Archive for February, 2008

Welcome to The Local!

Miscellaneous: February 29th, 2008 by JS

If you’ve found this blog entry, you’re likely one of the first to read The Local’s new German news site.

We aim to give you an informative and entertaining take on what’s happening in Germany each day from the perspective of someone living here. Our editorial motto is simple: Germany’s news in English. Like our successful sister website in Sweden, The Local in Germany will offer a cosmopolitan point of view on predominately domestic matters.

We will have a lively mix of news, features, and opinion on the most important events and issues affecting peoples’ lives from Flensburg to Freiburg. And though we’re based in bustling Berlin, Germany is a big place and we welcome our readers from across the country and around the world to join our forums to discuss those German issues dearest to their hearts.

Marc Young – Editor
The Local, Germany

The Local – for a globalized age

Miscellaneous: February 29th, 2008 by JS

Look up the word ‘globalization’ on a search engine or in an online quotation directory and the words that seem most closely associated with it are all negative.

For many of us, though, globalization is a fact of life. When The Local was founded in Sweden in 2004, it was a response to the fact that events there were of interest not only to Swedes, but also to foreigners inside and outside the country.

Hundreds of thousands of people have now discovered The Local in Sweden. We are now bringing a similar mix of up-to-the minute news, features and comment to Germany.

While politics, business and serious societal issues are of interest to foreigners, we realize that people also want a taste of the lighter side of life. Our journalists in Sweden can be chasing stories about drunken elks one minute and election debates the next. While the elks might be thin on the ground in Germany, The Local’s journalists here are driven by the same desire to be both informative and entertaining.

Reporting on these events in the global language, English, helps us give a greater insight not only to native English speakers, but also to the many who have English as a second language. And while we might be a symptom of globalization, our focus, content and – most importantly – our journalists are all, as our name suggests, locally anchored.

I hope you enjoy reading The Local!

James Savage

Managing Editor

The Local Europe

Germans hail Obama, “the new Kennedy”

International: February 28th, 2008 by PR

Shame for Barack Obama that Germans aren’t voting in the US Primaries. According to the New York Times politics blog, The Caucus, Germany has fallen in love with him.

The country’s sudden crush is bound up with near-constant comparisons here between the young senator from Illinois and President John F. Kennedy Jr. – still admired in Germany and particularly in Berlin.

Putting the brand in the Brandenburg Gate

Berlin, Tourism: February 26th, 2008 by PR

Never mind the museums, restaurants, concerts, bars and clubs – what every capital city needs is a slogan.

Berlin has brought in the branding experts, reports the IHT. And for the small fee of €10 million, they have come up with the following:

“Be Berlin”

Nice. According to Carola Bluhm, head of the Left Party’s parliamentary group in the city council, “the ‘Be Berlin’ campaign is designed to create associations with the city’s lively present rather than the dark, if fascinating, role it played in the 20th century”.

But the tourists are not impressed.

“I don’t want to be Berlin. I wanted to come here to see the galleries,” said Victoria Gilardi, an American tourist. “And why do they need a slogan anyway? It makes the place seem a little desperate.”

Tell that to Stockholm, the Capital of Scandinavia.

You take our frankfurters, we take your parmesan

EU, Food: February 26th, 2008 by PR

As reported on The Guardian’s web site on Tuesday, Germany has temporarily won an EU battle to be allowed to call certain domestic cheeses ‘Parmesan’.

The Commission, the EU executive, argued that Germany should not have allowed non-Italian cheese to be labelled “Parmesan”. But Germany, Europe’s second-largest producer of that type of cheese, said “Parmesan” had become a generic term over the centuries for grated hard cheese, and entirely unrelated to the specific Italian product from the Parma region.

If any country should be allowed to hijack the name of another nation’s cheese, surely it is the land of the hamburger and the frankfurter?