I must admit that what I knew about Berlin could have been written on the back of a postage stamp before my visit.

One of my best recollections was the visit of President Kennedy in 1963 and his famous saying: "Ich bin ein Berliner" to a crowd of 120,000. Literally translated, it apparently means to locals: "I am a doughnut", so perhaps he was in the same situation as me as I stepped off the aeroplane.

Interestingly, there are more British visitors than anyone else in the city - 746,000 went there last year - a rise of 22 per cent on the previous year's figure. So I was not exactly blazing a trail as there is a huge marketing push to attract as many visitors as possible. But although my visit was brief, I was able to appreciate exactly why that is the case.

Berlin is a city in a state of flux - there is a massive amount of construction taking place virtually everywhere you look. It is literally reinventing itself as a major centre of European capital and culture, a position it occupied happily at the turn of the 20th century.

There are 175 museums, 135 theatres and it is the only city in the world with three opera houses (if you get a chance, take a look round the French Masters exhibition - on loan from the Metropolitan Museum in New York - at the Neue Nationalgalerie; it's stunning).

It goes without saying then that determined culture buffs will have a field day, but that is just part of the Berlin story.

Rarely will you find a place so steeped in recent history - it is impossible not to be aware of it every minute you spend in the city.

Even in the forest walks of the Grunewald, probably the only part of the city untarnished by Nazi crimes, Second World War bombs, or the Communist regime, you are aware that you are in the still small centre of an ever changing world - one that is even now witnessing an ever increasing role for eastern Europeans, many of whom still come here to marvel at what was, until 1989, the most dramatic frontier between their world and ours.

They walk in the many open spaces in and around the city - the Tiergarten, Grunewald, Wannsee, and Grosser Muggelsee - and they step in wonder through the Brandenburg Gate which, less than 20 years ago, would of course have been something impossible for them to do.

One "ossie" girl from Leipzig - Germans call former easterners that, those from the west being "wessies" - described her feelings when she first set foot in west Berlin. She said: "Tears came to my eyes when I saw the glitter of all those expensive shops in the Kurfurstendamm. Suddenly I realised that I could go anywhere in the world: West Germany, England, America, anywhere. It was up to me to seize the opportunity."

Much of the 'Ku'damm', that extraordinary boulevard modelled on the Champs Eysee in Paris and built by Bismarck at the end of the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71, still manages to conjure up images of the decadent, anything-goes world of Christopher Isherwood, who wrote Goodbye to Berlin in the early 1930s, and whose writing helped inspire the film Cabaret, starring Lisa Minelli.

Remember Money, Money, Money? You would if you saw the shops in the Ku'Damm. Here a little gold choker, say, might set you back £20,000. And yet this Berlin is somehow full of hope, not bitter and inward looking, like Isherwood's. Near Voss-Strasse is where Hitler had his notorious bunker, which I was amused to see was now the site of a car park. Part of it still apparently exists - although it is not open to the public.

Imposing buildings, once the headquarters of the Nazi party, have now been transformed into banks and offices.

Berliners now seem willing to acknowledge the horrors of the Second World War and the key role the city played in the final days of the conflict.

While I was there, I also visited an exhibition of pictures and recordings of the Nuremberg trials, starkly pitched against the backdrop of part of the Berlin Wall.

This was an eerie but fascinating experience, as was a visit to the Jewish memorial, a modern piece of architecture which is truly haunting.

The Berlin Wall itself is now available to view in very small sections, as a living memorial, while Checkpoint Charlie, the American-guarded gateway to East Berlin, has been preserved, sandbags and all.

The wall had effectively divided East and West, communism and capitalism, for 40 years, but, as I stepped through the Brandenburg Gate, just a small row of cobbles marks where it ran, with people obliviously cycling and walking through the area.

Now all efforts are being put into matching East with West - hence the massive rebuilding work to replace the tenement blocks with smart, modern building. In a few years you won't be able to tell where the East ended and the West began.

Berlin has an incredible amount to offer and I felt as if I had barely scratched the surface.

I would like to return and delve deeper into that melting pot of culture, history and regeneration which proved so fascinating on this occasion.