I’m curled in a comfortable armchair in a bar at four in the morning, fighting sleep. I have to wait for my husband to finish deejaying before we can leave. I look up and, from across the room, a handsome dark-haired man makes eye contact with me. In sign language, he asks me if I am going to go to sleep. I smile. He answers for me, No way! and waves his hands emphatically. He signs again, this time asking, Do you want something to drink? I turn my head no. Then he touches his lips and mimics kissing. Wanna make out? His sign languages asks. I begin to laugh. I’d consider it.

Sleep, drink or sex? His down-to-business attitude turns me on. Perhaps that’s because after living in Berlin for two years a little flirting—both charming and direct—surprises me. I am no longer used to being approached like that.

It’s hard to say what it is about Berlin that’s so different from the United States when it comes to sex. I can’t quite put my finger on it, and I want to avoid cultural generalizations. Still, there’s difference that I can feel.

As it turns out, the dark-haired man is Mexican, I’m American, and we’re sitting in a bar in the city that was once, for a short period after WWI and before WWII, an internationally renowned “City of Sin.” And, it may very well be making a comeback.

Between the wars, during the Weimar Republic, Berlin experienced a period of sexual decadence—free love, cabaret, dancing girls, hundreds of gay bars and a highly visible gay and lesbian scene.

Although the sexual vibrancy of Berlin was brutally silenced when Hitler rose to power, Germany’s lustful ways, openness towards sex and comfort with the body somehow survived the many dark years that followed. In fact, Germany’s Freikörperkultur (FKK) movement that defended and celebrated social nudity was especially strong in former East Germany.

Julia Ostertag, a self-professed sex junkie and German filmmaker whose film Gender X, recently screened in the Berlinale, explains the FKK’s influence.

“The FKK created these spaces where everyone could be naked,” explains Julia. “The more you get opportunities to get real experience and see different bodies, the more you can accept the body and maybe the person, too, as just a part of life.”

Today, openness towards sex is visible in unified Germany, and Berlin especially: Prostitution is legal, Berlin has an openly gay mayor, Germany recognizes gay partnership, and darkroom sex clubs for men and women are just as easy to walk into as the neighborhood pub. “Sex” is a visible part of the city’s fabric, and so is sex education. Berlin is currently covered with giant billboard safe-sex ads displaying various condom-wearing asparagus, cucumbers and other phallic vegetables.

Triston Brewer, a bisexual African-American singer and performance artist living in Berlin, believes that “[Germans] discover and accept their bodies quicker … When you’re more comfortable with your body, you’re more comfortable with someone else touching it.”

Germans may be so used to their bodies that the mythos of nudity—the “erotic”—has deteriorated. This might be the key to why many Americans in Berlin find themselves less likely to get “hit on” than they did in the States.

Dahlia Schweitzer, a bisexual American artist living in Berlin, believes that when it comes to the art of flirtation, Germans are boring, passive and cautious.

“Americans are much more aggressive,” Dahlia says. “Germans are more passive and want to be told what to do. Americans pay more attention to ‘courtship’ and romance. Germans are more comfortable taking off their clothes—and not necessarily in an erotic way.”

Brandon Rivard is an American artist living in Berlin who has had sex with both German men and women. He believes that Germans “are just a little bit less coy about [sex] than Americans.” Americans, Brandon explains, tend to make insinuations about sex rather than asking directly. In America you might say, “Maybe you’d like to go for a walk?” or “Hey, would you like to come in for a night cap?” whereas in Germany sex is more matter of fact. Germans might say, “I live close. We come to my house, ja?”

Julia Ostertag, who spent time in the United States screening Gender X, filming No American Dream, and chasing sex, agrees that, while she doesn’t like to generalize, American guys are more into that Hey … can I take a ride with you? kind of flirtation. But that doesn’t impress her. What she does like about American flirt culture is the simple fact that people introduce themselves. It serves as an opening and therefore an invitation that one can either take or leave.

Some Europeans believe that introductions are superficial niceties. “Why talk about how nice it is to meet each other when we haven’t even spoken?” says one straight German man I interviewed. “I’d rather have a real conversation.”

“American men are more generous, in a way,” Julia says. “That’s something they lack here. They are a bit classier in the United States. It is just habit to invite a girl over and say certain things, even if it’s not exactly honest … a certain way of just being charming … ‘to treat you like a lady.’ I think that’s more ‘American.’”

Brandon agrees that “here in Berlin, if you’re sitting talking to a guy, he might be real upfront about just leaving and going home together, but it’s the starting talking part that doesn’t often happen.” German men aren’t full of snappy, ‘obvious’ one-liners. “And sometimes,” Brandon explains, “I need to be chased after ‘like a lady’.”

Therein may lay the difference. In the United States, at least traditionally, gender roles may be more clearly defined and niceties are more readily accepted: not only how to treat someone ‘like a lady,’ but who ‘the lady’ is. In Germany, however, who-is-who may be less obvious and more open to improvisation.

Triston, along with several other straight men I spoke with, find that German women are more likely to make first moves than American women typically do, at least when it comes to male-female flirting.

Julia is one of those German women often willing to take a risk. “I don’t care if a guy pays for my drink,” says Julia. “If I don’t like him, I take the drink and leave him alone. If I like someone and I am attracted, then I would make some moves, too. I think some German men think: ‘I couldn’t do that (approach a woman) because then I come across as macho.’”

A straight Canadian woman living in Berlin, who believes there are similarities between Canadian and American flirt styles, put in her two cents. She thinks that German women have flipped gender roles around.

“I think it’s because of women’s liberation in Germany … men have been scared off by the way German women act. I think that [German women] are kind of aggressive and they get pissed off sometimes and tell these guys to fuck off.”

While Brandon isn’t sure about ‘gender equity’ in Germany, he does know that “it’s easier to get straight men here than in the United States … there’s less of a stigma. You know a guy might be straight most of the time but it’s not such a big deal if he lets a guy suck him off every now and then.” In the States, being gay or straight is a black-and-white issue for most people. “That’s not necessarily a gender equity thing,” says Brandon, “but there’s a bit more of an openness about things [in Germany].”

I presented my questions about flirting and making ‘first moves’ to a small group of straight men—two Americans and one German—sitting in White Trash, an Americana bar and restaurant located in the heart of Berlin. They found gender roles to be less fixed in Germany than in the United States.

“All over Europe they don’t have this macho thing,” said one American. “For the first three months I lived here I thought some of my best friends were gay … they were so nice and always touching my leg ... I was like, ‘we don’t do that in Cleveland’.”

In Germany, explains the other American, gay and straight worlds are blurred—and so is the idea of who belongs to whom.

“The social scene is a bit more free in Germany because men are not always guarding their girlfriends and women are not nervous about being hit on. In the United States women are much more guarded, especially if they’re taken. In the United States, men respect other men’s girlfriends … sometimes they won’t even talk to a girl if they know she has a boyfriend because her boyfriend might get angry. Here men don’t care … they’ll hit on my girlfriend right in front of me!”

“Yeah,” says the other American, “the first few girls I slept with in Germany had

boyfriends! And my girlfriend now … her borders are totally different from mine.” He explains that his German girlfriend will touch people in much more intimate ways than he will, with or without the intention of actually having sex. “Here, women are more ‘emancipated.’”

“American girls,” explains the other American, “are less likely to talk about one-night-stands. They are afraid of being called a slut.”

However, Tara DePorte, a straight woman who has spent time living and traveling as an environmentalist and artist throughout Europe, doesn’t entirely agree. While she finds that “American men are more crass, more to the point,” she believes that in fact “it’s more acceptable for American women to play that typically masculine role … and accept those direct offers.”

Even though Julia herself is assertive and adopts a take-charge personality, she doesn’t believe that German women are more “liberated,” either. She agrees that German men censor themselves more than American men. However, she says, “I don’t think it’s a sense of gender equality. I think it’s just laziness. Sexism is a general global issue and [the amount of sexism] totally depends on the community where you live in. Look at the ads—it’s everywhere. I would say that it’s pretty much the same in Germany as in the United States by the simple fact that it exists.”

Julia reminds me that it’s impossible to make generalizations about flirting. Everything depends on the scene. She believes that the secret to finding the right concoction of directness, eroticism and good sex lies simply in accepting yourself for who are and finding your niche. She says it took her 36 years to learn and accept what she was looking for. She finds the Berlin punk-rock scene to be most comfortable for her, because “they accept girls that don’t behave so girl-like.”

So man or woman, gay or straight, and whether you’re the kind that likes to be chased or likes to do the chasing, you’re likely to find your niche if you let your real self shine through and allow the rest to follow. Do a little research, explore a different scene, and you might be surprised where you find yourself and who’s flirting with you. If you still don’t have any luck, I suggest traveling. I’ve got an extra bed in Berlin.