In the 15 years since Germany's reunification, the capital Berlin has been a city caught up in a hurricane of change, some of it, but certainly not all positive.
Its post-Cold War dream of developing into a thriving metro-polis in the heart of Europe has, claim experienced observers, largely failed despite all the hopes placed in it becoming a buzzing European cross-roads for trade, commerce and culture.
The disappointments have been considerable. This year Berlin is wallowing in high and long-standing unemployment, with city debts put at more than 60 billion euros (US$75 billion). Long robbed of its industrial base, Berlin is seeking new ways of resolving its problems.
Renowned as a city of culture, with its three opera houses, and countless theaters and leisure facilities, and reveling in its notoriety as a free-wheeling, fun-loving city, Berlin attracts increasing numbers of international tourists every year.
Governing mayor Klaus Wowereit exploits the city's cultural fame, also its reputation as a place of naughty, saucy, titillating goings on, by encouraging show-biz personalities and big names in Hollywood to visit Berlin and make use of its many atmospheric film locations.
With Germany's big business interests solidly centered in the west and south of the country -- in Munich, Stuttgart, Frankfurt and Dusseldorf -- Wowereit sees little or no chance of Berlin ever again winning any kind of solid industrial base.
So, the city's openly gay Social Democrat mayor champions Berlin as a media city, as a Musikstadt (Music City), and movie-making haunt. His show-biz contacts have paid off in recent years.
First, Universal Music arrived in Berlin in 2001 to convert a huge cold-storage egg-house into a glossy HQ for its expanded German and eastern activities, followed by MTV, the world's biggest music broadcaster, which transformed city warehouse facilities into a plush new seat for its "Central and Emerging European Market"
operations.
Berlin's music economy is currently booming. Hundreds of music-scene bars, discotheques, clubs and lounges can be found in Berlin -- many of them in Friedrichshain and trendy Prenzlauer Berg, both eastern city districts.
In the autumn of last year, Europe's biggest music-fair Popkomm was staged in the German capital for the first time.
With Universal Music and Sony active in Berlin, and recording giants like BMG and EMI also strongly represented in the city, it is hardly surprising that economic muscle is given to the city's show-biz scene.
Currently, Berlin's music industry employs some 5,200 workers in more than 700 outlets. Total annual turnover reached 924 million euros (US$1.1 billlion) in 2002, close on 35 per cent more than the 2001 figure.
During Berlin's post-war division little or no progress was made on finding a new role for the collection of old and decaying waterfront properties in the eastern (communist) half of the city, whereas elsewhere in Europe -- notably in London -- new business strategies for waterfront sites were under discussion as early as the 1960s and early 1970s.
By the 1980s, Fleet Street in London had lost its role as a production center for Britain's national newspapers, when new, cost-saving plants, were constructed in London's former docks area in Wapping and Canary Wharf.
Not that Germany's media industry is contemplating a similar such operation in Osthafen, although the city's popular Spree River (Radio) studios are to be found along the waterfront.
US artist Jonathon Borofski's arresting 30m-high mid- river sculpture Molecule Man also vies for tourist attention, while nearby is the "Spree River Bathing Ship."
Dozens of dance and entertainment facilities stud this side of the river -- many of them in close proximity to the riverside Arena, Berlin's biggest rock and pop concert hall with a capacity of 7,500 in south-east Treptow.
Little wonder, then, that the talk is of "Musikstadt Berlin" these days.
From the last quarter of 2001, research shows that real housing prices nearly tripled (before a 2012 law to enforce housing price registration, researchers tracked a few large real estate firms to estimate housing price behavior). Incomes have not kept pace, though this has not yet led to defaults. Instead, an increasing chunk of household income goes to mortgage payments. This suggests that even if incomes grow, the mortgage squeeze will still make voters feel like their paychecks won’t stretch to cover expenses. The housing price rises in the last two decades are now driving higher rents. The rental market
Fifty-five years ago, a .25-caliber Beretta fired in the revolving door of New York’s Plaza Hotel set Taiwan on an unexpected path to democracy. As Chinese military incursions intensify today, a new documentary, When the Spring Rain Falls (春雨424), revisits that 1970 assassination attempt on then-vice premier Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國). Director Sylvia Feng (馮賢賢) raises the question Taiwan faces under existential threat: “How do we safeguard our fragile democracy and precious freedom?” ASSASSINATION After its retreat to Taiwan in 1949, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) regime under Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) imposed a ruthless military rule, crushing democratic aspirations and kidnapping dissidents from
It looks like a restaurant — but it’s food for the mind. Kaohsiung’s Pier-2 Art Center is currently hosting Comic Bento (漫畫便當店), an immersive and quirky exhibition that spotlights Taiwanese comic and animation artists. The entire show is designed like a playful bento shop, where books, plushies and installations are laid out like food offerings — with a much deeper cultural bite. Visitors first enter what looks like a self-service restaurant. Comics, toys and merchandise are displayed buffet-style in trays typically used for lunch servings. Posters on the walls present each comic as a nutritional label for the stories and an ingredient
Fundamentally, this Saturday’s recall vote on 24 Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers is a democratic battle of wills between hardcore supporters of Taiwan sovereignty and the KMT incumbents’ core supporters. The recall campaigners have a key asset: clarity of purpose. Stripped to the core, their mission is to defend Taiwan’s sovereignty and democracy from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). They understand a basic truth, the CCP is — in their own words — at war with Taiwan and Western democracies. Their “unrestricted warfare” campaign to undermine and destroy Taiwan from within is explicit, while simultaneously conducting rehearsals almost daily for invasion,