Council Member
Posts: 2,289 
June 19th, 2008, 08:01 AM
No Longer the Capital, but a Global Destination
Someone forgot to turn out the lights in Bonn!
The former capital city has reinvented itself into an international campus for everything from medical research to alternative energy to the United Nations.
Bonn is home to SolarWorld, one of the leading companies in Germany’s top-flight solar-energy industry. Health care accounts for 1 in 10 jobs in the city and surrounding area. The central government announced in March that Bonn had been selected as the site of a new $1 billion dementia research center.
Since the Bundestag and the Chancellery left in 1999, Bonn, rather than watching employment plummet, has seen an increase of more than 12,000 jobs in a modest-size city of just 315,000 people.
Unemployment in Germany is at its lowest level in 15 years. And while it is expected to slow, the German economy grew at an annual rate of 6 percent in the first quarter of this year.
Though it is bound to be overtaken by the breakneck growth of China, this old standby in Old Europe — with only one-sixteenth of China’s population — is by many statistical measures still the world’s third biggest economy, behind only the United States and Japan. It is also the world’s leading exporter of goods, second to none thanks to its thriving, high-end manufacturing sector.
You should read the entire article!
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/19/wo...hp&oref=slogin
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Amazing how Germany has recovered and changed in the last 50 - 60 years! I think Hitler and Albert Speer would be happy to see their dreams of a glorious and efficient Germany realized... the hub in the middle of Europe. Out of the ashes rose the unconquerable human spirit! It all worked out, thanks to so many hard-working and dedicated people.
No Longer the Capital, but a Global Destination
Someone forgot to turn out the lights in Bonn!
The former capital city has reinvented itself into an international campus for everything from medical research to alternative energy to the United Nations.
Bonn is home to SolarWorld, one of the leading companies in Germany’s top-flight solar-energy industry. Health care accounts for 1 in 10 jobs in the city and surrounding area. The central government announced in March that Bonn had been selected as the site of a new $1 billion dementia research center.
Since the Bundestag and the Chancellery left in 1999, Bonn, rather than watching employment plummet, has seen an increase of more than 12,000 jobs in a modest-size city of just 315,000 people.
Unemployment in Germany is at its lowest level in 15 years. And while it is expected to slow, the German economy grew at an annual rate of 6 percent in the first quarter of this year.
Though it is bound to be overtaken by the breakneck growth of China, this old standby in Old Europe — with only one-sixteenth of China’s population — is by many statistical measures still the world’s third biggest economy, behind only the United States and Japan. It is also the world’s leading exporter of goods, second to none thanks to its thriving, high-end manufacturing sector.
You should read the entire article!
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/19/wo...hp&oref=slogin
------------------------------------------------------------------
Amazing how Germany has recovered and changed in the last 50 - 60 years! I think Hitler and Albert Speer would be happy to see their dreams of a glorious and efficient Germany realized... the hub in the middle of Europe. Out of the ashes rose the unconquerable human spirit! It all worked out, thanks to so many hard-working and dedicated people.
