

Berlin was where everything began. This city has always been good for new things. Not necessarily for beginners, but for all things beginning. The city had a magical attraction and it still does today, but it has changed. There’s a rather clichéd but nonetheless fitting quote that says Berlin never is, Berlin is only ever becoming. Still dishevelled by the war into the 1970s, unlike any other West German city, it really had become a symbol of survival and alternative living – in more ways than one. It’s now or never, was the motto of the city and its inhabitants, including those newly arrived in West Berlin.