Jörg also introduced me to Aspria Berlin Ku'Damm, the city's most exclusive wellness club, where the city's high achievers work body and mind in equal measure, and to the legendary Paris Bar, that wonderfully timeless Charlottenburg institution where artists, diplomats, and eccentrics have convened for decades. We dined there in splendid celebration of Jörg's birthday, surrounded by the bar's famous art-hung walls, and I cannot imagine a more fitting venue for such an occasion.
If Berlin is the rebel, Hamburg is the patrician, assured, elegant, and quietly spectacular. Germany's second-largest city and its greatest port, Hamburg occupies a position at the mouth of the Elbe with the confident ease of a place that has always known its own worth.
The skyline of Hamburg is defined by its church spires and, increasingly, by the soaring, wave-like form of the Elbphilharmonie, the concert hall that has become, since its 2017 opening, one of the architectural sensations of Europe. Perched on the banks of the Elbe, its glass upper structure rising dramatically from the red-brick base of a former warehouse, the Elbphilharmonie is both a venue of world-class acoustic excellence and a public landmark open to all.