This photo has been spreading around Germany, as evidence that German beer is so good that it can kick recovering alcoholics off the wagon.

But a close-up image reveals that the President was drinking near beer, as in non-alcoholic beer, and in fact…wasn’t even drinking German beer at all. It’s the Dutch that get to brag.

One of the most amazing, electrifying, and inspiring parts of my time here in Germany has been the level of arts funding and interest here in Germany. Specifically, arts that would be considered “high brow” — things like, opera.

And one of the things that funding and interest does is to bring some of the best artists and opera singers over here. For instance, at about the 1:00 mark of the above Youtube video, former Fulbright scholar Jennifer Porto grabs the leg of the conductor of the opera’s small orchestra. (Her performance in L’Orfeo has been in Hamburg and Berlin this year.)

Personally, I have no interest in heading up to the northern German coast for this year’s G-8 summit. I even got press credentials but decided against heading up there in order to cover it. Still, it sure could get interesting.

If you are the type of person dreading (or hoping) for Seattle-like riots — or so misinformed (and hypocritical) as to believe globalization is a malady — the Heiligendamm summit could be the most newsworthy in years.

Already, 146 police officers have been injured, 20+ seriously, and a train full of protesters has been turned back, between Hamburg and Rostock (near the summit HQ).

Spiegel Online will have updates; and I may be covering it for Marketplace.

In early February, I was working on a story for German broadcaster Deutsche Welle, when I met and talked with a unique and funny German music researcher, Albrecht Duemling.

After learning about his past, that included stints in the United States, I worked with NPR on a story about Duemling and his work, rediscovering music from people persecuted by the Nazis.

The story aired on Weekend Edition Sunday, and focuses on Duemling’s Berlin-based musica reanimata.

In an effort to gain support, Duemling decided to branch out and include the better-known works of persecuted musicians who survived in exile. Eric Zeisl, for instance, was an Austrian Jew who fled Nazi rule in 1938. He moved to Hollywood and went on to compose music for many popular films including The Postman Always Rings Twice.

Deumling was recently awarded the European Culture Prize for his work.

Fans of the Netherlands soccer team, on their way to Germany for the ‘06 World Cup, printed thousands of t-shirts that read, “Give me back my bike.”

The Dutch are known bike fanatics, and my time in Amsterdam over the past weekend, did nothing to disprove that preconception. But the fan t-shirts were in reference to the indelible history of Europe.

For after WWII ended, and the Germans were retreating from the Netherlands back to Germany, to get home quicker, many German soldiers stole Dutch bicycles.

It’s estimated that tens-of-thousands of bikes were taken this way, and the Netherlands won’t let Germany forget it. Fans were especially excited for a possible Netherlands-Germany match where they would be able chant a famous Netherlands’ cheer.

The cheer is, in Dutch, “Give us back our bicycles. Give us back our bicycles.”

The two teams didn’t get to play each other.

But that didn’t stop the Dutch from behaving, well, badly, in Germany.

(Second flickr link thx: maxbisschop.)

I got to watch a lot of movies last week.

It was the Berlin Film Fest, or Berlinale as the locals call it, and it is the largest film festival in the world in terms of attendance - 180-thousand tickets are sold over 10 days of movies.

But its now also one of the three-biggest festivals in terms of deal-making, alongside Cannes and the American Film Market in November. Years ago, it used to be one of the big marketing tools used, to push for an Oscar.

But as the Academy Awards became a more expensive and bigger financial event, Berlin became little more than a cog in the awards machine. Which took a way a bunch of its political cachet as well.

Wanna hear more?

Okay, its been far too long since my latest photo posting (let alone my last blog), so here is a quick link with my newest set of 20+ photos from work and life in Berlin.

Dell, the world’s now-No. 2 computer maker, yesterday “broke ground” on the expansion of its biggest German facility, in Halle, about 2 hours south of Berlin.

Michael Dell, the founder and chairman of the company, stopped by on his way to Davos, and spoke (auf Englisch) to a room full of Germans.

(Although, from this reporter’s perspective, it seemed like English was more prevalent at the Dell Halle offices than even in Prenzlauer Berg, the seat of Berlin’s expat community.)

The visit also included a tour of the Dell facilities, which were very nice and modern — which was even more incredible, after walking around the city of Halle, which has an unemployment rate of 20%, and which Time Magazine two years ago called Halle, “by any measure…the worst place in Germany, a symbol of what’s wrong with the nation.”

But Dell’s european VP said that’s actually one of the reasons the company located there, because unemployment was so high there was a cheaper labor force, plus two universities nearby, in Leipzig.

Some Berlin residents are still seething about the opening of a Church of Scientology Center in the trendy west Berlin neighborhood of Charlottenburg. The country has long refused to recognize Scientology as a religion.

The relationship between the German media and the growing church has long been touchy – at best. And it wasn’t just the media – several high-powered government officials spoke out as well. In fact, one of the group’s most outspoken critics is Günter Beckstein, the interior minister of Bavaria, who was in the news for another reason this week — he looks like he may take on a very high-profile political role in the country’s wealthiest state of Bavaria.

Beckstein says Scientology is “trying to approach students in order to gain more followers” and “brainwash them,” so you can see has isn’t really tiptoeing around the decision.

(more…)

The city is on the edge, if you can call it that, of style.

And I stumbled on this great website that tries to document the fashion, again if you can call it that, here in the city.

“Stil” auf Deutsch, is obviously “style.” And so, I give you, stilinberlin.