Adolf Hitler was decapitated in Berlin almost exactly a year ago - in July 2008 - when an ordinary citizen walked into the newly opened branch of Madame Tussauds, saw Hitler slumped in his bunker and, enraged, rushed up to him and, with great strength, twisted his head so violently that it parted from his body.
"A pity that somebody didn't do that 70 years ago," a German observer was overheard saying.
Meanwhile, the security guards removed the 41-year-old Berliner - apparently the second visitor to the gallery. Hitler's head was later put back on his body.
After the event, Natalie Rouss of Madame Tussauds said that as the gallery was portraying the history of Germany, it could hardly have left out a wax replica of The Fuhrer (The Leader).
Apparently, the lifelike statue of Hitler had caused much controversy in a country where all Nazi symbols are banned.
But, as Rouss said, "…we did surveys while we were planning the exhibition with Berliners and tourists… and Hitler is one of the figures they want to see."
Well, he's in good company. According to the report from the BBC (on which I found this information), also resident at Madame Tussauds are Otto von Bismarck, Karl Marx, Ludwig van Beethoven, Albert Einstein, Johann Sebastian Bach, Winston Churchill, Mikhail Gorbachev and Tom Cruise.
Yeah, good old Tom Cruise. Tom Cruise and Hitler? It makes you think. But it's such an apt microcosm of Berlin, a city where the extraordinarily weird makes strange things seem normal.
During the 15th century, the Hohenzollerns ruled Berlin and during that time the imposing City Palace was built on Spree Island, remarkably enough situated in the middle of the lazy-flowing Spree.
The Reformation came to Berlin, and the rest of Germany, in the 16th century (in 1539) when the ruler (elector) of the time, Joachim II, took Lutheran communion for the first time.
My late mother was born in Karlsruhe, another well-known German city, and, as a young girl, she visited Berlin many times.
"What a beautiful city it was. We'd stroll along Unter den Linden and through the Tiergarten. It was an exciting city," she'd add, with a twinkle in her eye. That was, of course, before Hitler came to power.
The original linden trees of the wide and famous Unter den Linden were planted in 1647 and the wide boulevard stretched between the Tiergarten and the Palace.
Interestingly, Berlin's Jewish and Huguenot communities were founded in 1671 and 1672 respectively. Both grew and flourished. The Huguenot community in-creased dramatically when, in 1685, Friedrich Wilhelm, known as the Great Elector, issued the edict of Potsdam, which welcomed the Huguenots persecuted in France and gave them shelter. Then, Berlin was the most tolerant of cities.
It was during this century too, that Berlin developed as a centre of enlightenment. During this time, Unter den Linden was surrounded by the newly built Palace of the Crown Prince, the State Opera House, the Opera Palace, Prince Heinrich Palace (later to become the Humboldt University) and the Old Library.
At one end of Unter den Linden was the royal residence, at the other the imposing Brandenburg Gate, built by Carl Gotthard Langhans in 1788 and opened in 1791.
The statue at the top, the Quadriga, consisted of the goddess of peace driving a four-horse chariot and was added a few years later.
It is important to note that Friedrich Wilhelm II commissioned the gate especially to be seen as a sign of peace. But then, he could not have known of the terrible events to happen a century and a half later. For over 100 years, ordinary folk were only allowed to walk through the two outer pillars on either side. One of those facts you pick up when on a tour.
We, a small group of journalists, had arrived in Berlin after an excellent Lufthansa flight and, within hours, were imbibing Berlin by the second.
We stood beneath the Brandenburg Gate and looked upwards. We were on the Unter den Linden side, what had been West Berlin. Through the Gate we could see the more crowded and very busy part of Berlin that had been East Berlin.
What history those four charioteers have seen, I thought as I looked up. The good and the bad. A block from the Gate, we wandered across to the massive iconic Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe (also called the Holocaust Memorial).
Huge and stark, it was designed by architect Peter Eisenman and engineer Buro Happold. On just under 2 hectares are 2 711 concrete slabs (stelae). Beneath this memorial is the underground Place of Information which contains all the known names of Jewish Holocaust victims, obtained from the Yad Vashem museum of the Holocaust in Israel. The stelae are different heights and as you wander through them the feeling of sadness is overwhelming. Of course, everyone reacts differently. There were, for instance, three children playing hide and seek and that I thought was a good thing. A reaffirmation of life.
The Holocaust Monument was inaugurated on May 10, 2005, 60 years after the end of World War 2. And yes, there is controversy about it. Why is it built only to commemorate Jews is one of the criticisms. True, so many non-Jews lost their lives too during this heinous war.
However, it was the Nazis under Hitler who came up with the Final Solution, the elimination of all Jews. And in doing so, murdered six million.
It was the 20th century that saw the rise of Hitler and Nazism. Germany, in keeping with the rest of Europe, had advanced technologically and economically. But turbulence in Europe resulted in World War 1 from 1914 to 1918.
It began in Sarajevo with the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, the Austro-Hungarian Empire's heir to the throne, by Gavrilo Princip, a Serb.
The Russians came to the aid of the Serbs and Europe was dragged into what is today called The Great War. The war was won by the Allies - the British Empire, Russia and France, Italy and later the United States against Germany, Austro-Hungary and, later, the Ottoman Empire.
The Germans were forced to sign the Treaty of Versailles (most unfair, they thought, as they had not started World War 2) under which they were forced to pay almost impossible war damages.
The map of Europe was redrawn, and from the Austro-Hungarian Empire emerged countries such as Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia. It is, I think, impossible to visit Berlin, indeed Europe, without an idea of the history.
Disgruntled Germans seethed, simmered and suffered under the Treaty of Versailles. Meanwhile, in the East the Russian Revolution took place in 1917 and the communists came to power.
Relative prosperity after World War 1 was followed by the Great Depression of the 1920s.
Hitler, born in 1899 in Austria, grew up in this rapidly changing world. In Italy, Benito Mussolini rose to power in 1922, and in 1933 Hitler came to power in Germany with his own brand of fascism, Nazism, accompanied by his belief (and popular appeal) that true Germans were the master race and should be racially pure.
In Hitler's Germany, the sub-humans were the Jews (Untermensch) and they, Hitler and the Nazis believed, should be annihilated.
He and his followers blamed the Jews for the Great Depression. Anyway, according to the fallacious belief of the time, all communists were Jews. (Remember, Russia was rising in the East).
Hitler began expanding, annexing Austria and the Sudetenland (Czechoslovakia), but it was when he marched on Poland on September 1, 1939, that World War 2 began. Hitler let loose his lightning war blitzkrieg against the Poles and the Allies immediately responded. World War 2 had begun.
After the war, won by the Allies, including Russia, Berlin was divided into four and occupied by England, France, the US and, perhaps most importantly, Russia. From the beginning, the Russians took their occupation of Berlin the most seriously.
By now, the Cold War was hotting up. In Berlin, the end-result was the division of that city into east and west.
On the night of August 13, 1961, as our guide explained, Berliners awoke to an extraordinary sight. Armed militia men and police from the east had begun digging huge trenches beside the Brandenburg Gate (and through other parts of Berlin).
It was the beginning of the erection of the Berlin Wall that would encircle West Berlin and keep it from the East, which had now become the German Democratic Republic. The horror of the wall is well documented in a moving museum we visited.
Families and friends were separated for more than a quarter of a century. It was an abomination.
Several Germans we spoke to, especially the older ones, agreed that World War 2 had been terrifying but the Russian occupation was far worse.
In Poland, a country I'd visited a year before, the sentiments of the ordinary people were similar.
The wall came down on November 9, 1989, when the East German government almost mistakenly announced that East Germans could visit the West.
The East Germans took it literally and streamed across in their hundreds of thousands. The reunification of Germany had begun and the wall was manually pulled down by all Berliners.
In practical terms, the wall had meant that the Russians were able to totally dominate the East Berliners, in fact the whole of East Germany.
The history of the wall is chilling. Pictures and descriptions describe tragedies such as that of Ida Spiekermann, fatally injured when jumping out of a window on the East to the street on the West.
Murdered was 24-year-old Gunter Litfin, as was 17-year-old Peter Fechter, who was shot by the East German guards and bled to death on the East side for over an hour, piteously calling for help.
Sadly, the very first victim was 22-year-old Siegfried Noffke, who wanted to be reunited with his wife and baby daughter on the East, and tunnelled beneath the wall only to be shot dead by the East German police when he broke through.
Today the wall has gone, but the history remains.
As we walk through the Brandenburg Gate, it's almost impossible to envisage the horror that ended only 20 years ago.
We visit the Reichstag, the seat of Germany's government.
Berlin, ferociously bombed by the Allies, was virtually flattened during the last war but it has been rebuilt. Today's Reichstag was reconstructed over the original Reichstag, first opened in 1894. The glass and metal dome is a miracle of construction but what is equally fascinating is that within is Germany's parliament. Visitors walking up the winding outer part of the dome, to the restaurant at the top, will see parliamentarians arguing. In Germany today, transparency is all. Angela Morkel had been there the day before, we were told by our guide. From the top of the Reichstag, the city stretches in all directions.
In front of the Reichstag are slabs of black marble, with the names of 96 members of the Reichstag murdered by the Nazis. They were dedicated in 1992, says a small plaque.
Today, though, the sun shines on Berlin and the city is vibrant and alive - shades of the 1920s, I think to myself. There are pavement cafes everywhere, galleries on every corner, superb shops filled with the latest designer gear.
There's also plenty of the most offbeat for those who want something different. The Germans, like most Europeans, have always been open about sex and sex shops are not hidden. East Berlin is more crowded and less attractive than the West, and although people move entirely freely, it is only recently, our guide tells us, that the ubiquitous blocks of flats in the East have become desirable for all young Berliners and are now being "tarted up" and are selling at high prices.
Berlin is filled with things to see - museums such as the Martin-Gropius-Bau Museum of Contemporary Art, the entire Dahlem Museum Complex and the New National Gallery in the Tiergarten vicinity.
Potsdam Place is a must, as is Checkpoint Charlie (though this is a copy of the original prefab HQ that separated West and East).
The lively Alexanderplatz is always busy, perhaps Berlin's liveliest square, and it is over-shadowed by a tall 365m TV tower. But here you'll see the Red Town Hall and the Old Town (Nikolaiviertel) built by the East Germans to attract tourists - and tourists it does attract.
The two opera houses are well worth a visit and if you can get a ticket to an opera, better still. On the eastern side, the reconstructed Neue Synagogue is the home to the city's Jewish Museum.
One evening we visit an experimental theatre, enchanted by high-flying mime artistes, another we eat in the dark, literally, at the unsicht-Bar.
This is an experience that is unique. In a lighted foyer, we are introduced to our waiter, Angela, who is blind (all the waiters at the unsich-Bar are). Then, in single file, holding each other's shoulders, we are led to our table, winding through curtains into absolute darkness.
For two hours we sit, a group of friends, unable to see, instead using our auditory and other senses. Dinner is served and mischief abounds when plates are removed and cutlery is stolen by neighbours.
There is much laughter but the overwhelming feeling is one of awe at how blind people adapt.
Who knows what we ate? It tasted good, but then, it wasn't the food we were experiencing.
On the last day I took a tour with a company called Milk and Honey, visiting Holocaust sites. We visited the old Jewish quarters, and most movingly of all, station 17 in the smart suburb of Grunwald from which Berlin's thousands of Jews were deported to death camps.
Kept as a permanent memorial, the empty track is lined with the numbers in brass of deported Jews.
Berliners, indeed most Germans, are acutely conscious of their history and have been proactive in recording the dreadful legacy of Hitlerian times. There are, for instance, plaques on the wall where Jewish families lived, or on the street, brass plaques denoting homes owned by Jews, their date of deportation and the camps in which they died.
Berlin today is a proudly cosmopolitan city and the pride of the city was overwhelmingly displayed during the 2006 Fifa World Cup.
A rich city of old and new, castles and clubs, museums and galleries and large bustling squares, it's a joyous place to visit.
And, very important, every German speaks English, and many speak, English, French, Russian and German. History makes for linguistic talent.
It truly has a heart, perhaps because of its turbulent history. If you visit only one city in Europe, make sure it is Berlin.
If you go
We spent a day at the airport with Lufthansa and received a comprehensive briefing on all aspects of flights, ranging from safety to comfort in the air, food on board, and air space. One thing is certain: you can feel very safe when flying with Lufthansa. And most of the flights leave on time.
If you have an urge for marzipan chocolates, this is the place to find them.
INFO: Check out www.visitberlin.de
