Berlin: Germany’s Chicago (and we liked it just as much)

As Kate mentioned, we were just in Berlin for a three-day conference I had to go to. And although the conference bored me to tears at times, Kate and I managed to have a good time before and after, shopping, riding the U-Bahn, playing in the Tiergarten, and noticing many, many similarities between this city and our previous home of Chicago.

But before I get to my thesis on the similarities between the cities, here are a few pictures:

Here's pregnant Kate at the Brandenburger Gate.

Here’s Pecos enjoying the Tiergarten. Here’s Pecos testifying his love for the city in a cute and undersized Berlin shirt (which is really for Elizabeth).
And here’s Pecos and I enjoying Sanssouci, the summer palace of Frederick the Great.
OK, now on to my treatise on the parallel correspondence of Berlin and Chicago. They’re similar in:

• Size (about 3.4 million)
• Metropolitan location (very far away from other similarly-sized metropolises)
• Climate (temperate and wet – and cold in the winter)
• Terrain (flat and grassy)
• Reason for commercial growth (inland harbor / shipping)
• Agricultural land use (cereals production)
• Dominant architectural style (Bauhaus)

Oh, and their flags have similar layouts.

Chicago

Berlin

To belabor the point and make you all completely aware of how much excess thought I’ve given this, here are some more similarities, with Berlin listed first and Chicago listed second. (Please let me know if you found this interesting or insanely dorky - or both).

• Mascot/icon: Bear/ Cubs
• Secret organization: Stasi / Mafia
• Significant amount of immigrants with the largest population in the country: Turks / Poles
• Popular cuisines influenced by these large ethnic minorities: Currywurst / Polish dog
• Historical damage: World War II (destroyed 60 percent of the city) / Great fire of 1871 (destroyed a third of the city)
• Significant division: East-West (divided by a wall) and North-South (divided by Madison St.)
• Nuclear physicists who practiced there: Einstein (Humboldt) / Fermi (U of Chicago)
• Politicians who started here that changed the world: Hitler / Obama (ok, give it a few months)

And here we are at Madison St. ... oops. Or The Wall. I'm not sure.