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"Berlin is a city condemned forever to becoming and never to being.") (Karl Scheffler, author of   Berlin: Ein Stadtschicksal , 1910)   The ICE train hurdles at 120 mph through the flat-lands between Goettingen and Berlin. There are extra seats in the coach, Berlin is far enough from most other German centers to make flying faster. After glimpses of Wolfsburg and its Volkswagen factory the most noticeable things to see are wind turbines that stand in clusters on seemingly endless lush green fields. These are the landscapes of East Germany which Helmut Kohl, the German Chancellor who died this week and who had overseen unification, promised to turn into bluehende Landschaften . (Flourishing landscapes).   Germany still has more open space than one thought possible. Then, rather suddenly, there is Berlin, a city and also a state with probably the most turbulent history in all of Europe. Peeling back the layers of this particular onion reveals much of what shaped this continent

This article is part of a series which investigates the future of work and what it means to cities. Many see a 40 hour work-week, two-day weekend, a two-week annual vacation and a life in retirement after 65 as something their parents did but is now out of reach.  Off-time used to be defined by what it was not: work-time. People's identity was defined through their work. "What do you do?" meant work, not a personal interest or "what do you like to do?" Coal miner: Work and rest Much work was hard and taxing, a drudgery which required 8 hours of sleep to recover leaving barely enough time to organize the private life of eating, shopping raising children, or keeping up with the household. Age 65 was just about as long as such a schedule could be sustained. Having fun wasn't part of that schedule, nor was adventure, exploration, continued education or strenuous activity. Such a binary world of strictly separated work and narrowly defined "leisure" is