BERLIN — A quarter-century ago today, the Berlin Wall fell, and since then this city has been on a roll. It’s one of the party capitals of the world and an affordable center for young artists and musicians, with enough layers of history to inspire a novelist for a few lifetimes. And its economy has benefited greatly from a growing start-up scene. In a country dominated by pleasant but boring cities, Berlin is Germany’s one truly cosmopolitan metropolis.
柏林——自从柏林墙在25年前的今天（本文发表于11月9日）被推倒，这座城市的发展便一帆风顺。它是世界狂欢之都；同时也是年轻艺术家和音乐家的聚居地，不仅生活成本低廉，还有层次丰富的历史，足够一个小说家写上好几辈子。此外，创业浪潮的兴起让它的经济受益匪浅。德国大多数城市都很宜居，但却显得单调乏味，柏林则是这个国家一个真正国际化的大都市。

Many of these accomplishments are laid out in “Berlin Now: The City After the Wall,” a recent book by the German author Peter Schneider. He is right in saying that in recent decades no other city “has changed as much — and for the better — as Berlin,” lauding the sense of openness that has drawn immigrants, revived the shattered Jewish population and made the city a magnet for a creative class that is also luring cutting-edge businesses.
这些成果的很大一部分都被德国作家彼得·施耐德(Peter Schneide)写进了他的新书——《今日柏林：一座后柏林墙时代的城市》(Berlin Now: The City After the Wall)。施耐德说得没错，最近数十年间，没有哪座城市“发生过像柏林这么大的变化——而且是变得更好了”。他对它的开放性称赞有加，正是这种特质吸引来了移民，让遭到毁灭性打击的犹太人群体恢复了生机，并把这所城市变成了吸引创意阶层和尖端企业的磁石。
All of this is worth celebrating, but to longtime residents like me, the moves that made this possible all ended about 20 years ago. Since then, the city has been coasting, mostly consumed by small-bore issues instead of grasping the chance to become a truly great city. Berlin has tried to make a virtue of being a less polished version of London or Paris — in the words of its departing mayor, “poor, but sexy.” Yet that is more a reflection of a city whose ambitions rarely extend beyond narrow parochialism.
所有这些都值得庆祝，但对我这样的长期居民而言，让这一切成为可能的举措早在大约20年前就已戛然而止。从那时起，这座城市一直在放任自流，它把大部分精力都消耗在了各种琐碎议题上，而非用于抓住时机，以成为一个真正伟大的城市。柏林将自己定位为不那么光鲜亮丽的伦敦或者巴黎——用即将卸任的柏林市长的话来说，“虽然穷，但是很性感”——并竭力善加利用这种定位。由此却反映出，它的雄心甚少超越一个相当狭隘的范围。
Given what happened during and after World War II, perhaps this isn’t surprising. One of the most dynamic cities of the early 20th century lost its elite to emigration or genocide, and then its infrastructure to saturation bombing and street-to-street fighting. In the aftermath, its great companies fled — Allianz and Siemens to Munich, Deutsche Bank to Frankfurt — while what remained of its middle class went anywhere to escape the rubble and isolation.
鉴于二战期间和战争结束以来所发生的一切，这或许并不令人意外。移民潮和大屠杀让20世纪早期最有活力的一座城市失去了精英阶层；随后，狂轰滥炸和巷战又让它的基础设施毁于一旦。接下来，大企业纷纷撤离——安联(Allianz)和西门子(Siemens)搬到了慕尼黑，德意志银行(Deutsche Bank)搬到了法兰克福——剩下的中产阶级也为了逃离废墟和隔离状态而四散各方。
Berlin survived for nearly 45 years on life support, but it was more like a curiosity of the Cold War. On one side, the Potemkin prosperity of East Berlin; on the other, the subsidized West Berlin of squatters and artists made famous by David Bowie. I lived in the western sector for the last couple of years of this period and to me the city was fascinating in a morbid way, like Dr. Caligari’s somnambulist hero Cesare, asleep in a coffin-like cabinet, controlled through hypnosis and displayed as a freak-show attraction to tourists venturing off the beaten track.
柏林勉强撑过了45年，但那一时期的它更像一道冷战奇景。一边是呈现波将金式繁荣的东柏林；另一边是充斥着擅自占用房屋者和艺术家，靠补贴度日，因大卫·鲍伊(David Bowie)而闻名的西柏林。该时期即将结束的那几年，我居住在西柏林。对我而言，当时的这座城市有一种病态的迷人气息，如同《卡里加利博士的小屋》的男主人公梦游者凯撒(Cesare)，睡在棺材般的箱子里，被人通过催眠加以控制，成了一个怪物秀，以吸引那些远离大众景点的旅行者。
The fall of the Berlin Wall resuscitated the city. Subway and light rail lines between the two halves of the city and its hinterland were reconnected, museum holdings put back together and Germany decided to move its capital here from Bonn, which eventually brought thousands of well-paid and well-educated civil servants to help restock the middle class.
柏林墙的倒塌让这座城市苏醒了。东西两部分及其腹地之间的地铁和轻轨线路重新连了起来，博物馆的藏品又被搁在了一处。德国还决定把首都从波恩搬过来，该举措最终为柏林带来了成千上万名薪酬可观、受过良好教育的公务员，这对中产阶层的复兴颇有助益。
Living here during those early years of reunification was thrilling. I recall in 1992 taking one of the first light-rail S-Bahn trains to Potsdam, the city of parks and palaces to Berlin’s south. It had been cut off for decades but suddenly was there, like an apparition out of the Prussian past. It seemed Berlin just had to flip a few switches to join the ranks of great global metropolises.
两德统一后的最初几年，住在柏林是一件令人兴奋的事情。我记得自己曾在1992年搭乘最初的几班轻轨列车之一，前往位于柏林之南的波茨坦，一座到处都是公园和宫殿的城市。通向那里的交通当时已被切断了好几十年，却突然间就出现了，如同一个来自过去的普鲁士幽灵。那时候，柏林要跻身世界大都会的行列，仿佛就是打开几个开关那么简单。
Instead, what followed were two decades of inaction. Berlin did get several important things right: the Holocaust memorial in the city center succeeds — as a warning, as a tourist attraction and as a piece of urban planning — far better than most people had thought possible. The nation’s Parliament is another achievement; a young democracy needs a good spiritual center, and Sir Norman Foster exorcised the Reichstag of Wilhelminian bombast, transforming it into a fitting symbol for a vibrant republic.
不料，随后到来的竟是碌碌无为的20年。柏林的确把几件重要的事情办得不错：作为一种警示、一个旅游景点以及城市规划的一部分，市中心的那座大屠杀纪念馆就建得很好，好得远远超出了大部分人的想象。另一项成就是德国国会大厦的改建。一个年轻的民主国家需要一个良好的精神中枢，诺曼·福斯特(Norman Foster)爵士摒弃了国会大厦原有的浮夸风格，把它变成了能够恰如其分地展现一个共和国生机勃勃的精神风貌的标志性建筑。
But since then, the city’s problems have started to pile up: the cheaply built central train station with its short roof and low ceilings; the failure to redevelop old Tempelhof Airport; the controversial proposal to shoehorn the city’s world-famous museum of European paintings into a smaller space; a similar, tourism-driven plan to shrink the Ethnological Museum and relocate it in a fake Baroque palace; and the inability to come up with effective measures to stave off gentrification. And then there’s the new airport. It was needed 20 years ago, was supposed to open in 2011 and is now unlikely to see traffic before 2016, by which time it already will be too small for projected passenger flows.
但自从那时起，这个城市的问题不断累积：寒酸的中央火车站，屋顶很矮，天花板很低；没能重建老旧的滕佩尔霍夫机场(Tempelhof Airport)；搞了一个饱受争议的方案，非要把该市一座举世闻名的欧洲绘画博物馆塞进一个较小的空间；又弄了一个类似的旅游驱动型规划，要缩小民族博物馆(Ethnological Museum)的规模，并把它搬到一座冒牌的巴洛克式宫殿里去；还有就是没能找出避免绅士化的有效办法。再来说说新机场。柏林早在20年前就需要这个新机场，原本应该在2011年投入运营，但现在看来，在2016年之前是不可能开业的。等到那时候，相对于预计的客流量而言，它已经显得太小了。
All these problems can be explained away as bad luck, or typical of ambitious, large-scale projects. And of course all big cities have their problems. But in Berlin’s case they are a fair reflection of the fact that the city has been treading water, and that many of Berlin’s accolades stem from the big changes of a quarter-century ago and not the efforts of city administrations since then.
所有这些问题都可以简单地搪塞，比如运气不好，比如满怀豪情的大型项目常常会事与愿违。的确，所有的大城市都有各自的问题。可在柏林，这些问题却可以显示，这座城市的止步不前，柏林的许多荣耀，都来自25年前的剧变，而非在那以后市政府的治理努力。
The reasons for this stagnation go back to the Cold War. Early on, West Berlin did have internationally known mayors like Ernst Reuter and Willy Brandt. But by the 1970s, the city had become a backwater. Few ambitious politicians wanted to lead the western half (not to mention the eastern section, which was run as part of East Germany’s one-party state). The city became synonymous with second-tier politicians.
这种停滞的缘由，可以追溯到冷战时代。最初，西柏林的确有过一些享誉国际的市长，如恩斯特·罗伊特(Ernst Reuter)和维利·勃兰特(Willy Brandt)。但到了1970年代，这座城市就成了一湾死水。鲜少会有哪个有志向的政治人物，希望领导柏林的西半部，更不用说东德一党制国家统治下的东柏林了。这座城市成了二流政治人物的同义语。
When the Berlin Wall fell, these parochial officials took over the unified city. Not surprisingly, their vision was almost comically narrow. In 1993, the long-serving mayor, Eberhard Diepgen, said Berlin’s new center should look like “a city space like those we know from old black and white photographs.”
柏林墙倒塌时，这些目光短浅的官员接管了统一后的城市。可想而知，他们的视野狭隘到了滑稽的地步。1993年，担任市长已久的艾伯哈·迪根(Eberhard Diepgen)表示，柏林的新市中心要像“老黑白照片里见过的那种城市空间”。
This lack of imagination was reflected in building codes that required most new structures to be small and not look too modern. Over the years, the city center has become filled with dull, historicized structures. The other lasting effect of this era was an epic housing bubble brought on by a corrupt bank that the city’s leaders created by merging several local banks. That bubble eventually cost Mr. Diepgen his job and saddled Berlin with billions in debt.
这种缺乏想象力的念头在建筑规章里得到了体现，法规要求多数的新建房屋尺寸要小，看起来不能太现代。日积月累，市中心里填满了枯燥的仿古建筑。这个时代遗留下了另一个长期的后果。柏林的领导人合并了几家当地银行，而合并产生的那家腐败的银行，却催生了巨大的房地产泡沫。这场泡沫最终导致迪根丢掉了工作，也让柏林背上了沉重的债务。
Mr. Diepgen was replaced in 2001 by the current mayor, Klaus Wowereit, a suave, telegenic Social Democrat. It has been under his leadership that the city has slowly recovered. And yet for the most part his administration has simply stayed out of the way of the longer-term trends that reunification had set in motion. Perhaps the most important of these was the bursting of the housing bubble that Mr. Wowereit’s predecessor created. That left Berlin with a glut of cheap apartments, which made the city a magnet for young, creative people and start-ups.
迪根在2001年由现任市长克劳斯·沃维雷特(Klaus Wowereit)接替，后者是社会民主党人，文质彬彬也很上镜。正是在他的领导之下，这座城市才缓慢地复苏。然而他的政府所做的，大部分也只是不去妨碍德国统一所引发的一种长期历史趋势。或许其中最为重要的，就是戳破沃维雷特的前任造就的房地产泡沫。这给柏林留下了许多廉价的公寓，于是它像磁石一般，吸引了年轻、富有创造力的人群，以及许多创业企业。
But when the city took concrete action, the results were usually closer to the agony of Berlin’s new airport. It is not only decades overdue, but like the central train station, it was built on the cheap. It has no subway connection, no dedicated light-rail line and increasingly it seems that planes will be heavily penalized for landing at night, guaranteeing it will never become a hub.
但是当柏林采取切实行动的时候，其结果常常更接近柏林新机场造成的痛苦。不仅拖延了几十年，而且像中央火车站一样，是以极低的成本建成的。没有对接地铁、没有专用的轻轨线，而且越来越常见的问题是，飞机在夜间降落时似乎会遇到很大的麻烦。这样一来，它绝对成不了一座枢纽。
And like many of Berlin’s big projects, corruption seems to be behind its delay, leading to resignations and official inquiries.
就像柏林的许多大项目一样，机场长期拖延背后的原因似乎是腐败。一些官员因此辞职，官方也展开了调查。
For many years, I comforted myself by saying that Berlin had thrived because of its leaders’ mismanagement. After all, if the city weren’t so badly run, real estate prices would be high, which would drive away the young people and tech start-ups. There’s some truth to this, but it’s the equivalent of telling China that it should remain poor because if it got rich its competitive advantage in low wages would evaporate.
多年来，我总是这样安慰自己：柏林之所以能繁荣，是因为领导层管理不善。毕竟，如果不是因为城市管理不善，房地产价格就会高涨，年轻人和创业的科技企业就会被挤走。这在一定程度上是事实，但却像是在告诉中国应该继续受穷，因为一旦富起来，低工资的竞争优势就会消失。
Comparisons to China’s capital, Beijing, often come up in my mind when I think of Berlin. Over the past quarter-century, I’ve spent all but three years bouncing between the two cities. Of the two, I vastly prefer Berlin: It has a vibrant civil society, better museums, more affordable housing, a more open and tolerant attitude, and of course much less smog.
我在想到柏林时，头脑里经常会浮现出与中国首都北京的比较。在过去25年里，除了三年之外，我一直往返于这两座城市之间。我喜欢柏林远远超出北京，因为它有活跃的公民社会、博物馆更好、住房更便宜、心态更开放也更宽容，当然雾霾也要少得多。
But in some maniacal way Beijing is chasing the future to a degree that Berlin can’t — or won’t. Maybe it’s because Berlin has endured too much to indulge in this game, but Beijing feels as if it is at the center of something special, ominous at times, but thrilling nonetheless. The city can be overcrowded and dirty, but it’s also at the phase in its history where it’s building a subway line every year. Meanwhile, Berlin still hasn’t managed to run a subway line from the eight-year-old main train station to the western part of the city, where two-thirds of the population lives.
然而北京正在以有些癫狂的步调追赶未来，这是柏林所无法企及的，或者说不愿企及的。可能是因为柏林在过往承受了太多苦痛，不愿沉湎于这种竞赛之中，但北京却感觉自己站在一个奇迹的中心，偶尔让人惊惧，不过还是激动人心。虽然北京过于拥挤也有点脏，但是它处在一个每年都新建一条地铁线的历史阶段。与此同时，柏林却一直做不到用地铁线，把已经落成八年的主火车站，与三分之二柏林人口居住的城市西半部连接起来。
It’s fine to be world-weary. But that shouldn’t be an excuse for being dull and timid. Yet for many who have witnessed the city’s post-wall fortunes, it feels that this is what lies beneath the art galleries and start-ups: a scarred city content to remain in the second league.
厌倦世界恐怕无可厚非，但不应该以此为借口，一直枯燥、羞怯。然而，在见证了这座城市在柏林墙倒塌后的命运的许多人看来，在画廊和创业企业背后，仿佛掩藏着一座伤痕累累，甘愿当二线城市的柏林。