Interflug was the only East German airline seen here with a TU 134

Germans call it 'Ostalgie', an irrational love of the workers' cacotopia that was Honecker's East Germany. East Berlin stank of Russian petrol and had cardboard Czech shoes in flyblown shop windows. People ate coal.

You can still find apartments in East Berlin that have showers in the kitchen or so-called "Plattenbauten" with renovated facades in the district of Marzahn. And on Unter den Linden, Ostalgie shops feed the tourist need for memorabilia. At Checkpoint Charly, you can walk down memory lane by shooting a picture with Soviet and American dressed soldiers. There is money to be made with the Cold War.

Never mind pre-modern consumer products, such as the misguided German engineering effort, the Trabi and from a convenience standpoint, indoor coal heating, which stil exists in select eastern cities. In the winter months, you're bound to make some trips to the basement accompanied with moderate health issues once it burns.

Today, post-communist Russia and China have hired architects from the West to ensure that Ostalgie is a thing of the past. They have partially adapted capitalism to make it fit according to their own needs. Russia is competing with Airbus and western tourists in Turkey, whereas China continues to copy German wood saws and provides the States with ample amount of products found in Macys and Bloomingdales.

As Stephen Bayley points out in todays Observer, one of the greatest legacies of the Cold War era weren't consumer products, but rather the space these words are in: the Internet. And the interpretation of its use varies from freedom of speech, secure free movement of the US command, Google data mining and telling everyone about your new haircut.

If the British are known for great food, then the Germans for their unreliable cars. Jack Dee, aka Jack Spleen on the show Lead Ballon, takes on the subject. I remember living in high school in the States when Jewish classmates would tell me that their parents would never buy a German car. You can't disagree with that one.

Then again if you're against child labor, sweat shops or the death penalty, you're left with cell phones from Finnland, who actually started their business on bicycle tires. Even Nike is learning about consumer awareness and is pressured to appear more responsible. Most of all, Germans have much to learn about self-irony, because we can't blame it on the weather, England has game on that one.

Usually the Muesli is a weekly mashup of anglofritzian news, since I haven't posted weekly, we'll have to make an exception this time and do it monthly.

Holy Schnitzel, se Germans are so eco-friendly! William Powers discovers in a travel piece and slide show that Green is more than Whole Foods and Toyota Prius; it's a grass roots movement turned political. He starts his journey via the historic, hip and bicycle lane heavy Berlin, "But how is it that the "Los Angeles model" of urban renewal affected Berlin, and many other German cities, so minimally?"

Good 'ol John C. Dvorak, also grumpy on the highly recommendable TWiT, wonders why Germans care about American poltics in such graphical manner. Commenter Michael Auerswald mentions, "but first and foremost most Germans are still sceptical about pretty much anything that comes out of the US. And here comes the interesting part: deep inside Germans actually want to like the US."

Olympics are over. Apart from the fact that Germany's b-ballers got knocked out by China, they did get help from Nowitzki and the naturalized mercenary Chris Kaman, whose German ancestors emigrated to the States around 100 years ago. Rosenthal writes about this blitz naturalization and wonders, "Chris Kaman has never lived in Germany, he does not speak German, and his only connection to Germany consists of some ancestors who emigrated from Germany to the United States nearly a century ago." When will Germans change their dusty blood law into modern citizenship?

Then there's British actor Rupert Everett whose ready to move to Templin, which is in the state of Brandenburg - Everett enjoys the authentic country side there. He thinks London is packed. Well, it's surely not known for it's gourmet food, women or great weather. Last but not least, at the world's largest consumer electronics fair IFA, German and US bloggers discussed "What German Bloggers could learn from their US-colleagues – if they want to."

photo by Yuhang Yuan

It wasn't the Love Parade, but with all the love in the air, sometimes it felt like it. Barack Obama's speech in Berlin yesterday attracted throngs of eager onlookers---German and American flags a'plenty---up to a quarter million by one estimate, teeming masses along the Straße des 17.Juni, the historical avenue connecting the Bradenburg Gate with the Victory Column. The street is known best internationally as the site of the Love Parade (which has since left Berlin for the Ruhr) and most recently the Fan Mile where multiple widescreens broadcast the World Cup to crowds of soccer fans.

A good number of Berlin's 13,000 Americans were in the mix among the Germans, excepting those Americans working at the U.S. Embassy who were forbidden to attend the speech.

Obama's performance went off without a hitch. German observers are fawning over his professionalism and charismatic presence. The speech itself, rhetorically impressive and seemingly leaving something for everyone, put his appearance in the narrative of past countrymen, Obama acknowledging from the beginning that he came as an American citizen and a citizen of the world, rather than as President. The difference between Senator Obama and President Obama was at the centre of Angela Merkel's resistance to his original request to use the Brandenburg Gate. The story of the Berlin Airlift, started 60 years ago this summer, began and ended the speech. The breaking down of walls was employed as a metaphor at least 17 times. Germans were especially receptive to his admission that the U.S., 'my country' (notably not the Bush administration), had made mistakes and, appealing to Lincoln's 'more perfect union' concept, that the U.S. had not yet perfected itself. Obama made a plea for the unity of all mankind (more walls breaking) and the mutual responsibility that Europe and America hold for each other---not to mention the need of NATO for more troops in Afghanistan, a less than popular standpoint for the home crowd.

But, pundits counter, it wasn't necessarily a risky move either, considering that the intention of the speech was to impress, first and foremost, American voters watching at home. On that point, a request from Germany to offer more military resources in an unpopular but arguably necessary war would come across as tough love and statemanlike---just the sort of foreign policy brawn Obama needs to buff up stateside.

It was not the 'major speech' on the trans-Atlantic partnership that many had expected, nor did he try to speek German (luckily), but it was generally judged a success and a first look at someone who may well be heading the United States in 2009. Germans are relieved at the prospect of someone like Obama replacing the deeply unpopular Bush, who managed to all but ignore Europe for the last eight years. There is great hope, to use the Obama campaign's favourite word, that he would represent a new dawn in US-German relations. Germans, while in general more resistant to lofty rhetoric, seem to admire Obama for what he represents as the promise of the American idea.

It was supposed to be so grand. U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama -- who next Thursday in Berlin punctuates the midpoint of his European and Mid-Eastern foreign policy tour with a major speech on trans-Atlantic relations -- ran into a few snags on his choice of venue. His initial desire to speak in front of the historically resonant Brandenburg Gate (a scandal with 'gate' already built in!) has been quietly dropped after it sparked a three-way conflict last week between German Chancellor Merkel (against), Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier (for) and Berlin Mayor Klaus Wowereit (very for).

Though insiders say Obama may still walk through the historical gate where past Presidents Reagan exhorted Gorbachev to "tear down this wall" and Kennedy proclaimed himself a Berliner, the gate itself is now off the agenda with Obama officials now looking at alternatives like Gendarmenmarkt and Tempelhof Airport.

Not that Obama doesn't have a key phrase of his own to launch on the occasion: he will say, "Ich kann zuhören" ("I can listen") Dialog International blogger and Obama campaigner David Vickrey writes at the Atlantic Review. As a mission statement for US-EU relations, its harder to imagine a starker contrast to the "don't tell me anything" policy favoured by President Bush over his eight years in office.

It's a shift in American political culture and largely a good thing, writes Anne Applebaum in the Washington Post, that both candidates are now campaigning overseas (McCain just got back from Mexico and Columbia). "It's also useful for American voters to spend some time thinking about how their president will be perceived abroad because that's where he's going to be spending a lot of his time, like it or not. If Obama or McCain is going to be preoccupied with foreigners, perhaps it's not a bad idea for both to prove that they can cope." Nor, for that matter, is it bad for 'foreigners' who'll have to cope with Obama or McCain.

On a rain-soaked evening in Berlin — the 4th of July marking the occassion of the U.S. Embassy re-opening near Brandenburg Gate — the mutual appreciation machine was in high gear.

Berlin mayor Klaus Wowereit, in his opening words, said there are things one remembers their entire life and seeing John F. Kennedy speak before Rathaus Schöneberg was one of them — and not just because he got a free day from school. Reflecting on Germany's recent breakdown in unquestioning American loyalty on the Iraq War, he turned lemons into lemonade and lauded the American influence on his country, pointing out that Berlin's loud protests against the Iraq War were an indirect product of the sixties anti-Vietnam movement experienced in the United States.

But in a reminder that all is perhaps not yet forgiven, ex-Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, who presided over the bitterest period of protest and who was invited to the opening ceremony, refused to attend.

The dominant theme, however, was that of a new dawn for the US-German relationship, one which has notably improved in the last few years after a low point circa 2004 during strong disagreements on Iraq. The dignitaries on hand appealed instead to historical highpoints in the trans-Atlantic friendship.

Ex-President George Herbert Walker Bush, in power in the heady final days of the Berlin Wall, said, "Today, we fit one of the last pieces of a historic puzzle into place. The reality that it lays bare — a new American embassy in the capital of a unified Germany, fitting in the heart of a Europe that is indeed whole and free and at peace, is in fact a great and noble dream realized."

Angela Merkel said, "I thank president Bush for the role the United States played. We will always protect our friendship. We take your concerns seriously."

US Ambassador William Timken, who cut the ribbon, said he took the rain as a good omen.

Today, with sunnier skies on the 60th anniversary of the Berlin Airlift, the nostalgia heavy Amerikafest celebration takes place with the original "candy bomber" of the Airlift, Gail Halvorsen, in attendance. The fanfare will pay tribute to the epic past of German-American relations and leave one to wonder, beyond flowery rhetoric, what is in store for future relations.

Sixty years ago to the month Stalin's Russia began blocking all incoming traffic to West Berlin, choking the city's supplies of fuel and food. The act was an attempt to squeeze the Allied powers out of otherwise Soviet-controlled territory, an angry reaction to a German currency reform initiative that included West Berlin. The city, still smoldering from World War II less than three months prior, was thrust into what Der Spiegel calls The War After The War -- The Cold War.

Just two days after the blockade began, on June 26, 1948, the Allies began flying relief missions over West Berlin, dropping supplies by parachute. Over the course of 14 long months, nearly 2.4 million tonnes of food and fuel was flown into a hungry and desperate city. American and British pilots flew 300 aircraft on 277,000 missions over West Berlin. Though the Airlift ended in August 1948, Russia had already stopped the blockade four months earlier. Thanks to the Airlift and the sacrifice of 78 American, British and German lives, West Berlin was kept out of Russian control, changing the course of history in the process.

This month Germany celebrates its 60th year of post-airlift freedom.

"Your eminence, you're looking good." photo by NAVROC Command

With a departing flight from Belfast back to Washington DC this morning George W. Bush ended his weeklong jaunt through Europe, beginning with Slovenia last Monday and ending in Ireland today. Journalists are united in calling it a farewell tour, notes the Atlantic Review.

Bush's visit to Europe, America's most valued ally, was marked by grand pronouncements and popular disinterest, spotty protests described in the hundreds rather than the tens of thousands that have greeted Bush in years past.

In Germany, meeting with Chancellor Merkel at Schloss Meseburg and at the press conference following the meeting, efforts were made to bolster a trans-Atlantic stand against Iran with renewed threats of sanctions regarding nuclear proliferation, lip service was given to quick completion of the long-frozen Doha trade round and, in a bizarre attempt at levity, Bush denied media reports that he dislikes German asparagus.

Meanwhile, distracted by the next White House occupant and the EURO 2008 football championship, Europeans couldn't be bothered. A Berliner friend of your correspondent, chatting over beer about the German team's prospects this year was reminded about the U.S. President's arrival the following day. "Ach ja." he said before returning to Fussball commentary.

As far as winning today's hearts and minds, Obama seems to have the lock on Europe. According to a new Pew survey, 82% of Germans (and 82% of French) believe the Democratic candidate would "do the right thing" regarding U.S. foreign policy -- a dramatic vote of confidence, considering that only 59% of Americans feel the same.

Werner Herzog has cajones. He'll do anything he wants and he don't give a damn what you think. He's like your uncle who shows up falling down drunk at your family reunion -- and still commands respect from your older sister's fancy stock broker boyfriend. He can be in the dodgiest part of Los Angeles doing an interview with the BBC, get shot by random sniper fire and carry on talking like nothing happened. Some would call him a pimp. The getting-shot experience, he told Conan O'Brian last night, he found exhilarating. Whatever does it for ya, buddy. If Germans were into middle names, Herzog's might just be gall.

So, without breaking character, last month at Cannes Herzog announced his next project would be a liberal remake of The Bad Lieutenant -- the cult film in which Harvey Keitel plays a dirty, rotten, well, bad cop -- starring Nicholas Cage. Herzog claims it's not really a remake or even an homage. Apart from sharing the same name, there seems to be little connection with the original. In fact, he claims to know nothing of director Abel Ferrara, telling Defamer he doesn't know the first thing about the man -- and apparently doesn't want to.

But I don't feel like doing an homage to Abel Ferrara because I don't know what he did — I've never seen a film by him. I have no idea who he is. Is he Italian? Is he French? Who is he?

Ferrara's thoughts? "I wish these people die in Hell. I hope they’re all in the same streetcar, and it blows up." Nice. Who needs Klaus Kinski when you've got a jilted has-been director to grapple with?

courtesy of flickr user Umschauen

After 70-some years of displacement, the United States Embassy has returned to its historical location at Pariser Platz 2, a prime piece of real estate nestled immediately next to Berlin's iconic Brandenburg Gate. Dimplomats are as jubilant -- George Bush Sr. arrives on July 4 for the official opening though operations began last week -- as architects are indignant.

Criticism of the highly-fortified building has been swift and almost uniformly disparaging: Der Tagesspiegel writes, "It is a triumph of banality and a barely disguised castle pretending to be a contemporary building." Says the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, "If a building could stand with its arms crossed, it would be this one" while Jacob Heilbrunn at The National Interest notes a "bunker mentality" in the structure, which "resembles something of a fortress that no one would want to try entering."

courtesy of tehelka @ flickr

Prominent Berlin-based Scottish expat, culturist and opinionator Nick Currie, better known as the musician Momus, elects Barack Obama today as the next President of Europe. The position just opened up, Momus says, after French President Nicolas Sarkozy earlier this month withdrew his essential support of Tony Blair for the job.

Chalk it up to widespread weariness of the same old portly and waspy politics in Europe -- not unlike those that power the US -- but for the hip and wired classes Obama has become a juggernaut of charisma, pioneer of our globalized future and a fund-raising force of nature, as Joshua Green reveals this month in The Atlantic. More than any other candidate, Obama and his campaign leaders realized that the sprawling online networks spawned in northern California -- notably the wealthiest area of the wealthiest state -- remained largely untapped by old guard fund raising strategies. Ignoring this new, and increasingly monied, generation of power and eager financial activism might well prove to be Hilary Clinton's biggest mistake. Eschewing hipness for experience spoke to the old money, leaving the new wired money behind.

As Roger Cohen op-eds in the New York Times, bouncing off Green's article, "Obama has been a classic Internet-start up, a movement spreading with viral intensity and propelled by some of Silicon Valley’s most creative minds. As with any online phenomenon, he has jumped national borders, stirring as much buzz in Berlin as he does back home." And with Obama contemplating a post-nomination visit to Berlin and given Germany's current love affair with the man (not to mention the rest of Europe), he would have a decent shot at the job if he wanted it.

Bosselmann from Driftlab and Gahlert from Neue Digitale, two creative agencies are discussing the differences of digital work in both countries at the webinale conference. It starts with a movie about the web becoming the number one destination for consumers. They want to discover brands in new ways and experience them before they reach the market.

Bosselman points out that print is not dead yet, even though there is a 5% ad spending drop, whereas digital ad spends jumped 15%. Internet is used parallel to other media says Gahlert. Obama has used the web the best from all presidential candidates. His website is more personal and collected more than 30 million dollares.

Now we're talking about another net bubble? In Germany, it took longer to pick up the courage to invest again, and yes and the US was quicker and is two to three years ahead of the Web 2.0 game. Both younger generations don't worry much about publishing private information on the web. Bosselman adds that the security mindset in Germany hinders innovation and stifles the development of new ideas.

Gahlert thinks print and online advertising supplement each other, especially in terms of branding and reach. In the US, dead paper ads are not as effective as in Germany. Gahlert points out that ads outside are becoming less intrusive; I would add less flashy and interruptive, whereas Americans are less resistant to colors. The idea and use of on-demand is more commonly used in US households than in Germany. In the end: Germans need to move quicker and Americans need to do more intelligent and less annoying ads.

Last year an Australian businessman with the bellicose-sounding name Steve Killelea launched a nation-by-nation ranking of peacefullness with the Economist Intelligence Unit called the Global Peace Index. Looking at this year's rankings, handily arranged with 2007 vs. 2008 in compare mode, one sees that the United States (97), still in the lower bracket, has gained seven points while Germany is unmoved at the fairly respectable position 14 and the UK rises two places to 49. Sweden, which usually tops these sorts of lists, actually loses four points. Might it be the weapon-making?

As for what keeps the U.S. in its lowly, albeit slightly improved, position says Killelea to the AP, is it having "the highest proportion of jailed people in the world. And it has high levels of homicide and high potential for terrorist attacks." Lest his list be labelled as agitprop or a tool for the vast global socialist conspiracy, Killelea stresses that the index strives to avoid making moral statements. Peace, of course, is an economic factor as well. Has anyone invested in Somalia recently?

Feldman tattoos with earlier self assessment. Photo courtesy of dailypoetics

As if the US film industry hasn’t gotten enough. Corey Feldman, best known from “Stand by me,” started shooting in Berlin this past Wednesday for his new flick “Lucky Fritz” with little connection to Germany or Fritz. In case you didn’t know: Fritz is also an alternate name for Devon sausage and a German computer chess game.

Produced by Ica Souvignier, Feldman plays the main character Fritz, a worm breeder who gets struck by lightning and suddenly attracts all kinds of metals and women - it’s a comedy. For Corey, it’s his first shoot in Prussia’s former capital and thinks Beliners “are really friendly,” well if you’re filming in Zehlendorf in the old West or in American speak, city suburbia! Nightlife would be akin to the Puro, a club on the 20th floor near the Ku’damm. Feldman has gone through ups and downs in his career and it looks like his three year-old son Zen is giving him positive energy.

The production comes equipped with German actors, such as Axel Wedekind from “Contergan,” a movie about a health care scandel and brunette-gone-blond Julia Dietze who thinks the script is sweet and funny. It’ll be in the theaters summer 2009.

Photo courtesy of medemaatjes

Johann August Röbling, a German immigrant from Thuringia, a middle-of-nowhere state equipped with a new state anthem by Rainald Grebe, escaped building permit bureaucracy to find his opportunity in New York, suggested to build a bridge that connects Manhatten's East Side with Brooklyn. His idea didn't cause much excitement in the City at first. How will a two kilometer long bridge hold?

Röbling developed the idea of a hanging bridge with steel cables and had been successful as a civil engineer near the Niagara Falls, so eventually the City was convinced to start the project. Up until then, ferries that traversed the East River had to fight the ice pack during the winter months.

After only a few days of steel and brick gathering, a ferry squeezed Röbling's foot. He was never able to see his bridge take shape and died of Tetanus after his accident. As if the boats knew who was changing their business model and delivered a final punch.

[Keep on truckin...]

The dialog between rationality and religion, Pope Benedict XVI from Bavaria says, is to be a primary focus of his tenure at the Vatican. The Roman Catholic Church, still smarting from a dispute with that fellow Galileo about 400 years ago, is eager to seem forward-looking or at least open to alternative viewpoints. Still, it is a bit surprising to read of the Pope's official astronomer, Rev. Jose Gabriel Funes, telling an Italian newspaper this week that alien life forms should be seen as children of God. To do otherwise would be putting limits on God's creative freedom, Funes says.

What if the aliens are not Christians but of another religious persuasion, say Jewish or Scientologist? wonders Gawker's new science fiction blog. That would be embarrasing.

"Stinginess is sexy!" Yup, that was an ad slogan from the German electronics store Saturn for quite some time. Now it's "We hate expensive" and they might get some company after Best Buy bought a 50% stake in Carphone Warehouse worth € 1.4 billion, the largest cellphone retailer in Europe.

The story in gatekeeper media is more about the joint venture in Britain. With a stingy consumer electronics market worth €122 billion in Europe, the battle for market share will be a tough one. In terms of the strategic position, it is an entry ticket into foreign markets since Carphone owns 2,400 shops in 9 European countries. I can't wait to see MicroSD chips dropping 50% at Best Buy in Berlin and German consumers who reignite the idea of shopping as a sport.