Covering the period between 1938 and 1989, this is a memoir of life in the city of Berlin as seen through the eyes of the youngest member of a Berlin family. It chronicles how ordinary Berliners survived the war and its aftermath. It is also the story of a multitude of young Berliners who left home to find happiness on foreign shores and how, by leaving, they retained the spirit and sass characterizing a Berliner -- a trait destroyed by the erection of the Berlin Wall, the reunification of two solitudes and the phenomenon of political correctness which makes no allowance for humour, wit or self-deprecation -- without which a Berliner is not a Berliner.