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Nothing could have prepared me for Berlin. Travelers who loved it touted its invigorating pace of life, its cutting-edge nightlife and art scenes, and its glimpse into the future of Germany. Backpackers who hated Berlin either likened it to Los Angeles in its immense urban sprawl and swathes of smog or claimed that modern Berlin was nothing more than a giant construction site, complete with a skyline of cranes. My trusty Let’s Go told me it was a city where things happened, where history exploded and the cutting edge emerged from a desperate population with its back against a wall. Me, I just kept picturing the newsreel from 1989 when the city’s entire population danced atop the crumbling Berlin Wall. I pictured Eastern Europe but with efficient trains, hipper clothes, and money that was actually worth something.

I’d never been so unprepared for a city in my life.

As the express train from Prague lurched into Zoo Station, I noticed two things: cranes and ruins. I’d been warned about the cranes, but I was surprised and horrified by the ruins. One minute I saw brightly colored skyscrapers and orange cranes towering above; the next I saw only the blown-out tower of the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church (Kaiser-Wilhelm Gedächtiniskirche). Built in 1852, the church’s tower was destroyed by Allied bombing during World War II. While I later learned that the church was left in its ruined state as a memorial to the stupidity of war, at the time all I understood was that bomb sites and war ruins still stood, side-by-side with modern Berlin. I would have expected war ruins in cities like Sarajevo or Zagreb, only recently emerging from the rubble of bombings and snipers, but in Berlin, where WWII had ended over 50 years ago? Until my visit to the German capital, I understood WWII in Europe to be memorials, vast cemeteries, even snide or sarcastic comments. In Paris, in Budapest, in London, in Warsaw, WWII was a thing of the past, a horrific moment in history to be reckoned with, to be talked about, to be got over. Cities rebuilt, museums were dedicated, and citizens healed. In every other city I’d been in, WWII clearly belonged to a different generation, to a different time. It was a legacy—a devastating legacy—to be learned about but not to be lived with.

But in Berlin, I quickly realized, WWII was as much a part of daily life as the cranes at Potsdamer Platz and the döner kebabs sold by street vendors. My second day in the city, I took one of Terry’s Top-Hat Tours. Terry, a former member of the British Foreign Service who lived and worked in divided Berlin, was intent on showing tourists the ‘real’ Berlin, the Berlin where Hitler’s ghost lurked around every corner and where everything questionable was actually a remnant of history, where 40 years of Soviet control trapped the city in an eery time capsule where every bullet hole and war bunker was perfectly preserved. Under Terry’s trained eye, I quickly learned that the myriad vacant lots throughout Mitte were actually bomb sites and that the large, locked, steel doors in the U-Bahn stations were not storage closets but rather parts of the wall, doors that once locked East Berlin from West Berlin (and that opened only in the wee hours to stock the magazine and food stands in the city’s stations). Sure, Berlin was rebuilding, as Potsdamer Platz attested, and recovering, as the renovated Reichstag proved, but beneath the veneer of progress was an insidious layer of not-quite-history.

In that first Berlin morning, of course I saw the standard array of Berlin’s "tourist" attractions, from Brandenburg Gate and Friedrichstr. to the Reichstag and Unter den Linden. Those were interesting, of course, but their monumental scale left a less-than monumental impression on me. In fact, what struck me the most on that morning’s tour—and during my entire stay in Berlin—were the (not so) little pieces of history hiding under trees and in train stations that silently and unremarkably coexist with modern Berlin. On Wilhelmstr., behind the record store at #92, is a small playground with a single tree at its entrance. The unknowing would walk past thinking this was merely an urban park, but beneath that tree and park lurks the entirety of Hitler’s bunker (Führerbunker), the site of both his marriage and his suicide. Many walking tours don’t even visit the site. Down the street—and unmentioned in any Berlin guidebook—is a beautiful U-Bahn station bedecked in the shiniest red marble imaginable. This is not, however, merely an elaborate decorating scheme: the marble is from the façade of Hitler’s palace, which once stood across the street but was destroyed during the war. As citizens began rebuilding the city, instead of wasting precious materials, they used the remnants of the palace to rebuild the neighborhood, most notably the marble in this station.

Of course, not all of Berlin’s history persists so surreptitiously alongside modern life. In the early 90s, young artists squatted in Tacheles, a bombed-out shopping center near Orianburgerstr. Today, Tacheles is one of Berlin’s hippest and most cutting-edge galleries, exhibiting underground artists and offering space for local performance artists. In many ways, Tacheles epitomizes the way in which Berlin’s youth are reclaiming and reappropriating their city’s bitter past, bomb sites, bunkers, and all. The view of Tacheles from Friedrichstr. exemplifies their project: the hollowed-out back of the four-story building is adorned with eight-foot-tall modern art canvases hanging where windows should be. The rubble of WWII is shockingly bedecked with daring, futuristic canvases. Among the bones of a war skeleton, Berlin’s avant-garde—Berlin’s future—has emerged.

Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church: Tel. 218 50 23; open M-Sa 10am-4pm. Terry’s Top-Hat Tours: 10am and 3pm daily from the Neue Synagogue on Oranienburgerstr.; DM10, under 14 free; S-Bahn #1, 2, or 25 to "Oranienburgerstr."