41 posts
Berliners: foreigners, stop boozing on the cheap in our city!
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In the Berlin borough of Kreuzberg-Friedrichshain people are celebrating for all it's worth. More and more tourists are cavorting in the cheap cocktail bars, the parks and in the streets. The locals are fed up and are stirring up opinion. Stag dos, p...
Saturday night. Berlin. Europe.
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Photo by Urbanartcore.eu on Flickr / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 Starting the evening with Russian vodka cocktails in a Georgian restaurant in the western part of Berlin. Continuing the night with British cider in the eastern part of the city. Talking with a P...
Öttinger vs. English as a working language
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Günther Öttinger famously declared a few years ago that English will become the global working language (“Englisch wird die Arbeitssprache”).So, his job as the EU commissioner for energy is certainly a great opportunity for him to use h...
Europe in blogs - Euroblogs (10): Fall of the Wall Special
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Today is clearly a historic day, and the blogosphere and the euroblogs use the opportunity to look back in time, into their own lives, into global moments, into politics and art. L'Europe en Blogs is just murmuring about the event, and strappato is...
Party time for Berlin!
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People walk next to a miniature representing the Berlin Wall placed on the bricks at the site of the former wall near the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin November 8, 2009. As the highlight of a 5-million euro ($7.4 million) celebration marking the 20th an...
Berlin's moment of freedom that turned world history
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"Twenty eight years and 91 days!" said the elated east Berliner I met walking up the Friedrichstrasse soon after the wall was breached. On the day the Berlin Wall went up, 13 August 1961, his parents had wanted to go to the cinema in west Berlin, but...
Berlin Wall's Lessons For Today
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The oxygen of a free society is accurate and trustworthy information. Yet even today, regimes around the world are intent on cutting off the supply. READ MORE...
Werner Hoyer: Return to EU politics in the new German government
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While all eyes are on the inexperienced new German foreign minister Guido Westerwelle (with no European profile) and the proposed German EU-Commissioner Günther Oettinger, let's have a look at the second row of German EU politics under the new gover...
Germany’s choice
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Just because he did not particularly want the job and has no European profile to speak of does not mean that Guenter Oettinger will turn out to be a *bad European commissioner. But it does speak volumes about how Berlin views Brussels. German chancel...
Festival of Freedom – Berlin 20 years on
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It’s perhaps fitting that we are voting on the future of Europe 20 years after one of the most important shifts in the balance of power in Europe – the fall of the Berlin Wall. Cast your mind back to this time 20 years ago. The city of Berlin...
Ich bin eine schnelle Berlinerin
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1:52: 09. Place 6470 out of about 25 000 runners, and place 141 among women in my age group. That’s my numbers from the Berliner Halbmaraton this weekend. And just like last year, when I participated in my first proper race, Brussels 20k, I wa...
Berlin Hohenschönhausen Prison
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I lived in Berlin for 6 months in late 2001 / early 2002; since then I feel I have been playing catch up, trying to understand a city that I was too young to fully appreciate when I lived there. Perhaps I should rephrase: I reasons I enjoyed my time...
WSJ: "In Berlin, Obama's Becoming Just Another Bush"
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Chancellor Merkel uses her opposition to Obama's financial policies to campaign for reelections, writes Malte Lehming from the German Tagesspiegel. According to Lehming, Angela Merkel is following Gerhard Schroeder's anti-Iraq war strategy, but impl...
46:09, 175th place for the Berlin Half Marathon 2009
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OK, so the first race of the season is behind me - the Berlin Inline Half Marathon took place this morning. My result is here. I managed the 21km in 46 mins 9 seconds, giving an average speed for the race of 27.82km/h. Overall I finished in 175th pla...
Obama in Berlin - and a message for Fortress Europe
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A real Christian Democrat is finally in Berlin – and the message includes humanity for immigrants and religious and racial minorities - but includes the same ol' Cold War, American "leadership of Europe." I thought that the speech given by Barack O...
What Germans Think of Barack Obama: Continuity We Can Believe In
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The majority of Germans support Barack Obama for the US presidency, not because they believe he will radically change US policy, but because he is expected to return it to the familiar pre-Bush trajectory. This is the conclusion from my colleague Ben...
Obama in Berlin: behind the cheering crowds
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Obama's speech in front of the Victory Column in Berlin was an unqualified campaign success....
By Giving a Speech in Berlin, Obama is Playing with Fire
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This is a guest post by the US journalist David Francis: As a journalist who covers U.S-European relations and as a U.S. citizen who hopes for better relations with Europe in the next administration, it was quite gratifying to see so many Berliners w...
Barack Obama’s Berlin Speech
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For the people who missed Barack Obama’s speech in Berlin yesterday, here it is again. The event will certainly become a modern political classic!
Obama Keeps it Global
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One of the first things I picked up in the audience after Obama's speech was 'fast genau eine halbe Stunde' (almost exactly half an hour). The audience was keeping time. After many had waited for two hours or longer, they were perhaps expecting more?
Obama, Berlin and the world
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So what did we expect from Barack Obama’s foreign policy speech in Berlin? Since Barack Obama is not even the official democratic candidate yet, and obviously not the US President, I think expectations were hugely exaggerated. Apart from that...
No, Barack Obama couldn't!
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Sorry, but this was kind of weak. This was a political speech, but not a historic one.Okay, Obama presented some nice rhetoric, he got his applause, he made his compliments, he has his visions, but you could hear with every word that he tried to avoi...
Yes I could!
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If I left now, I still could be in time for Senator Obama's speech here in Berlin. YES, I COULD! This man knows how to deliver a speech. And I love listening to him - not for everything he is saying, but for saying some excellent things in his positi...
Obama in Berlin
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Can’t find any pictures yet, but I’ve seen blogs of people coming up from Prague just to see him. That’s about a five-hour trip each way by train (no ICE connection yet). Expectations on the radio this morning were that the event wo...
