Can’t find any better description of Berlin than the one made by Martin U Waltz in his excellent book Berlin Unseen :

“ It’s a city where you are allowed to be different. A city that is open to people who think or feel outside the mainstream. There are few places where you can live out idiosincrasy and otherness so freely. At the same time, Berlin is, for long stretches, a normal big city with very “normal” people.”