A group of journalists argues over whether the city is on the up, or is still down, whether it is lost between east and west, or poised to become capital of a united Europe. Everyone wants to know what outsiders think: witness the appetite for English books on Germany, such as Simon Winder's Germania, Peter Watson's The German Genius, and How to be a Kraut by Roger Boyes.
Apart from the belligerent century from Bismarck to Hitler, Simon Winder's delightful country of trolls and Rhine maidens, forests and beer, efficient factories and clean hotels, fostered the Reformation, the northern Renaissance and the industrial revolution with none of the trappings of super-sta
