new germans
Last week, the Goethe Institute in London held a brainstorming session with corporate and cultural representatives in the hope of coming up with a new "brand" for Germany.

"We discovered that it would be too hard to change Germany's brand, as many of the images associated with the country are too deep-set," said the conference's chair, Ulrich Sacker.

"But we did decide that we've got to start emphasising current aspects of German life which are ignored - the hedonism for example of the Love Parade, the fact that we have short working days, that we take the longest holidays in Europe."