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Sat 03 Mar 2007Changing at the crossroadsThe Europe of the last century, dominated by the Holocaust and the Iron Curtain, is transformed.At school in Brussels, we referred to Brussels as the "carrefour d'Europe" - it was not, of course, it was the carrefour [ crossroads] of a 12-member EU, of western Europe, but we were partitionists who thought Europe ended and the USSR began at the Berlin Wall. With the wall down, Berlin is once again, in Geert Mak's phrase about the city in 1918, "Europe's natural crossroads". In a year spent visiting 53 European cities, Mak got to a few - Paris, Munich, Moscow - twice, but Berlin he visited six times, and where some cities, such as Dublin, get only perfunctory treatment, Berlin, symbol of Europe's transience, never fails to rouse his enthusiasm: