The shelf of best-selling books and new arrivals at Ocelot bookstore, Berlin. MEI JIA/CHINA DAILY

With a cluster of five museums built from 1830 to 1930, the place is now a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Our choices that day are the Pergamon Museum, where the beautiful dark blue Ishtar Gate of Babylon and the Market Gate of Miletus from ancient Rome are on display; and the Alte Nationalgalerie (Old National Gallery), which features mainly European, especially German, masters from the neo-classical, impressionist and early modernist periods.

I buy a souvenir there, a box for glasses with dark blue images from the Ishtar Gate, together with recordings of the bell ringing from the nearby Berlin Cathedral.

Something unusual about Berlin, for a Beijing resident, is when I hear that at some point during the 1990s, artists from around the world rushed to Berlin to "occupy" the many empty houses there for free and stayed there to create art.

"My workshop is located in a neighborhood that used to be like this (empty). But as time passed, the artists' presence boosted the quality of life there, the housing prices soared, and bankers and rich people begin to move in," says Chinese-German designer Liu Yang when we visit her studio.

Finally we experience Berliner Weisse, a local white beer with juices or syrups, and thick, tasty beef goulash.

Contact the writer at meijia@chinadaily.com.cn