Associated Reporters Abroad (ARA) - Professional freelance journalists reporting for media outlets worldwide

BERLIN - "Come on," shouted my friend James, who had come to visit me in Berlin and, at that moment, was climbing through a hole in a fence to an abandoned theme park he had found in his guidebook.

Carefully, my other friends and I followed him through. We were on our way into Spreepark, one of a number of abandoned sites throughout the city becoming popular with tourists looking for something beyond the normal Berlin attractions like Brandenburg Gate, the Reichstag and Alexanderplatz.