Put Berlin next to Paris and you have both sides of the coin: romance, which occasionally appeals, and eros, which never fails. "Berlin is sexy," said the German capital's openly gay Mayor Klaus Wowereit, and it's been that way since the iniquitous Weimar Republic of Marlene Dietrich and cabaret, when only verboten was a naughty word. Recent influxes of German hipsters and clued-in foreigners are (as the song says) "Falling in Love Again (Can't Help It)" with Berlin's outré art scene, drinking in all-night bars where mind-numbing absinthe is the poison of choice, and dressing in provocative Weimar styles for Bohème Sauvage, an on-going series of nightclub parties with dancing to hot jazz, backroom poker and floor shows featuring scantily clad performers of undetermined sex.

-- Susan Spano

Pictured: In Berlin's Friedrichshain neighborhood, the East Side Gallery is the longest stretch of the Berlin Wall still standing. A popular section shows Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev kissing Eastern German leader Erich Honecker.