New York loves Berlin loves New York loves Berlin ad infinitum. The love-in might be getting out of control. This week Gawker pretty much pegs the shared annoyance of young New Yorkers who live in Berlin returning to underhandedly boast about their cheap and lovely dolce vita in the City of Fallen Angels; it's some wonderful first-person hipster satire:

I mean I am not trying to really diss New York. It's just, well, over. And I know you agree with me. The luxury condos, the lack of dance clubs, the NYU robots, the Nanny-culture. In BERLIN, it's different. It's different in BERLIN. We don't ascribe to the narrowed, uptight, fitted, fashiony ideology that seems to have taken over this city. For instance, the other day I woke up in my apartment (I live in a huge former button factory on the Fingerstrasse for which I am charged about 60 dollars) and I decided I would just walk down the street with a teacup on my head! And no one even looked! Because we are all beautiful losers and artists and creators and puppeteers in BERLIN!

The harmonic convergence of gespiegelt admiration and envy can be seen in two showcases now being held in each city, about the other. The Economist enthuses about Carnegie Hall's Berlin In Lights, now in its second of three weeks, "Berlin and New York have sizeable mutual admiration societies but, until recently, post-war Berlin could only dream of being in the same league of creative effervescence as New York" while pointing one reason why the reception has been so positive: As many [New Yorkers] have German- or Austrian-Jewish origins, they have a loving, knowledgeable relationship with German culture.

Meanwhile at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt (an American gift to Berlin, mind you) highlights Gotham with the New York State of Mind exhibition. It finished last week. But, according to current Berlin resident Ed Ward who grew up in New York, you didn't miss all that much, unless you're really into theory, "It's been a long time since I've seen a show as incoherent and empty as this one.... Someone got so carried away with the theory behind this exhibition that it escaped the bounds of gravity and soared into the intellectual stratosphere, away from any bonds tying it to the subject matter at hand."

November 9th (Germany's own 9-11) rolls around and all Berliners wonder, "Hey, wasn't there a wall here just a minute ago?"