What Every American Should Know About Europe

by Melissa Rossi

  For decades, the two halves of Germany ignored each other. West German chancellor Willy Brandt, however, thawed the ice in 1969, and continued warming up the East through the next decade. “Ostpolik,” as the diplomacy was called, and the roaring economy were the only happy things of the 1970s, as terrorism raged across Germany.

  Palestinians killed eleven Israelis at the 1972 Munich Olympics, and hijacked a plane. The urban guerrilla group Baader-Meinhof and the Red Army Faction (RAF) kidnapped businessmen; assassinated politicians, lawyers, and industrialists; robbed banks; and attacked U.S. Air Force bases, killing at least fifty.

  RED ARMY FACTION (RAF)

  Among the protesters marching in 1968 were wealthy Andreas Baader and intellectual Ulrike Meinhof. Their rage was extreme and contagious, and by 1972, they’d assembled several dozen fanatical followers. Frantic that Germany was becoming part of the U.S.-guided military industrial machine, Red Army Faction (RAF), as Baader-Meinhof was later called, took aim at German and American military and industrial targets. Their most impressive year was 1977, when, in six months, RAF assassinated a German federal prosecutor and two colleagues; offed a bank president; killed four high-placed business consultants; kidnapped and murdered an industrialist; and hired Arab guerrillas to hijack a Lufthansa plane, killing the pilot and holding passengers for days. By 1988, the group was mostly dead, imprisoned, or missing in action. East Germany’s secret police may have armed and trained the group.

  With rebellions and protests throughout Communist countries, pressure was building to open the East. In 1989, Soviet satellite Hungary allowed holidaying East Germans (and others) to flee from Hungary into Austria. In East Germany, Honecker gave a little and allowed East Germans to travel to West Berlin, but his gesture of November 9, 1989, was misconstrued; border guards thought the countries were no longer divided. Both sides were equally surprised when the wall tumbled down, and the sudden event led to what had long been regarded as a dream: the unification of Germany. On October 3, 1990, East and West Germany, separated for fifty-one years, came together as one.

  Hot Spots

  BERLIN: THE EYE OF THE KALEIDOSCOPE

  Nobody can accuse Germany of being in a rut. Over the past century, the country—like a hot-to-trot clotheshorse heading out to a singles’ bar—has tried on more looks, personalities, and agendas than any other country in the world. No place better epitomizes the kaleidoscope of Germany’s identities than Berlin. The center of opulence in the early twentieth century transformed into a city of poverty after World War I—a raucous era when husky-voiced women and transvestites sang in smoky cabarets, and edgy artists unleashed experimental creations. Berlin soon emerged as headquarters of the Nazi war machine, and what had been Berlin lay in rubble after the firebombs of World War II. Occupied and divided, Berlin was schizophrenic in the postwar era, and the West German government moved the capital to Bonn. Starting in 1999, with German reunification, Berlin again bloomed as Germany’s capital. Now it’s a city of renovation, creation, and cranes. Cheap rent and a slew of cool bars draw arty types from designers to DJs, novelists to playwrights—and the city explodes with culture. Over 150 museums and galleries, three opera houses, dozens of theaters, a pulsing nightlife, chic restaurants, an underground arts scene, secondhand clothing stores (and those with original fashions that look secondhand) are just a few reasons alternative types looking for the un-mined creative hot spot of Europe are donning thick coats and setting up here.

  More Turks (2.5 million) live in Berlin than in any other city except Turkey’s largest, Istanbul. Many were invited in a few decades ago as guest workers.

  The Holocaust memorial: Finally opened, the $30 million Monument for the Murdered Jews of Europe in central Berlin consists of 2,700 columns of varying heights that have been treated with graffiti-resistant coating. That coating was yet another delay in the construction of the monument that had been in the works since 1988. The problem: the manufacturer had also manufactured the gas that killed millions of Jews in concentration camps.

  Hamburg: Elegant, filled with parks, and boasting a wild bar scene, the city has plenty of touristic charm, but that wasn’t the lure for 9/11 ringleader Mohammed Atta, who studied engineering here and worked for the city planning office. Employers say he was kind, hard-working and devout; he had a prayer rug at his desk, and never failed to give thanks to Allah five times a day.

  Prussia: The kingdom that stitched Germany together was dissolved as a geographical entity in 1934.

  Bavaria: Best known for Oktoberfest, when her beer halls are even more festive than usual, and for rigid Edmund Stoiber (whom you won’t see at the beer halls), heavily Catholic Bavaria is the overachiever of Germany, with the lowest unemployment rate and the scariest ideas; the Bavarian government recently proposed “tagging” Roma for easy identification.

  The Rhine: Europe’s busiest waterway, and, until recently, the biggest sewer in Europe, the Rhine provides both drinking water and an industrial dumping ground. It’s being cleaned up; aquatic life is returning, as are the fishermen. Eel anyone?

  Green-friendly: Germany is one of the world’s environmental heroes, and her popular Green Party keeps an eye on sustainable development. Recycling is second nature, the public transport is excellent, and all of Germany’s nuclear plants are to be phased out by 2020. And, by and large, Germans simply don’t litter.

  Dresden: This beautiful city in eastern Germany seems jinxed: it was firebombed by the U.S. and Britain at the end of WWII, with 35,000 civilians incinerated in the resulting, citywide inferno. Rebuilt to her original plan and unveiled in stately splendor in 2001, Dresden was ravaged by floods the next year, but the old gal has been shined up yet again.

  Frankfurt: Rising along the River Main, the financial heart of Germany has a stunning skyline that resembles New York City’s, hence her nickname “Manhattan.” Every October, she hosts the world’s largest and most important book fair.

  The ground: Weighing in at 500 pounds or more, Allied bombs are still embedded in German soil. Almost 2,000 have been unearthed in Berlin alone since 1945, and there are still 15,000 more to find in that city—and some are live. Now over 2,500 people are searching them out across Germany, digging up about 20,000 tons of the tickers every year.11

  Desks: Chunks of the Berlin Wall serve as paperweights all over the world. If you don’t already own one, don’t bother now: so many fakes have been peddled that it’s said the wall has been sold three times.

  DREAMS COME TRUE

  Mad King Ludwig (1845–1886) of Bavaria had the grandiose dream of building enchanting mountaintop castles that would capture music in architectural form. Built as tributes to his favorite composer, Richard Wagner, Ludwig’s castles are splashed with scenes from Wagner’s operas; even caves are built into the spindly towered fantasies. Security-wise, they were worthless, and in fact may have cost Ludwig his life. He was found mysteriously drowned in Starnberger Lake. His family, livid about his extravagant follies that were eating up all their money, was suspected of plotting his death. Ludwig’s castles, particularly ornate Neuschwanstein, turned out to be a brilliant long-term investment: today they are Germany’s biggest tourist draws.

  Garching reactor: Germany plans to phase out all nuclear reactors for electricity, but has no current plans to shut down this twenty-megawatt nuclear research reactor, fueled with enriched uranium, at the Munich Technical University. This sort of reactor flies in the face of nonproliferation agreements; some worry that it could be used to build nuclear bombs.12

  Nuremberg: The city where Hitler pushed through legislation to strip Jews of their legal rights was also where Nazi war criminals were tried.

  Autobahn: Twelve thousand miles of mostly speed-limitless highway, the Autobahn—the world’s first interstate—was commissioned by Hitler in the 1930s to give jobs to the Depression-era unemployed. Polish Jews and POWs completed it in 1941, but the armed forces didn’t use it for the original plan: the asphalt couldn’t support their tanks.<
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  Hotshots

  Angela Merkel: Chancellor, 2005–present. See box on page 42.

  Horst Köhler: President, 2004–present. Christian Democrat Köhler should be able to help the economy; he was former head of the IMF.

  Gerhard Schröder: The former chancellor is now heading a pipeline project to bring natural gas from Russia to Germany.

  Joschka Fischer: A former taxi driver, and formerly Germany’s most popular postwar politician, Fischer headed the Green Party and served as foreign minister under Schröder. Left both posts in 2005. No word if he returned to his cab.

  Edmund Stoiber: Minister-President of Bavaria, 1993–present. White-haired and super-tan, conservative Stoiber lives up to the image of the Super-German Type A, working eighteen hours a day. It’s paid off: the popular Christian Democrat from Bavaria has helped make his state Germany’s wealthiest.

  The lady chancellor is cheering up Germans.

  Neo-Nazis: The recent appearance of neo-Nazis, said to number around 30,000—mainly in the East—presents a tough problem. The government deprogramming school hasn’t attracted many, and courts have ruled that it is unconstitutional to ban the neo-Nazi parties. In 2000, young neo-Nazis were behind the murder of an African man and a bomb explosion in Düsseldorf; many believe they are heading to Sweden and France.

  Helmut Kohl: Chancellor, 1982–1998. Portly four-term chancellor, powermonger Kohl was a heavyweight in almost every way. He approved deployment of NATO nuclear missiles at German army bases, headed the republic when the Berlin Wall fell, and oversaw the reunification between the two halves of Germany. He lost to Schröder in 1998, and fell hard. He was implicated in a campaign finance scandal the next year, which had some calling for him to take a vacation in prison. The scandal shook his Christian Democrat Party; the power party of postwar German politics, their popularity plummeted until Angela Merkel was called in to clean up the mess.

  Scientologists: Were they trying to infiltrate the top of Germany’s power pyramid, or just trying to get leaders to take free personality tests? Who knows if the German press was on to something or exaggerating the numbers, but recently there was such a scare about scientologists trying to influence German politics that it turned into an international brouhaha.13

  News you can understand: Deutsche Welt, one of several interesting papers that publish in English: (www.dw-world.de).

  3. UNITED KINGDOM

  (Britain)

  Playing Both Sides

  FAST FACTS

  Country: United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

  Capital: London

  Government: Constitutional monarchy

  Independence: Unified in tenth century (established as UK in 1927)

  Population: 60,610,000 (2006 estimate)

  Head of State: Queen Elizabeth II

  Head of Government: Prime Minister Tony Blair (1997); may be shoved out soon

  Elections: Monarchy is hereditary; prime minister is head of majority party or coalition in House of Commons

  Name of Parliament: Parliament (House of Commons and House of Lords)

  Ethnicity: 92% White (84% English, 9% Scottish, 3% Northern Irish, 5% Welsh); 2% Black; 2% Indian; 1% Pakistani; 1% mixed; 2% other (2001 census)

  Religion: 72% Christian (Anglican, Roman Catholic, Presbyterian, Methodist); 23% unspecified; 3% Muslim; also Sikh, Hindu, Jewish

  Language: English (the Queen’s, and heavily accented variations)

  Literacy: 99% (claimed); functional illiteracy 22% (says UN)

  Famous Exports: Jerry Springer, Ozzy Osbourne, Charlie Chaplin

  Economic Big Boy: BP (oil and gas); 2004 total sales: $285.06 billion1

  Per Capita GDP: $30,900 (2005 estimate)

  Unemployment: 5% (November 2005 Eurostat figure)

  Percentage in Poverty: 17% (2002 estimate)

  EU Status: EEC member state since 1973

  Currency: British pound (sterling)

  Quick Tour

  So much of Britain is charming, if hard on the wallet and often plagued by gray skies and rain. Yet how lovely is the land when you can see beyond the cleared splash from the windshield wiper. Country villages ringed by pastures and dotted with lakes, Scotland’s blindingly green hills punctuated by cemeteries and golf courses, Northern Ireland’s crackling-fire inns downwind from whiskey distilleries, and Wales’s battered coasts are but a few things that lured tourists long before the Harry Potter craze.

  Kids tracing Harry’s steps as he learns to fly in magic school helped the UK soar to the sixth most visited country in the world, with 24 million visitors in 2004.2

  London’s regal Tower Bridge

  GEOGRAPHICAL CONFUSION: UNITED KINGDOM VS. GREAT BRITAIN VS. IRELAND

  Popularly called Britain, the country officially known as the United Kingdom is made up of four parts: England, Scotland, and Wales (all sharing the same island, and collectively known as Great Britain), plus Northern Ireland, the six British-run counties on the island of Ireland. All of Ireland was once part of Great Britain, but the bulk of that island became a separate, independent republic in 1921. The people who live in Britain are known as Britons or Brits, unless one particular group is specified—e.g., the English, the Scots, or the Welsh. In this book, Britain and the UK are used interchangeably.

  With her swanky hotels (popular hangouts for well-heeled Londoners), nostalgia clubs (where partiers don smoking jackets and false eyelashes and dance to old jazz), and chic bars (that can now stay open past 11 PM), history-steeped London is the tourist magnet, with millions stopping by to gaze at Big Ben. Recently, more has changed than the guards. The city that landed the 2012 Olympics is now Europe’s cultural epicenter, where flashy designs command eyes to London’s catwalks, witty writers launch new genres, theater thrives in the West End, and edgy artists try to “out-edge” each other in a battle to break taboos. No other European country culturally influences the world more than Britain, which now holds up Coldplay, Beckham, and Potter as her symbols.

  BRIT POP

  London runways yank the heads of fashionistas worldwide with creations of Alexander McQueen, Shelley Fox, Phoebe Philo, and Boudicca, while British books shoot to the top of world bestseller lists, be they magic-infused fiction or cheeky “chick-lit” tales of urban singlettes fleeing from credit card bills and defying societal expectations, such as Helen Fielding’s diary of Bridget Jones. Theater lovers may choose experimental works meant for heady contemplation, but the biggest hits are raucous musicals: Jerry Springer—The Opera (highlights included singing and dancing Ku Klux Klan members) packed houses for several seasons, even at the previously stuffy National Theatre, and Monty Python is stealing the West End with its musical Spamalot, featuring kicklines of knights. While contemporary British culture may be madcap, the visual arts—helped along by advertising magnate Charles Saatchi, patron to daring “Young British Artists”—most often cause eyebrows to raise and mouths to drop, or at least try to. Damien Hirst, whose work includes oversized, overflowing ashtrays and chunks of dead fish, was outdone by the Chapman Brothers, Jake and Dinos, who buy up rare works, such as Goyas, only to deface them with drawings of clowns, and who affix plastic penises to dolls’ heads. They’ve been left in the dust by the latest in expletive artists, whose deep statements seem increasingly on par with those of teenagers who write graffiti on bathroom walls. But they are popular. The national art museum Tate Modern displays many of the subversive works, and the East End’s Hoxton district is in the arts spotlight, made trendier by gallery White Cube.

  With the European Union’s third largest population, Britain commands respect as a cultural center and finance headquarters—the London Stock Exchange is Europe’s biggest—but her weight in the world arena has changed. Britain is no longer the hungry imperial whale prowling the seven seas and swallowing more land than any other colonial power; nor is she now the manufacturing heart of Europe. The land whose thinkers unveiled the basic workings of the planet (gravitational forces, for on
e) and whose creators introduced many of the world’s most important devices isn’t Invention Central any longer. But the island kingdom still stands tall on the global power team. Granted, these days clout comes less from how Britain acts than how she reacts, and less from what Britain is than who she knows and can influence (or vice versa).

  HELPFUL BRITISH INVENTORS

  James Watt: Revolutionized steam engines

  Thomas Crapper: Invented the modern toilet

  Richard Trevithick: Invented the steam locomotive

  Sir Alexander Fleming: Discovered penicillin, ending syphilis plague

  Alexander Watson-Watt: Invented radar

  Tim Berners-Lee: Invented the World Wide Web

  Geographically and ideologically, the UK bridges the gap between the European continent and the United States, Britain’s good mate and fighting partner. The Anglo-American relationship rattles Europe’s elite—some hiss that Britain is “Atlanticist” (too close to the other side of the ocean)—but it aptly reflects British ambivalence about being part of Europe and the EU.