Berlin, Spring 1925: A Walk Through the City

You step from the tram onto the Kurfürstendamm and the afternoon catches you at once, broad and unhurried, the light coming in clear and golden from the west, the kind of light that makes even soot-streaked stone look momentarily beautiful. The plane trees lining the boulevard are in new leaf, the first pale candles of blossom beginning to open, that particular fresh green which will deepen through the coming weeks but which now, in these first days of May, seems almost luminous against the grey bulk of the city. You stand a moment and breathe it in. Coal smoke, always the permanent bass note of Berlin. But over it today something cleaner: blossom from a florist's display, the faint green smell of the trees themselves, and below everything the particular damp warmth of stone that has been cold all winter and is only now beginning to yield.

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Jason Collings
March 2026