Read the text and fill in the gaps with a word from the ...



Read the text and fill in the gaps with a word from the table below. Write your answers in the empty table below the text. There are five words you will not need.

|ALTHOUGH |BECAUSE |DAMAGED |LIFE |THAN |

|APARTMENT |CHEAP |DEATH |ONE |THAT |

|APARTMENTS |CITY |FOR |PACKED |WAYS |

|BACK |CITY’S |FROM |PAY |WHAT |

|BECAME |COMMUNIST |FURTHER |STONED |WHEN |

W

hile the cost of housing can be an obsession in other cities, Berlin’s plentiful supply of inexpensive pads is a key factor in its appeal. A big overhang of cheap (1) apartments and abandoned factories and warehouses in the formerly communist (2) eastern half has depressed prices throughout the city. Studio space is to be had for (3) next to nothing. Even in Mitte, the center of Berlin’s new Szene, newly renovated apartments (4) rent for less than one (5) quarter of what you’d pay (6) in London. That’s a big draw. But Berlin isn’t just cheap. Some flock there because (7) it is not yet set in brick, stone and concrete, but in the process of redefining itself.

In some ways (8) the city is now the way it used to be. Before World War II, what became (9) East Berlin was the smart center of town. Unter den Linden, a treelined boulevard that (10) was Germany’s answer to Paris’ Champs Elysées, led eastwards from (11) the Brandenburg Gate to an island on the Spree packed (12) with neoclassical museums. Behind that was Mitte and the residential district of Prenzlauer Berg. When (13) the Wall went up, the east went down: fine apartment (14) buildings, many of them damaged (15) in the war, decayed further (16). Some areas were entirely razed to make way for the Wall and the death strips either side of it. West Berliners moved out into what (17) had been leafy suburbs and the center of commercial life (18) moved west. Now the city’s (19) focal point has shifted back (20) east again, but it’s an evolving process. There are still large areas of the eastern part of town that are filled with hideous communist-era concrete blocks, or just big holes waiting to be filled.

Adapted from Peter Gumbel’s Hip Berlin. Time Magazine. November 16, 2009.

|1. CHEAP |5. ONE |9. BECAME |13.WHEN |17.WHAT |

|2. COMMUNIST |6. PAY |10. THAT |14. APARTMENT |18. LIFE |

|3. FOR |7. BECAUSE |11. FROM |15. DAMAGED |19. CITY’S |

|4. APARTMENTS |8. WAYS |12. PACKED |16. FURTHER |20. BACK |

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