Germany's Spiegel magazine warns that the neo-Nazi scene in the country is thriving. The shocking report says:
Arson attacks and racist assaults by right-wing extremists are part of everyday life in parts of Germany.
Violence against foreign-owned businesses has gotten so bad in certain areas that insurance companies are refusing to cover kebab stands and other ethnic fast food joints.
According to Spiegel, one Nazi group evolved out of a group of soccer hooligans. Other Nazi factions reportedly have been trying to clean up their image with environmental activism and other public campaigns. Germans who stand up to the Nazi thugs claim that they have faced widespread intimidation and harassment.
Could random acts of violence start scaring tourists away? "Living history" is just fine at, say, Colonial Williamsburg, but somehow we doubt walking down Third Reich Memory Lane will work in Germany.
We definitely have a few favorite spots to visit around the world, but Swedish woman Eija-Riitta Berliner-Mauer has really put the attraction back in "tourist attraction." Her surname, of course, means "Berlin Wall" and she's taken this surname because she is, in fact, married to the Berlin Wall.
Confused? So were we. But Mrs. Berliner-Mauer has a condition known as Objectum-Sexuality--which means she's attracted to non-living objects, in her case, walls and fences. She had a small ceremony to marry the Berlin Wall back in 1979, and was fairly devastated when most of it came down ten years later.
Now she runs the Model and Guillotine Museum in Sweden which has models of various constructions, including her husband, the Berlin Wall. Her museum's open every afternoon during the summer season from June to August. Just don't expect to be able to buy any of those tacky chunks of Berlin Wall souvenirs--that's like taking a piece of her husband home.
We're trying to ween ourselves off cute-polar-bears-in-German-zoos stories but... they're just so damned cute. We get it that the Berlin Zoo's poor Knut now has a personality disorder but we just can't stop!
Flocke, which means snowflake, is the new Knut. She's the new star of the Nuremberg Zoo in southeastern Germany and like Knut, she's been hand-reared by zoo-keepers. (Apparently her mother tried to drop her down some stone stairs.)
Given that the Berlin Zoo admits to earning nearly $8 million from Knut last year, the Nuremberg Zoo will be looking for people like us to fork out for Flocke merchandise and extra zoo visits, too. Will we give in to temptation? We're hoping to stop at some gratuitously cute pictures.
We've been trying to let poor ol' Bruno the Bear rest in peace since he was killed in Bavaria after famously being the first wild bear to enter Germany since 1836.
But we just have to mention that Bruno the Bear has finally become a permanent part of the tourist landscape in Germany. As promised, a well-stuffed Bruno is now on display in the Museum of Man and Nature inside the Nymphenburg Palace near Munich. The realistic-looking diorama opened last Thursday and the nice thing is you can get into the museum for just €2.50 ($4).
And while we're pleased that Bruno can take a rest now, we don't want you to forget that if you're traveling through western Austria this summer, you might catch some of the location shoot for the movie based on Bruno's story. If you think we're champing at the bit to visit Bruno in the museum, just imagine how much we're dying to see this film.
It won't take you long to think of a few celebrities who've had trouble dealing with fame. Apparently, the same problems can occur in the world of polar bears. And that's why the biggest tourist magnet ever at the Berlin Zoo, abandoned polar bear Knut, might be taken out of the limelight soon.
Turns out that Knut has gotten so addicted to the adoration of the public that he can't survive without it. For example, the zoo closed for a day recently due to bad weather, and he howled and screamed the hours away until his fans returned. If there are no people near him, Knut becomes distressed and angry.
Some of the staff at the Berlin Zoo are considering sending Knut to a smaller animal park where he gets less attention, but presumably the attention would follow him. Unless he gets smuggled anonymously. If you find a cute (but slightly psycho) polar bear in your backyard soon, let us know.
On the outskirts of Berlin, a Chinese couple is working to build at €500 million Chinatown that'll be the first in Germany. But classic European bureaucracy is gumming up the works: The project has been in development for three years and ground has yet to be broken.
Before the bulldozers can start rumbling, all manner of paperwork needs to be finished. That has Chinese developer Hongbin Ren learning about Europe before he can share his culture with Germany:
He had never heard of some the expressions he was reading, phrases like "spatial planning procedure," "development of the local public transport system" and "substantiated preliminary draft development plan." It was time for Mr. Ren to get to know the real Germany.
Until then, he had seen the country as a place with good air, wide-open spaces and industrious people. He was about to encounter the invisible Germany, the land of ordinances and regulations.
Totally reminds us of trying to buy stamps in Italy. With some luck, work on the Chinatown project could start by this summer. There'll be lots to do: Blueprints call for pagodas, gardens, an opera house and even a replica of the Great Wall of China.
When we watch old movies depicting New York City in the 70s, we admire a few things, including the imitation leather jackets everyone seemed to have, and the insane amount of graffiti all over everything. Now you can relive an even more intense graffiti culture, says the New York Times, in current day Berlin.
Apparently graffiti art is making a serious comeback in the German capital, with famous tags literally all over the place--in the nice neighborhoods, across sidewalks and up buildings. It's currently the most "bombed out" (read: graffitied) city in Europe.
Young local artists are redefining their own version of "Berliner Strassenkultur" and spraying the place up. Photographer Peter Sutherland says:
It's like everyone grabbed a can of paint at one point and just went for it.
And it's not all amateur hour either. You can spot tags by famous graffiti artists like Os Gemeos and Banksy if you know where to look. Can't get there soon? Here's a closer look:
If you're a cute, black-and-white animal living in Stuttgart's beautiful Wilhelma Zoo, you've been in the headlines recently. That's the conclusion we've drawn from the series of stories emerging from southern Germany, with the most disturbing news being the abduction of Babe.
Babe, in this case, was not a pig, but a penguin. Poor Babe was bird-napped from her enclosure in broad daylight last Tuesday and hasn't been seen since. As the police astutely pointed out, "There is no black market for penguins in Germany," so everyone's stumped by the penguin theft.
But the zoo is trying to turn its image positive again, finally announcing that a baby polar bear was born there in December. They kept it a secret--trying to avoid a repeat of the Knut drama in the Berlin Zoo--but have now announced that baby Wilbär is happy, healthy and hasn't been abandoned by his mother, although he'll be staying out of the public eye until April. By which time, we hope, poor Babe the penguin has also returned.
We recommend postponing trips to Stuttgart until all the black-and-white cuties are on show again.
