In Deucthland-Berlin-at the Heart of Germany where I was based and clouded most of my experiences, during my four months stay International Institute for Journalism.
At the heart of Germany's old-new capital, Berlin, a heady mixture of symbols confronts the visitor, start with the Reichstag, restored as the unified nation’s parliament: a ponderous Prussian hulk of a building with an awkward history, renovated and now capped with a delicate glass dome, proclaims a peculiar yet suitably mixed message of old solidity and adventurous novelty.
Then look across to the Brandenburg Gate, a mocking reminder of Germany's division that until 1989 stood gloomily alone in the border wasteland near the site of Hitler’s old bunker. Now that it has been restored, the horse-drawn chariot on top of the majestic gate seems poised to take off eastwards into territories soon again to fall within Germany’s economic embrace.
And the bunker itself, a place that most Germans would rather expunge from their capital, if not from their historical memory. The country’s leaders have courageously decided to erect, close to the site of the bunker, a massive and eerie memorial to a crime that must not be forgotten, however normal Germany has now become and however blameless today’s Germans are for the appalling crimes committed by their grandparents.
On the face of things, Germany has finally come out of its post-war shell. Twelve years ago it emerged united, suddenly much more populous and with a far bigger economy than its chief counterparts in Europe—although, by taking in the poor east, it became less wealthy.
It now has 82million people which make it the undisputed giant at the heart of one of the two richest continents in the world-Britain and France.
The European Union has 370 million people against America's 270m, and a combined annual GDP of $7.9 trillion against America's $10.1 trillion.
In little more than a year’s time, if the 15-country EU expands as expected to take in another ten countries, mainly in Central Europe, the Union’s population will rise to 460million.
Hence the symbolism, once again, of moving Germany’s capital in 1999 from the sleepy little Rhineland town of Bonn, just 55km from the border with Belgium, to raucous, once-imperial Berlin, just 80km from the frontier with Poland.
