In the Hue of History

In a little more than 13 hours, U.S. presidential hopeful Barack Obama will stand in the golden hue of Victoria, at the foot of Prussian greatness, walking in the footsteps of American greats before him.

Germans know their history well. To this day, over 50 years after WWII, and almost 20 years since the Wall gave way to German unity, they are still struggling with their past. To this day, you will still find Germans in their forties being asked, if they ever met Hitler when they were in the Hitlerjugend. And to this day, you will still find young Europeans carrying within them the resentment passed down through generations, from when they were occupied by the Nazi regime.

No page in history is the mere sum of its words. It holds the lives and fates of the thousands before it, who paved the way. It holds the hearts and souls of those who changed it. And it owes its life to those, whose story it did not tell.

Obama for President: American Dream or Forever Hopeful?

Call him the Black Kennedy, the Tiger Woods of politics, or the Second Coming. The epithets used to describe presidential hopeful Barack Obama (D-Ill) are a testimony to an election that is so much more than politics. There is something close to biblical about rain, when the skies give way to an almost cathartic downpour, draining off the drudge, sins and conversation-residuals clogging the streets. In any Hollywood movie (especially considering the writers’ strike) it could have been a Second Coming scenario, yet it was an unassuming Monday with weather more befitting of an unassuming British city pronounced Gloomster (but probably spelled Gleucmcester) in the midst of Berlin. The prophesized savior of American politics, Barack Obama, drew close to a 100 people, who sought shelter in the Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung on this rainy, borderline-suicidal Monday evening, to learn about the self-professed harbinger of a new era – in a country so far from theirs.

From the 78th Floor to the Stairway to Heaven

Sometimes, silence seems louder than the shrillest noise. In New York, where noise is the norm, silence can pierce your heart and penetrate your soul, until you feel like crying.

6 years after 2 planes pierced the hearts of an entire nation, and penetrated the souls of the Western world, the silence at Ground Zero still screams. And though the pain will never go away, New York is back on its feet.

M100 – Day 1: Is There More to Potsdam Than Popcorn?

 A lot can be said about Potsdam. Probably most of the stuff is true.

Located a stone’s throw west of Berlin, Potsdam drew national attention on Easter Sunday 2006, as a German-Ethiopian husband and father was sent into a coma by a blow to the head by an assumed, yet unidentified, right extremist. It was a punch on the nose for a nation, desperately fighting to move past its all too tragic past.