A Special „Silent Night“: The Light of Peace in Austria

A Special „Silent Night“:  The Light of Peace in Austria Newlyweds should not be sad.  But the hustle and bustle of the capital city of Austria could not overcome the dark loneliness we felt spending our first Christmas together far from family and friends. The traditions of the season we had cherished at home rang [...]

TV Images and Sugar-Plum Fairies: Berlin In Sight!

Remembering November 9, 2009 When I finally pedalled my old bike into the courtyard of the all-male Bergstrasse dormitory it seemed as if the whole building was pressed around the small television set up in the basement community room. Everyone was intensely focused on the set and my questions posed in fluent but less than perfect German were met with impatient hushes.  [...]

Disco and the Fall of the Wall

Remembering November 9th, 1989. “The most memorable night of my life began in a German disco” I know, this sounds like the beginning of a cheap romance novel, but this is the story of how I heard about the fall of the Berlin wall on November 9th, 1989. At the beginning of that night I [...]

The Fall of the Fall of the Wall

Remembering November 9, 1989 I had just turned 20 and was spending my junior year abroad in Heidelberg, Germany.  West Germany that is.  The wall in Berlin was still standing and the Germanies were divided by hundreds of miles of barbed-wire fence and watchtowers.  Heidelberg, nestled in the Neckar valley not far from Mannheim and [...]

Thillo Sarrazin’s Comments Spark Debate on Immigrants in Berlin/Germany

The controversial comments this week by Bundesbank (German Central Bank) executive member, Thillo Sarrazin, have sparked a debate in Germany which now must transcend the obvious charges of racism and xenophobia.  While Sarrazin’s comments absolutely betray his less than noble feelings towards Arabs and Turks living in Germany (they “constantly produce little girls in headscarves”), the issue of how German society [...]

German Ingenuity + Gastronomical Creativty = Profits

“There are guys walking around Germany with gas grills strapped to them – its crazy.” And when I say “crazy” I mean “profitable”. The New York Times recently reported on the phenomenon of wandering grillwalkers in Berlin’s highly travelled Alexanderplatz. Bertram Rohloff, an unemployed hotel manager was not going to take his situation laying down. [...]

How German Advertisers Open Our Wallets.

 If you have been watching “Mad Men” on AMC, or if you are simply interested in how advertising works in different cultures (hey, its a GLOBAL economy, after all, right?), you might want to throw a glance at how German advertisers pry open some of the stingiest wallets on the planet. They do it in [...]