In our Summer episode, airing this weekend as the city heads towards fashion week, we explore the economic challenges facing Berlin’s young fashion designers. No one knows their ups and downs like Melissa Drier, the Women’s Wear Daily correspondent in Germany, who has been covering the Berlin fashion scene for more than 20 years. The ultimate urbanite, Queens-born Drier cannot drive a car, so it comes as a great surprise to learn that in addition to her chic pad in Schöneberg, photographed here, she has a magical country house about an hour due west Berlin.

Most houses on the Berlin countryside are situated in villages, but Drier’s is the rare one on its own in the woods, like a cottage in a fairytale, surrounded by a large, blooming garden. Seeing it now, it is hard to believe that when Drier and her husband bought the place, not long after the Wall came down, it didn’t have running water and the garden was nothing but brambles. And for those of us who occasionally need a break from city life, they have an apartment to rent on their property. Berlin Stories host and Novelist Anna Winger recently retreated there to write for a few days and was charmed.

Snapshots by Anna Winger