In Berlin, by contrast, you can't walk far without stumbling on history. Many historical sites have now been turned into memorial sites. These artificial versions of the past are very different from the raw, accidental reminders of history you would find if you grew up in West Berlin in the 1980s.

The house my family lived in, for example, had bullet-holes on the outside. In the little courtyard there was engraved a Star of David - it had been owned by a Jewish financier, and the holes were from heavy fighting in the final days of the war. You would play in the attic and find newspapers from the 1940s. On Sunday afternoon walks in the park, you could see over the waters of the Wannsee, watch the East German border guards and hope to see a spy exchange taking place as you passed a checkpoint. At the time, this kind of history was very much part of our daily life. You couldn't get away from it and so it became a natural part of your life - certainly not the material for introspection or fantasy. Now it seems almost as if this relationship has been reversed: there are so many slick memorials that I suspect many people have grown weary of them - or at least ceased to feel the intrigue of looking beyond the memorial and into history.

Sometimes, it feels like that when you look at younger Germans living in Berlin today. Now that the city is officially one of the coolest places in Europe, many have developed a peculiar sense of being German - a form of confidence, or nonchalance at least, about their nationality. Recently, I passed a boutique that was as Berlin-ish as it could be: all independent German designers, a tiny showroom and a snooty owner. In the window, there was a blouse with the German eagle on it. It was slightly altered to make it appear trendy and fresh but it was the same bird you see in the Bundestag and the same that appeared on Deutschmark coins before we switched to the euro. A friend of mine in his late thirties commented that this was "Nationalist fashion". His girlfriend, in her mid-twenties, saw nothing wrong with it. "Come on, we're past that debate, don't you think?" When I suggested it was simply a case of bad taste, I got strange looks from both of them. Apparently, German symbols remain German symbols, whether you like them or not.