Travel: 48 Hours in Berlin

6.45am Sunday: Berlin isn't a city just for youth - it was Generation X that peacefully reclaimed the reunited city when the Berlin Wall came tumbling down in 1989. Evidence of their procreation is all over the city in the form of a baby boom, but they are still out in force, and are often heard harking back to the good old days before the gentrification began and the world caught on that Berlin was the coolest city in the world.

Upstairs in the Berghain Panorama Bar beneath Wolfgang Tillmans's photorealistic artful prints, I slam back a vodka shot and join the crowd dancing with a new-found sense of abandon. Somewhere this weekend I lost my inhibitions, now if only I could remember where...

9pm Friday: Rewind. I retrace my steps. Arriving at Schönefeld Airport in what was formerly East Germany, the rain lashes across the windscreen as the taxi passes by place names straight out of a cold war spy novel; Brandenburg Gate, Alexander-platz, Reichstag, Potsdamer Platz, and the Fernsehturm TV tower, which aptly looks like a giant disco ball suspended high above the city, and acts as a beacon when trying to get your bearings.

About nine times the size of Paris, Berlin graciously spreads out over 12 districts, each with its own unique character.

After a tough century where the city was home of the despicable Nazi party, almost bombed into oblivion and then had its heart split in two by a huge concrete wall, the 21st century belongs to Berlin. Since the unification has come a huge reinvention, with each district emitting its own creative pulse and energy.

11.30pm Friday: Standing in front of a derelict, graffiti-covered building, I start to wonder if I've been given the wrong address (in Berlin, signage is considered gauche). An eyeball appears in a section of frosted glass. Suddenly a door opens and a cloud of cigarette smoke and '80s music billow out of Trust, the city's new It bar in Mitte. Berlin is a city fuelled by cheap booze, as well as other more illicit substances and here, vodka and champagne flow by the bottle, not by the glass. "Nobody will tell you what is too far in Berlin," explains Henrik Tidefjärd, who runs tours of the city. "You cannot beat Berliner; they've done it, ate it and smelt it."

Click here to view a slideshow of Berlin.

Everyone here is a DJ, artist, musician or filmmaker, usually with a second job...or not. With unemployment at 15 per cent, there's plenty of time to be creative. Any ostentatiousness is seen as pretentious, therefore uncool. Nobody will be impressed with your designer handbag unless you've slashed it with a razor blade as some kind of radical anti-consumerist statement. Berlin is that kind of city.

10am Saturday: Grey is so passé. Despite the overt hedonism, I awake to church bells tolling. The mournful weather has been replaced by a relentless blue sky. The once dour Soviet grey buildings have almost all been painted in a riotous palette of gelato colours, while new trees planted at the fall of the Wall shed a blanket of red and gold autumnal leaves. I have coffee at Wohnzimmer (Living Room) – a cafe full of quirky furniture where Nick Cave, who called Berlin home in the late ’70s and early '80s, following the lead of David Bowie and Iggy Pop and the Ramones, plays on the stereo.

12pm Saturday: Berlin wears its dark history on its sleeve like penance. The war is mentioned often and serves as a reminder of the dangers of tyranny and fascism. The Topography of Terror, an outdoor museum, gives a chilling account of the rise and fall of Nazism, on the site of Gestapo headquarters in Niederkirchnerstraße. The history feels remote, yet eerily alive as I walk along a section of the Wall, the old graffiti reading "Madness", "End this now" and I'm taken back to a time not too far in the past, the austere buildings from the communist era creating a menacing backdrop.

3pm Saturday: Art for art's sake. It's the past that has fostered the current climate of tolerance and experimentation that infuses Berlin and brought with it an edgy creativity and thriving counter-culture. Freedom of self-expression is everywhere in the graffiti, stencils and cut-outs that tattoo the entire city, and in its thriving arts, music and cultural scene that sees 4000 events every day. My choice is a visit to Hamburger Bahnhof, an 1847 railway terminus brought back to life as a contemporary arts space that has a large collection of Andy Warhol's work.

9pm Saturday: Snapshot of a Berlin performance-art night at Ballhaus Ost: a silver-suited gimp hangs upside down with a dispenser taped to his chest spewing out reams of toilet roll; a naked fat woman squeezes herself into a small suitcase; a woman dressed as a chicken fries a lady dressed as an egg. Australian dancer and performance artist Diane Busuttil, a 10-year Berlin resident, rolls onto the stage in a dress hanging from a clothes rack and sings "Lonesome Town" in a de-tuned warbling with striking dance moves. "Berlin people accept you as an artist and have less of a need to categorise your work," she explains later. "It has a very open-minded approach to creativity. The city is pumping out inspiration by the minute."

Click here to view a slideshow of Berlin.

12.01am Sunday: Bar hopping. Kreuzberg was the centre of alternative youth culture in West Berlin before the Wall fell, and now it is again. Home to Berlin's Turkish population, it's bleakly urban and full of unique bars and clubs, each with a distinctly different vibe: Paloma is a tiny bar in an abandoned graffiti-covered shopping centre with retro wallpaper, cheap drinks and minimalist electro; while Roses, on Oranienstraße, looks like the inside of a womb covered in red fur, with kitsch chandeliers and playing '80s Euro pop.

4.30am Sunday: Leave your clothes and inhibitions at the door. These images will be burnt into my retina for an eternity: a towering transvestite with 100 face piercings, tourists dancing awkwardly in their underpants; naked men with their genitalia flopping to the music, big-breasted women in tight corsets. Me? Well I'm not so daring, I remove the slip from beneath my sheer grey dress, which seems to be enough to gain me entry into the KitKatClub, Berlin's infamous sex/trance music club. Beneath pornographic fluoro paintings, people sit around chatting and making out like teenagers in booths and lounges.

I meet Marc, a topless, supermodel-hot East German in tight leather jeans. When I ask where the libertine attitude comes from, he says, "It's definitely from the East. We didn't have religion, so we don't have the same hang-ups about sex."

As an intrepid reporter, I feel it's my duty to check out the dark room. In the half-light I can see just about every imaginable sex act occurring, and suddenly five guys with lust in their eyes surround me. It frightens me more than excites me, so I beat a hasty retreat and head to Berghain Panorama Bar.

11.30am Sunday: Blinking like a baby bat, I stumble out into the light from Berghain Panorama after hours of dancing, chatting and drinking, and I'm completely exhausted. Mr-Barbed-Wire face gives me what could be either a smile or a grimace as I smile happily back at him. Taxi!

4pm Sunday: I catch the tail end of the Mauerpark Flea Market, a retro-shopper's dream in what used to be no-man's land, and wind up at open-air karaoke, where 2000 Berliners sit wrapped in coats, beers in hand, as they clap along to mostly appalling singers. And it's the sense of freedom and responsibility that leaves the greatest impression on me: drinking in public, not wearing helmets when you ride your bike unless you want to, not having to conform to fashion, taking your dog to a restaurant, unlimited licensing hours, smoking in bars, being who you are without fear of judgement. It would take 48 months to truly discover Berlin, but now I've drunk it, eaten it, and smelt it - I want more.

Click here to view a slideshow of Berlin.