GERMANY: Over one million excited Germans gathered in central Berlin last night to watch an elderly lady disrobe in public.
Even Bill Clinton dropped by to see the strip show, when Berlin's grande dame, the Brandenburg Gate, was unveiled to celebrate 12 years of German unity. Every beauty secret in the book was employed over two years to restore the 211-year-old landmark.
The crowd roared its approval when a giant fastening was unzipped to reveal the gate in its original bright sandstone splendour. The Brandenburg Gate is living history.
It was here that the Nazis held their torchlight rally the night Adolf Hitler became chancellor in 1933. It spent nearly 40 years as a gate to nowhere, caught in the no man's land between East and West Berlin. Then in November 1989 millions of people surged through its portals once again after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
But years of neglect, pollution and tourists all took their toll, and urgent repairs were necessary.
But because the city of Berlin is so deep in debt - it's polite to stop counting at €30 billion - the renovation costs were paid by Deutsche Telekom. In exchange they used Germany's most famous landmark as a billboard, and millions of tourists went home with Telekom advertisements in their camera. The celebration marked an apparent end to a mini-cold war between Berlin and Washington in recent weeks. Relations have been frosty since the Chancellor, Mr Gerhard Schröder, made an election issue out of Germany's opposition to a US-led war with Iraq.
But a letter from President Bush yesterday, sending his "warmest wishes" to the German people, signalled a thaw.
