THE countdown has definitely started. In only one month, the football world's attention will be focused on Berlin with all the intensity of a laser beam. From June 8 to July 9, games leading to the final in Berlin will be played in 12 German cities.

Some readers are lucky enough to hold tickets for some of them . . . others will be glued to television coverage and images of Berlin will become part of their daily viewing.

In a recent conversation with Kirsten Schmidt, Director of Public Relations for Berlin Tourism, she predicted an expected upsurge in interest in that area after the games.

"It always seems to happen after a major sports event," she told me.

And indeed it does. Coverage of Summer Olympics in Greece, recent winter ones in Torino and Lisbon's European Cup saw travel interest in those destinations immediately escalate.

So to get travellers and sports enthusiasts in the mood, we're going to take readers on a visit to some of Berlin's must-see sights experienced on our three trips there.

If ever there was a city on the move with an ever-changing skyline and thriving building boom, this is the place. Intense destruction of World War Two and the city's division by a wall separating East from West had an understandably devastating effect.

Today, after intense rebuilding, it continues to change, expand and reconstruct to the point anyone who hasn't been there in recent years will hardly recognise the place.

This traveller first arrived at Templehof Airport in May 1977 as part of a small press group of half a dozen journalists invited there by the German Government in co-operation with Lufthansa Airlines. To label it an interesting time would certainly be an understatement.

Hard-core communism was at its height. The much-publicised wall which sliced through the city isolating neighbours and families had gone up in 1961 and nothing had happened to thaw the threatening mood.

We'd flown from the US to Frankfurt, continuing onward via connecting flight. Most of the jet-lagged group opted to collapse at our hotel on arrival, but a few of us chose to take a trip offered into East Berlin to visit a Russian War Memorial built with stones from Hitler's Reichstag. That meant crossing through Checkpoint Charlie, then being subjected to intense scrutiny of communist border guards at East Germany's border. They seemed to go out of their way to make it an especially tense experience, studying your passport with the thoroughness of an anthropologist examining a newly discovered species.

Finally, you were asked to take off your hat, turn your head . . . more penetrating X-ray observation peering into your face as though memorising it for posterity, then disappearing off the small tour bus into the border post with your passport.

Certainly we were all aware of the ominous watchtower above, staffed by well-armed soldiers with reputations for aim accuracy when anyone attempted to escape to the west. Many freedom-seekers did not make it.

Spy movies and mystery thrillers often focused on the Funeral in Berlin theme and one did not need too much imagination to feel they were part of such plots.

I didn't know that much about personal history of the older journalist sitting beside me. It took some years in the writing profession before learning he'd been OSS in Burma during World War Two, a close associate of "Wild Bill" Donovan who founded the CIA, and was still very involved in intelligence using travel as a cover. It's a wonder he wasn't hauled off the bus as a spy and myself along with him, suspected of guilt by association.

That almost legendary Checkpoint Charlie is one of the first places visitors will want to see. Somewhere around 700,000 tourists a year do just that, recalling what it must have been like to be trapped on the wrong side of the wall.

The actual Allied guardhouse was moved to the Allied Museum in 1990, but a duplicate was built at the site. And to the mortification of many Berliners, the dreaded watchtower was torn down in December 2000 by East Berlin real estate developers to build a new shopping centre and office complex.

Efforts were under way by historic-minded conservationists to save it as a reminder of the past, even if it meant moving it out of the path of the new development.

But in what locals described as "a stealth operation" (much like what happens in Chicago), "they waited until it was dark and we were told nothing in advance, even though we had often discussed how the tower could be moved", said Rainier Hilderbrand, Checkpoint Charlie museum director.

LOCAL opinions ranged from "a barbaric act" to "stupid". One does wonder about city officials who said they could not save it because it was "not classified as an historic landmark". Why not? If it wasn't, what is?

That museum now covers the history of his border crossing and recalls many of Berlin's incredible escapes . . . and failed attempted escapes . . . that occurred during the wall's existence. Officially, it's called Mauermuseum Haus am Checkport Charlie (Mauer is German for wall).

It was started in 1962 beside that checkpoint border crossing which itself opened in 1961 when the wall went up. It is open daily from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. Entrance fee is 9.50 euros or reduced to 5.50 euros for more than ten.

Allow plenty of time to view displays. Who could ever forget some of the remarkable photo images of escapes actually in progress? A woman jumping from an apartment to reach a net held below . . . a soldier leaping over barbed wire for freedom . . . windows being walled up in the Eastern zone to prevent people trying to escape by jumping from them.

There's a touching picture of a bride being lifted up by her groom to wave over the wall to her crying mother on the other side. Heroic efforts to flee by hiding in trunks of cars . . . like one shown in a small Isetta . . . even attempts to be carried across in suitcases.

Nearly all of the 97-mile wall was torn down except for a few scattered sections. When we first viewed it in 1977, the 12-foot section easily observed from a viewing platform near the Reichstag was complete with a chilling death zone.

It was actually a double wall with treacherous tank traps and watch towers on buildings. From there one could also see "hillocks" that covered what had been Hitler's bunkers.

The walls had a pipe on top designed so those attempting to scale it couldn't get a grip. And at the Brandenberg Gate it was six feet thick to stop cars from breaking through as they used to when it was thinner.

From a viewing platform at the Reichstag, one looked out over the River Spree to the other side where guards were easily visible in watch towers.

We could also see five crosses, memorials to people who didn't make it. We were told there were 71 like them along the river.

Interestingly, at that time the German government subsidised trips for high-school students to Berlin so they could have a better understanding of a divided Germany. On that first trip, it seemed there were more historic, architecturally interesting public buildings surviving war damage in Berlin's Eastern Mitte Zone than in the west.

SO when my brother Jim joined me on an encore trip a dozen years later, we decided to stay in one of the "golden oldie" hotels next to the river on Karl Liebknecht Strasse, a continuation of Unter den Linden Strasse, in what had been the eastern sector.

The wall had just come down and we arrived soon after. So most of it still remained. There was still an air of tension in what had been the East because the Stasi remained as German police.

And I especially remember how when we eventually left to drive west, truckers made a beeline for former border areas of western Germany well over 100 miles away, because none of them wanted to park overnight in what had been a police state, that large section separating Berlin from the west.

The hotel we discovered turned out to be a rare delight . . . bedrooms were super-sized, actually suites with gilt antique furnishings of a previous century. I often wonder what happened to the beautiful beds with their solid brass flat headboards decorated with Mozart Angels. To this antique collector, they looked like their value would cover a home down-payment. One of its major selling points at that tempestuous period of history was the fact our suite had a large bay window and management agreed we could park our rented Mercedes station wagon directly under it on the sidewalk in a normally no-parking area, rather than the dark, insecure parking area behind the hotel. Cars were being stolen, hub caps, even tyres removed for sale on the black market.

We loved the location . . . it was near the river and the great island museum complex, including the justly famed Pergammon which was part of our view. Unfortunately, on our most recent return, that one-time hotel gem was boarded up, its land titles under investigation.

In fact, that has been a major problem throughout East Germany where private property ownership was violated under communist rule and land confiscated. Reunified Germany gave legitimate owners opportunity to dispute the matter in court . . . a problem that still continues in some areas.

A journalist of my acquaintance fled Berlin as a child with his parents when war began and has successfully restored the family title to their home after a court battle.

q Next week: Berlin is definitely a city on the move