Introduction

People get interested in places and things for weird reasons. Why do some people love dogs and other people can’t stand to be in the same room with them? What makes you prefer chocolate to vanilla?

I wanted to go to Edinburgh because of Ian Rankin’s Inspector Rebus books. I wanted to go to Amsterdam to see the Van Gogh museum. (Yes, I also wanted to indulge in some legalized pot smoking – I’m not going to lie about that.)

And I wanted to go to Berlin because of a movie I was never able to watch – Wim Wenders’ Wings of Desire. The image of a melancholy angel perched above a black and white Berlin touched me – I couldn’t understand how a creature that should be happy – eternal life in heaven and all of that – could look so sad. Even though I never found the attention span to watch the film all the way through, the picture stayed with me.

I was supposed to go to Berlin eleven years ago, when I was in London and then Belfast doing law internships. As much as I wanted to go to Berlin, Dublin made a big impression on me and I changed my travel plans to include a return trip to Dublin. Berlin was put on the back-burner and this year, we had the perfect reason to make the trip - the wedding of our friends Colm and Heidi.