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Berlin toasts Barack Obama
Arnaud Bouvier , AFP
Published: Thursday, July 24, 2008

[color="black"]BERLIN - Berliners laid on the beer, sausages and a carnival atmosphere as the city got its first proper glimpse of the man anointed by the press as "the new, black Kennedy."

Spectators started to gather in the Tiergarten park in the late morning waiting for Barack Obama to deliver an open-air speech at the Victory Column monument at 7:30 p.m., his only public address on a week-long tour.

Television crews and vendors set up around the venue and along the June 17 Avenue, while some 1,000 police officers, along with private security guards, were mobilized for the visit.

The Illinois senator and Democratic White House hopeful was cheered by a small crowd snapping photos as he arrived at the ultra-modern chancellery for talks with Germany's conservative leader, Angela Merkel.

He later had short meetings with Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Mayor Klaus Wowereit, who presented him a porcelain Berlin bear and asked him to sign the city's golden book.

"Berlin is a symbol for the world of the victory of hope over fear, and the impossibility of dividing people in their pursuit of freedom. Let us together build on that remarkable history!" Obama wrote.

He later emerged from a white sports utility vehicle at the plush Ritz-Carlton in a t-shirt and tracksuit trousers for a workout before the main event because the gym at his own hotel, the Adlon, was being renovated.

His speech, on transatlantic relations, was to be carried live on television from a venue just a mile away from the Brandenburg Gate, once the symbol of the Europe's Cold War division and today the heart of reunified Berlin.
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The June 17 Avenue, where the crowds were to gather, was itself named to commemorate a 1953 uprising of workers in communist East Germany that was crushed by the Soviets.[/highlight]

[highlight]Obama, 46, is wildly popular in Europe, particularly in Germany[/highlight] where, according to a recent opinion poll, 76 per cent of the people would like to see him win the November election.

He has drawn frequent comparisons with the late president John F. Kennedy, who was also 46 years old when he made his legendary "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech here in 1963. (cargo cult thinking)-Jett

"After all these years of George Bush, there will be better relations between the US and Europe" if Obama wins in November, said newspaper seller Klaus Schlicht, 49, speaking in former East Berlin.

Police spokesman Michael Bengsch said Berliners were fascinated by the visit.

"It's a little as if Michael Jackson or some other pop star were dropping by," he said.

[highlight]The daily Tageszeitung, for its part, ran a front-page cartoon of Obama as Superman.[/highlight]

But asked by reporters as he flew into Berlin if he was ready to address "a million screaming Germans," Obama demurred.

"I doubt we are going to have a million screaming Germans. Let's tamp down expectations here, if we get tens of thousands . . . " he said.

"My staff just told me that this space is bigger than I realized. We are sort of on a high wire all of a sudden," he said, a touch tongue-in-cheek.

Members of Democrats Abroad and the local chapter of the Social Democrats, partners in Germany's ruling coalition, rallied their members for the speech.

But spectators have been told not to bring bags, signs or banners to the venue.

To get around the ban, the World Wildlife Fund was distributing t-shirts to sympathizers urging Obama to tackle climate change.

"Yes you can," read the T-shirt message under the picture of a polar bear in reference to Obama's campaign slogan, in a play on his "Yes we can" rallying cry.

Spectators were also told they could take small radios to the venue as several stations would carry simultaneous German translations of Obama's speech.

http://www.canada.com/topics/news/world/story.html?id=50216a5b-9059-4747-b947-fd70e9555834
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