Berlin's Green Man, Running for Life By David Sturm The Washington Post Sunday, June 14, 1998; Page E01

Also, and most significantly, he is an emblem of pride in resurgent east Berlin, where he flashes on every street corner as the "walk" signal for pedestrians.

West Berlin has a different walk signal, an uncertain-looking fellow stepping ahead tentatively. Maybe he's not so sure he wants to cross the street. As the united city begins to standardize its long-separated infrastructures, there was some question whether East Berlin's high stepper would gradually disappear and be replaced by West Berlin's shuffler. A "Save the Green Man" campaign arose a little more than a year ago and the whole city has embraced him.

"The Green Man is a little part of our identity," said Kathrin Ruemmler, a 28-year-old research engineer and a proud native of East Berlin. "Our sign looks better than the one in the west. The campaign is a way of saying, 'Don't erase who we are.' "

Like its mascot, east Berlin is taking big strides.

The western sector may have its silk stocking neighborhoods, its posh shops and lush parks, but the east has become the epicenter of the au courant. Streets like Oranienburger Strasse and Rosenthaler Strasse in Berlin Mitte -- "Middle Berlin," the old showcase of Prussian might stretching from Brandenburg Gate to Alexanderplatz -- and the neighborhoods south of Brandenburg Gate around Potsdamer Platz and to the northeast in Prenzlauer Berg buzz with cafe chat by day and rumble with techno music by night.

Oranienburger Strasse, less than half a mile east of where the Berlin Wall stood, is practically the capital of Berlin hipdom. It's chockablock with bars-cum-art galleries like Silberstein, Obst & Gemuese and Cafe Orange. Nearby are the techno-rave madhouse Tresor, where you can shake it in a former bank vault, and Delicious Doughnuts, the acid jazz venue that boasts both its own record label and Web site (http://www. doughnuts.de).

At Oranienburger Strasse 53 is the vast and slightly preposterous Tacheles, a warren of galleries, clubs, art studios and restaurants inside the former Friedrichstrasse Arcade, a semi-ruined department store. This seven-year-old house of outre culture is the kind of place you can shop for a sculpture made out of working flamethrowers, videocassettes of underground movies, computer-generated art or a cute robot, not to mention T-shirts and coffee mugs. Find a table amid the iron armatures sticking this way and that in the sculpture garden (watch your head!) and catch the slackers of Europe hard at work trying to out-cool each one other.

If Berlin Mitte is where you wear a ring through your eyebrow, Prenzlauer Berg is where you wear it more sensibly in your earlobe. Dubbed "Yuppie Town Prenzlauer Berg," this old neighborhood about a mile northeast of Berlin Mitte is undergoing a blitzkrieg of gentrification. Rising rents have forced an estimated 70,000 East Berliners, mostly young families, to flee elsewhere for cheap digs to make room for battalions of young executives and professional couples, most of whom are Wessies (west Berliners).

On weekends, they come to Prenzlauer Berg from all over the city to make the weekend scene around the neighborhood's two main landmarks, Kollwitzplatz and the Wasserturm (Water Tower), scarfing pasta at chic eateries like Die Krahe, arguing politics under a portrait of Karl Marx at the Cafe Westphal or checking out the jam sessions at the nightclub Cafe-Kunstfabrik Schlot.

East Berlin may be one of the few urban areas in the world where a city official would be quoted in the newspaper promoting lenient treatment for graffiti artists who get caught. Wouldn't want to scar a teenage paint bomber with a criminal record! The city has an estimated 3,000 graffiti artists, and a ride on the 1 tram along Prenzlauer Allee, which stretches from Berlin Mitte northeast to Prenzlauer Berg, is like a tour of their gallery.

Although Ruemmler wouldn't be caught dead at a rave on Oranienburger Strasse (she's a country-western music fan), she takes out-of-town friends to Prenzlauer Berg, the urban living blocks at Hellersdorf and other places in the east. In fact, she rarely even goes to west Berlin, which she finds full of self-centered people who value only money.

Lots of east Berliners share her attitude.

A 1997 study conducted by the Leipzig Institute for Market Research found that only one-fourth of Ossies (east Berliners) could imagine themselves living in the west. Many scorn the west as a fount of egotism, greed, arrogance and immorality. The study found that east Germans see themselves as more industrious, family-oriented and willing to help others.

While the study may show that east Germans value a hardscrabble identity forged over four decades of Communist rule, there's no trading in nostalgia over politics. Other studies show that fewer than 5 percent want the old regime back.

You need only visit Alexanderplatz to see why.

In East Berlin, Alexanderplatz is inescapable. A vast, mind-numbing concrete plain of socialist modern architecture, dotted here and there with an old church, Alexanderplatz is the epitome of old regime kitsch. Ten new skyscrapers to be built in the next decade will no doubt transform the square's drab, uninviting appearance, but for now it's a place to buy cheap socks or CDs at open-air kiosks or puzzle over how to read the international clock.

The main reason tourists go to "Alex," as Berliners fondly call it, is to ride to the top of the Fernsehturm, the soaring television tower (second highest construction in Europe).

Unter den Linden, which connects Alexanderplatz to Brandenburg Gate, was the old city's grand promenade, clattering at different times with the hooves of Hohenzollern cavalry and the boots of torch-bearing Nazis. Now, the boulevard's windswept spaces are in sore need of street life.

On the north side of Unter den Linden is Museumsinsel (Museum Island), a clutch of art museums dominated by the Pergamon Museum, which holds one of the world's most awe-inspiring displays of ancient architecture. After exiting the Pergamon, stop at the outdoor flea market just over the Spree River that runs along Am Kupfergraben. Several stands specialize in communist-era items, including medals and posters. Here is a good place to buy your Green Man pin.

Opposite Museumsinsel on the south side of Unter den Linden is the big, boxy and quite empty Palace of the Republic, the former East German parliament building. The palace has become a focal point of Berlin's debate over what is and isn't worth saving from the communist era. Many want it torn down. Others see it as worthy of preservation, a focal point of a lost political identity.

The Berlin Wall has all but disappeared. But so many visitors are curious about it that city officials have taken to painting a red stripe, to be replaced later by cobblestones, to show its location.

To immerse yourself in giddy Cold War paranoia, there's only one place to go -- Haus am Checkpoint Charlie, the museum situated at the location of what was once the world's tensest border crossing. Haus am Checkpoint Charlie at Friedrichstrasse 44 is a real house, or more precisely, a series of rooms going through several houses. Here are inspiring, frightening and poignant relics -- escape contraptions, fake passports, propaganda posters, protest art, screaming headlines, booby traps.

The Cold War demarcation between East and West Berlin was once likened to a shop window, with the Ossies outside peering hungrily at the array of western goodies on the other side. Unification has revealed a measure of western self-congratulation in that cliche.

The Green Man struts happily these days in his beloved east Berlin. The only wall now hindering his freedom is the one surrounding the construction sites.

David Sturm is a freelance writer living in Prague.