Checkpoint

Before he tells it to me, sitting at the head of his kitchen table in his modest home in western Hungary, he offers me some sweet treats and some searing but delicious plum and pear liqueur, served from a suspiciously label-free bottle. Bella is a proud man.…

Reunited Berlin's mayor Michael Müller told a memorial service Tuesday that the Wall's erection in 1961 and its fall during East Germany's peaceful demise in 1989 were "both memories that belong together. Berlin's message as a city of freedom was that "the w…

'On our way home Both roadsides used to have flowers," Diarna told me. "Colourful flowers, red, yellow, white… Collecting them and putting them in a vase, with storylines Before red, yellow, white colour would disappear… Today, both roadsides no longer h…

In the 1991 German comedy film, Go Trabi Go, a family from the former German Democratic Republic (GDR) goes on a road trip to Italy in their beloved Trabant 601—the most popular car in East Germany before the collapse of the Iron Curtain. At one point their v…

1. Kurfürstendamm Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church surrounded by shops. Photo: DPA Oxford Street meets the Champs Élysées in this huge shopping district in the west of Berlin. Kurfürstendamm is often referred to as 'Ku'damm' by those in the know, or those who…

It's perhaps Berlin's best-known historic landmark and one of the most often recommended to tourists.A powerful symbol of German division, Checkpoint Charlie was a point of crossing between Berlin's divided East and West, and the chilling scene of US and Sovi…

There is a world of difference between visiting a monument and inhabiting it. So we learn from the new TWA Hotel at New Yorks John F. Kennedy International Airport, which lets one experience Eero Saarinens celebrated terminal for Trans World Airlines as it sh…

See why the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989 marked not just the dismantling of a barrier, but a victory for freedom itself. Berlin had been politically divided since the end of World War II, with the eastern portion of the city serving as the cap…

Is the Beijing Consensus finally replacing the Washington Consensus? In the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, the Ethiopian president Meles Zenawi gave a series of speeches lauding Chinas developmental state as an alternative to a failed neoliberal mode…

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