EVERYONE will remember where they were when they found out about David Bowie.

My heart sank when I woke up on Monday and checked the news, bleary eyed. How could he have died? We didn’t even know he was ill.

But that’s one of the reasons I admired Bowie. He was a proper star right up until the end. In an internet obsessed world where no secret is safe, Bowie was private despite being one of the planet’s most famous humans.

He told only his close friends and family about his illness. It was dignified.

And releasing an album at death’s door? Wow. I can’t my head round that level of creativity, motivation and dedication. He was made to be an artist.

Bowie’s death sparked a huge collective grief, signalling how far-reaching he travelled, in all his reinventions.

In Glasgow, organist Christopher Nikol performed a stunning version of Life on Mars at the Kelvingrove Art Gallery. It gave me goosebumps.

Tom Joyes, manager of the Barrowlands where Bowie played in 1997, summed it up. “He was just amazing. He was my hero.”

My relationship with Bowie started when I was about 19 or 20. I have my friend Sarah, a college pal, to thank.

She was/is a Bowie obsessive. She probably knows the words to every song in existence.

At that point I wasn’t familiar with the lesser known albums.

I’d recently bought a second hand CD copy of Hunky Dory and couldn’t stop listening to it. Sarah’s influence meant I was scouring record shops for vinyl soon after and the albums Low and Station to Station became my new favourites.

We would stick the record player on and dance around my old flat in Aberdeen. She also introduced me to the film Christiane, F. It’s based on a teenager from Berlin who becomes addicted to heroin and it's set to a backdrop of Bowie’s music.

Not exactly cheery stuff but it ignited in me a love of the German city.

So I couldn't believe my luck when I got picked to do a journalism fellowship last year and spent 10 weeks in Berlin at a newspaper there.

I reckon my time there was no less exciting than Bowie and Iggy Pop’s flat-sharing experience in Shoneberg - that's how much of an impact it's had on me.

Berlin is in tune with Bowie's pioneering music and it captures the strange isolating feeling that still hangs over the city, years after the fall of the wall.

Bowie said Berlin is a city that's so easy to get lost in and to find yourself too. He's spot on.

I bet everyone has a Bowie story, whether you saw him live, gifted your boyfriend a CD or listened to him in your parents' car.

That's why he lives on; in my ear phones when I'm walking to work or chatting to my mum about him on the phone. What a hero.Glasgow Times: