BERLIN - I was sitting in a chic Asian fusion restaurant - they sprout effortlessly here - listening to my friend, Patti, describing the city's charms: "I like it that there is a choice of restaurants and the menus are in English. I like it that Berlin is green, but not so green that it's too spread out. And I love it that they have Wax in the City!"

"Wax in the City?" I asked. Apparently, it's a waxing-studio franchise, and it makes my friend, a former resident of Philadelphia and New York City, very happy.

A young man approached us and offered a massage. Yes, a massage. It seems that the members of neckAttack, a mobile massage service, ply their trade in restaurants, bars, and offices. The masseurs and masseuses have no fixed prices - you pay what you deem is fair when the deed is done. Since my masseur looked like a young Brad Pitt, I got my first back rub, fully clothed and upright.

So, delicious food, Wax in the City, and massages while you dine. Is this sensual Berlin?

The thing is, Berlin is not the most beautiful city in Germany - Munich has fairy-tale castles and mountains, and Hamburg is on water. Nor is it the nicest - Berliners can be quite brusque. But Berlin is infinitely interesting.

My three-day visit in May couldn't have been better-timed. Twenty years ago this month - Nov. 9, 1989 - the Berlin Wall fell, bringing to an end 40 years of a corrupt, authoritarian system. All year, Berlin has been gearing up for a remembrance marathon, with exhibitions and events planned all over the city.

So another Berliner friend, Yeemei Guo-Hartung - she remembers drinking champagne on the street the night the Wall fell - took me on a historical route.

We met at Brandenburg Gate, the city's most famous landmark. Pre-November 1989 pictures showed its stately elegance scarred by the Wall and the ever-present soldiers on watch. American presidents have been drawn here, with Kennedy, Reagan, Clinton and presidential hopeful Barack Obama making rousing speeches.

In Guo-Hartung's Mercedes, we zoomed down Unter den Linden, a tree-lined boulevard, rounded the Alexanderplatz public square, then turned onto Karl-Marx-Allee. On a stage on this boulevard on Oct. 7, 1989, East German leader Erich Honecker, Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, and other Eastern Bloc dictators watched a military parade celebrating the 40th, and unknown to them, last anniversary of the East German communist state.

We stopped at the East Side Gallery, the longest piece of the Berlin Wall still standing at its original site. When the Wall fell, thousands of people came with hammers and chisels to collect their own little pieces of history. Larger chunks were transported to museums or sent abroad as gifts, and smaller pieces are still being sold in souvenir shops around town.

The East Side Gallery is about a half-mile long and suitably covered with graffiti, though much of it is touristy doodling rather than old, powerful political expressions. There are plans to restore the Wall, but it seemed to us like new art made to look old to stand in for the real thing.

But the past became very real when I met Uwe Richter at the Alexanderplatz. On this huge square, a major Berlin Wall exhibition had just opened - 700 pictures and items documenting the events leading up to the fall and its aftermath.

The venue for "Peaceful Revolution" had been chosen with care. On May 7, 1989, a group of citizens gathered at the square - known as "Alex" - to protest controversial East German elections. It was a courageous act, since protesters were marked by the secret police, the Stasi.

And on this square on Nov. 4 - five days before the Wall fell - the largest anti-government demonstration took place.

Pointing to a display, Richter, 51, said: "That was my suitcase. You literally left with only the belongings you could carry. And that's my daughter's teddy bear. We sewed our foreign currency into it."

A former East German opposition member, Richter fled to the West and was in a refugee camp when he watched the breaching of the Berlin Wall on television.

I asked whether he had seen The Lives of Others, a 2006 drama about a dissident artiste couple who so moved a Stasi official that he risked his career to protect them.

"I couldn't talk for three days afterward," Richter said of the Oscar winner for Best Foreign Language film.

"Because it was so moving?" I asked.