Local TV talk show host Becky Bernstein has decided her life is past due for an overhaul. Her latest flame just dumped her with a kind parting remark: she could really afford to lose a few pounds around the hips. So now is as good a time as any to put herself and her overstuffed apartment on a crash diet.

As she sorts through mountains of worn out clothes, old records, and half-read newspaper clippings — taking a break every now and then for a bowl of tomato soup — old memories resurface: how she fell head over heels in love with one Jürgen Markowski and soon agreed to follow him to Berlin. How, when Jürgen eventually opted out of her life, she learned the hard way that the men of Berlin were as flawed as the New York variety. And that actually her real love was not for him but for his town: Berlin, Europe’s one glitzy metropolis, and New York’s only Old World double.

Chapter Five of Becky Bernstein Goes Berlin has been produced as a radio drama in German.