Checkpoint

One of the last major surviving government figures from the former East Germany, Oskar Fischer, has died. He was the GDR's last foreign minister, holding the role for 15 years. Oskar Fischer, East Germany’s foreign minister in the years leading up to the fall of the Berlin Wall, has died…

Like everyone else, I listened to nothing but David Bowie in the days after hearing the news. The night Bowie died, I had felt a disturbance in the Force at 3:00 am, saw the news via text, got out of bed, bereft, and put on Station to Station, knowing that…

Like all of us, DW reporter Marcel Fürstenau's life has changed recently. He muses on how coronavirus alters the perception of a long distance runner and how you can still improve body, mind, soul and the environment. "Moin!" This typical North German greeting alone, no matter when I hear it, gives…

Veritas Entertainment has raised $10 million in funding for its esports event business, and it is also unveiling LVL, a Berlin-based esports and gaming entertainment venue designed for community and competition. Bitkraft Esports Ventures and additional angel investors made the investment so that the company can build LVL’s infrastructure, scale…

Key point: At some point, luck runs out. An international “crisis” is the anxious space between peace and war. It is defined by three things: time, threat, and the likelihood of violence. The shorter the time, the greater the sense of threat to important interests, and the greater the chance of…

Usually collecting passport stamps requires entering a new country. From the Galápagos Islands in Ecuador to the United Nations in New York City, here’s a list of places where you can collect extra stamps for your passport within a given country. (Just be sure to remember to bring your passport…

The two cities have had shared stresses, balancing radically different ideologies. Jeffrey Wasserstrom February 8, 2020 Hong Kong residents wave Chinese flags during the lead-up to the handover of the city from Britain to China in 1997.Claro Cortes / ReutersHong Kong and West Berlin stand about as far apart as…

It was with some trepidation that I accepted the invitation to speak in Lahore. After all, I was born in India and did not know how I would be received there given recent relations between India and Pakistan. But I had always been curious to see Pakistan for …

We are huge fans of Luisa Weiss, OG food blogger and author of My Berlin Kitchen, as well as one of the definitive books on German baking. Luisa lives in Berlin with her two young sons and husband, Max, and we’re so happy she’s here to share some favorite spo…

On the night that Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu were shot by firing squad in full sight of TV cameras, their bloodied corpses seen around the world as they lay sprawled on the ground behind a courthouse in the town of Targoviste, my grandmother, a Romanian exil…