A sociopolitical landmark for Berlin's parents: Starting in August all municipal day care centers in the German capital will be free. Several other states are also looking to phase out the costs for working parents.

The Berlin Wall came down in 1989. But it seems that its story still hasn't been fully told. A previously unknown section of the wall was discovered in summer 2018 in a residential section of northwest Berlin. Several locals on a walking tour came upon a 20-meter (66-foot) section of crumbling wall, covered in graffiti, in June. The wall had been covered by overgrown bushes, which is how it had escaped discovery for so long.

At Eliud Kipchoge’s training camp in Kenya, where he never misses his turn to clean the toilets or draw water from the nearby well, his fellow athletes call him “the boss man”. And on a pleasant autumn day in Berlin the 33-year-old lived up to that reputation – as well as reinforcing his case to be considered the greatest distance runner of all time – by obliterating the marathon world record. Kipchoge’s time of 2hr 01min 39sec was staggering enough, given it took 78sec off the previous best set by Dennis Kimetto in 2014.

Once state-owned housing, the apartment buildings of Karl Marx Allee have become the target of a bold city plan to keep rents affordable.

Little remains of the Berlin Wall, but a new monument in the German capital will honour the protesters who defied the communist state in 1989 and led the divided nation to reunification.