Germany and America, different or the same???

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Another exciting day in Berlin. We visited the Federal Chancellory today, equivalent to the White House back home. We met with one of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s top aides. One of her 3 right-hand men. He would be considered the U.S. Deputy Chief of Staff.
I couldn’t believe he took the time to speak with us for an hour. This man was busy running the country but he met with the 12 of us American journalists. It was interesting. For example, the Eurozone…comprised of 17 countries including Germany…is in crisis, as I’m sure you have heard. Germany is the largest and strongest economy of them all and other countries, straddled with debt and weak economies, look to Germany for help (bailouts). the Chancellor won’t leave countries like Greece hanging…even though some think that she should. The euro is stronger now than the Deutsch mark ever was. I asked him, what he thought of America’s debt. He said he thought it was concerning and America at one point was the leading economic country but now our dependence on China is concerning.
I could go on and on with our discussion but I want to tell more about where we went today. We had a delicious lunch at Tucher…a meal, cappuccino then desert.
We visited one of the first TV and radio stations in Berlin, ARD 1. Here, all the news is political news on the public TV station. No Hollywood gossip, sex scandals or rich wives charged with murder or vice versa on this channel. It’s all politics. One of the TV reporters who spoke with us visited a news station in the U.S. recently. She says she couldn’t believe that in America, journalists could obtain police records and personal records of others. In Germany she says, privacy laws are very strict. And famous tv personalities don’t make the 17 million dollar salary that Matt Louer makes. Highest earning, maybe a cool million. I could live with that.
One more thing, we saw the Reichstag parliament building, I would say that’s equivalent to our congress. It was incredible. Names of the MP (members of parliment) who were killed during Hitler’s reign are recognized throughout the building. The Reichstag’s glass dome was phenomenal (last picture)! When you reach the top…which spirals towards the sky…you can see all of Berlin. Until tomorrow.

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