MAINZ, Germany – Pink? Or blue? For most parents this is the paramount question when it comes to organizing a baby shower or choosing a color for a newborn's room.

But, what happens if the exact gender of the child cannot be determined? It is estimated that in Germany alone approximately 80,000 people are intersexual, so-called hermaphrodites, who have physical features – such as chromosomes, hormones, gonads and outer sexual organs – which cannot be unambiguously attributed to just one gender. 

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Christiane Voelling, 52, is an intersexual.

She is a nurse living in Düsseldorf who was born without defining gender characteristics.

Because German law requires that a newborn's personal data – including gender specification – is registered within a week, Christiane was proclaimed a boy at birth and called Thomas after a midwife supposedly mistook her enlarged clitoris for a penis.

In Voelling's case, it was later diagnosed that her indeterminate external genitalia were the result of a rare genetic disorder of the adrenal gland, the so-called congenital adrenal hyperplasia, or CAH.

"My childhood and teenage development was often agonizing because I did not really know what was wrong with me and where I belonged," Voelling said in a recent interview with NBC News. 

Following a push from various human rights groups, Germany‘s government commissioned its National Ethics Council in December 2010 to consider the issue and come up with recommendations on how to identify intersexuals so they could live with greater dignity. The council, which in February of this year released its recommendations, even grappled with the question of whether or not a “third sex” should be introduced.  

Invasive surgery
For Voelling, her gender issues were rarely discussed in her family growing up in a small town in a rural area of western Germany since her parents were convinced that they were raising a male child. Yet, in school, she would often be reminded of her ambivalence, when she played soccer with the "other boys," but also felt very much integrated in the girls clique. 

She was experiencing an inner conflict that is rather common among intersexuals, or so-called differences of sex development (DSD) affected individuals, experts say.

"By the mid 90s, the first intersexual patients started seeking psychological help at our offices and most of them were preoccupied with feelings of shame, humiliation and a burdening tabooization of their problems," said Dr. Sophinette Becker, a sexologist and psychologist from Frankfurt.

For Voelling, her emotional trauma grew significantly larger at age 18, when physical scars were added in an unnecessary operation.

After being admitted to a local hospital for an appendix surgery, doctors diagnosed that their patient had mixed male-female genitals and an atrophied reproductive system.

But, when the young adult landed on the operating table, the surgeon found a full set of female reproductive organs, including an intact womb and ovaries.

Without consent from the patient, the organs were removed.

"I never received a truthful explanation of my condition and after the operation I felt a lot of physical and emotional pain for many years,"  Voelling said.

"Some 95 percent of all intersexuals systematically undergo genital surgery and other interventions without medical informed consent and without clear scientific proof," said Lucie Veith, the head of "Intersexuelle Menschen eV" in Hamburg, a group that represents hermaphrodites in Germany.

Gratification after legal battle
Only a couple of years later, Voelling also started receiving the regular administration of testosterone, or steroid male hormones.

"For 27 years, I was more or less exposed to severe doping," Voelling said.

"At age 47, when I felt more like a woman than a man anyway, I said enough is enough," she added.

Today, intersexual activists are trying to educate the medical community, affected families and the public about the often harsh consequences of genital reconstruction surgery and other severe medical interventions.

"These massive medical interferences plunge the intersexed child into total imbalance and lead to irreversible damages," said Veith, whose organization has nearly 600 members in Germany.

In 2008, Voelling decided to take her case to court and sued the doctor that had removed her female reproduction organs over unlawful intervention.

In its verdict, the court ordered the surgeon to pay 100,000 euro, (approximately $133,000)  in compensation for performing an operation converting a hermaphrodite into a man without consent.

"I felt very relieved and it was really more of a moral reparation than anything else, but it unfortunately did not have consequences for the legal rights of intersexuals," said Voelling.  She officially changed her gender from male to female, as well as her name from Thomas to Christiane, in a long bureaucratic process that same year.

Preparing legal framework
While experts say that Voelling's case is legally unique and will not set a precedent, the topic nevertheless started to receive more public attention after she wrote a book called "I was man and woman – My Life as an Intersexual.“

Despite some disagreements with the recommendations of Germany’s National Ethics Council released last month, Voelling and other intersexuals hope that the council’s recommendations will help give their status a legal framework in the future.

"In our recommendation to the German government earlier this year, the main message was that intersexuals are different from other human beings, but they need to be respected and belong in the center of our society," said psychologist Dr. Michael Wunder, a member of the German National Ethics Council.

Because irreversible medical interventions of gender assignment in people with ambiguous genitalia are typically conducted during early childhood years, the German Ethics Council determined that these operations present an infringement of the right to physical integrity, thus a violation of basic human rights.

The Ethics Board also said that "a non-justifiable encroachment on the personal rights and the right to equal treatment is present when people who cannot be assigned as ‘female’ or ‘male’ because of their physical condition are legally compelled to assign themselves to either category in the civil registry."

Following Australia's example, the German Ethics Council recommended that in addition to the registration of  "female" or "male," the German government should introduce the category "other" or should allow a “no entry,” until the affected person have made a personal decision themselves.

Last September, Australia  introduced new guidelines, which allow its citizens to change the sex details on their passport to female (F), male (M) or indeterminate (X).

"This amendment makes life easier and significantly reduces the administrative burden for sex and gender diverse people who want a passport that reflects their gender and physical appearance," said Australian Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd.

In Germany, rights activists, representatives from the Ethics Council and intersexuals now hope that German lawmakers will soon implement regulations, which will help to protect the rights of hermaphrodites and remove discrimination on the grounds of gender identity and sexual orientation.

ATHENS – Shock was a common sentiment in the heart of Athens this week. 

Athinas Street, the colorful shopping mile in the Greek capital, is known for its lively fish and meat markets, where spice salesmen mix with traditional shoemakers and sidewalks are packed with commodities for sale. 

But at one corner earlier this week shoppers and residents stopped to look at the ugly face of growing public anger in the Greek crisis.

Workers were removing broken glass, burnt wood and other rubble from the Bank of Cyprus building, one of at least 48 Athens buildings that were torched by protesters during riots two days earlier.

Two blocks up the road, 50-year-old Michael Ipermahos stood outside his small clothing store and looked on in despair.

"Once, we were proud to be Greeks. Now, I am ashamed. Ashamed not of myself, but of the Greek politicians and what they have done to this country," he said.

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'Work, work, work'
Ipermahos said he has been to several of the public demonstrations outside of the Greek parliament in the past months to peacefully protest the harsh austerity measures and to voice his anger over what he calls "injustice.“

"I work, work, work, day and night, 16 hours every day, sometimes in temperatures below freezing, sometimes in brutal heat," said Ipermahos, a father of two children – ages 20 and 23 – who still live at home with him and his wife.

"We are not lazy," he said. "But while my income is shrinking, the taxes are going up, fuel prices are skyrocketing and even basic food is becoming more expensive."

On this cool morning, only a few people stopped to look at the tee-shirts, jackets and other garments that Ipermahos sells.

But he does have one item that sells briskly.

"Gas masks," Ipermahos said, as he pointed to the prominently displayed protection gear.

"Because tear gas is regularly used at the protests, we now also offer gas masks. It is one of our best selling products," he said.

But it may not be enough, over the course of the past two and a half years, Ipermahos said the little shop that he owns with his brother-in-law has seen a 60 percent decline in business.

And, hope for a better future is fading.                                                             

"It is almost certain that we will lose our jobs; we are only counting the days,“ he said. 

Armed robbers steal 70 relics from museum in Olympia, Greece

Tightening the belt
Of course, it’s not just retail businesses that are feeling the crunch in Greece.

Chris Manolitsis, a 52-year-old freelance sound engineer who has been working with Greek artists for over 30 years, said he had been struggling ever since the 2008 collapse of Lehman Brothers in New York.

"The Greek music industry has generally deteriorated because people do not have the money to go out to nightclubs or events anymore, one of the first things everybody saves on is entertainment," he explained.

In recent years, the father of two grown-up children had to cope with a 50 to 60 percent reduction in his income, though he still feels somewhat financially independent because he has been receiving money from other sources, including rent from a house that he bought in better economic times.

However, his alternative income sources are far from secure.

"The woman who is renting my house is a civil servant who had her salary already cut three times and she is now facing a fourth cut," Manolitsis said. "I agreed to reduce her rent by 20 percent, otherwise the mother of a young child would have moved out and I would have been left with more uncertainty.“

And his 27-year-old son Terry, who finished college with a degree in media and communications, was recently fired from a job as a security guard, the only employment he could find after finishing his studies. As a result, the young man left for Scotland, looking for job opportunities outside Greece.

In Greece, the crisis is making people ill (literally)

Broken promises
Manolitsis blames the current financial crisis on two decades of financial mismanagement, which has resulted in broad public anger and deeply rooted mistrust towards politicians.

"Greeks had the wool pulled over their eyes, so to speak,"  he said.

"When former Prime Minister Papandreou won the elections in 2009, for example, he received overwhelming support on a platform that there is plenty of money," he said. "Two days later, the politicians said sorry, we made a mistake, there is no money.“

Today, most Greeks feel that they have been pushed to the limits, leading to growing despair and rising suicide rates.

"The situation is a tragedy and a shame for a nation with such a powerful heritage," Manolitsis said. "Of course I am worried about my future, but we have to keep going and I am not afraid to get my hands dirty or explore new routes."

Next week, the Greek sound engineer has signed up for a training seminar, which will teach him how to sell insurance.

(This report has been updated to correct an error.)

By Andy Eckardt, NBC News

BERLIN – Irmela Mensah-Schramm has embarked on her very personal "combat mission" almost daily for 26 years. Her weapons? A scraper, nail-polish remover, a camera and lots of courage.

Come rain, heatwaves or stormy weather, the 66-year-old sets out to battle what she calls "extremely disturbing" neo-Nazi and racist graffiti, stickers and posters that blight the streets of Germany's capital.

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The retired special-needs teacher has now removed more than 90,000 stickers and scribblings.

"Even when I injured my leg several years ago and was walking on crutches, it did not stop me from removing the muck off traffic light poles, bus stops or building walls," Mensah-Schramm says.

Mensah-Schramm travels by commuter train to areas she believes are right-wing strongholds, places where xenophobic propaganda and spray-painted Nazi symbols mix with gang-related graffiti and the more colorful works of spray-paint artists.

'Appalled'
Her "vocation" started with a single neo-Nazi sticker on a street light outside of her apartment in the upmarket Berlin-Wannsee area.

"One morning, I saw a banned Nazi symbol well visible on a lamp post and was appalled that people in my neighborhood ignored it day in and day out, without removing this trash," Mensah-Schramm recalls.

"Only a short while later, I witnessed an incident in which my Indian brother-in-law became the victim of racist bashing. This shocked me so much that I decided to act."

She documents much of the offensive material in photographs and has compiled a scrapbook, which she always carries with her. Mensah-Schramm calls her project "Hate Destroys".

"For many years, I have been displaying my pictures in exhibits across the country," Mensah-Schramm says. "I talk about my experiences in schools and I regularly host workshops with children and students, generating awareness for the bad impact of these ugly racist messages."

Swastikas
Even ill health hasn't stopped her determined drive to wipe out extremist propaganda. After undergoing a cancer operation at a Berlin hospital in 1995, Mensah-Schramm found two swastikas painted in a stairwell. She rushed back to the nurses, asked for acetone and scrubbed away as much as she could before becoming too weak to finish the job. It was the first day Mensah-Schramm was able to get out of bed.

"In some journeys, I need to take tougher measures with black spray-paint or anti-graffiti solvent to remove writings off walls, and sometimes I even ask people on the street to help me out, if I cannot reach the graffiti," Mensah-Schramm says as she walks past run-down apartment buildings in an economically depressed neighborhood in the Berlin suburb of Koenigs Wusterhausen, which was once part of communist East Germany.

"Look, that is my work," she proudly points out, as she walks past a black square, which was once a swastika that she recently painted over.

Her message is clear: Don't look away.

"You cannot achieve something by doing nothing," explains Mensah-Schramm, whose husband was born in Ghana.

"This type of xenophobic propaganda on the streets can help to spread dangerous ideologies, which can be part of a radicalization process that ultimately can lead to extreme violence," she says, referring to recent revelations about a neo-Nazi terror cell that shocked Germany and led to a nationwide debate about the danger of right-wing extremism in the country.

Murder spree
Two men, Uwe Mundlos and Uwe Boehnhardt, and their 36-year old female accomplice, Beate Zschaepe, formed the so-called National Socialist Underground (NSU). The group is believed to be responsible for the murders of at least nine small businessmen of Turkish and Greek origin between 2000 and 2006, as well as the slaying of a police officer in 2007.

Much to the embarrassment of German authorities, the country's law enforcement agencies only connected the crimes and their xenophobic motives in late 2011 after two of the three cell members committed suicide, following a bank robbery that put police on their trail.

German investigators originally suspected that the victims were most likely killed by fellow immigrants and might have been involved in gang-related crimes.

While critics say that German authorities had turned "blind on the right eye", by focusing instead on tackling Islamist terrorism, lawmakers set up an anti-terror center for right-wing extremism in December. Last month, Germany's parliament also appointed a commission of inquiry into the series of killings.

The German government has also established a database aimed at better coordination in the fight against violent neo-Nazis, partly because the NSU terror cell apparently remained in the shadows for so long due to poor lines of communication between different national security agencies and state authorities.

"Attacks on local politicians and violent acts against foreigners show that the goal is to spread fear and terror," Heinz Fromm, the head of Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, told a recent symposium in Berlin.

'Brutality'
Germany's domestic intelligence agency estimates that there are about 9,500 potentially violent neo-Nazis among the 26,000 right-wing extremists in the country.

"For years, we have been seeing that brutality within right-wing extremism has been on the rise," says Dr. Alexander Eisvogel, vice-president of Germany’s domestic intelligence agency.

• Homes raided after neo-Nazi torchlight parade

However, Mensah-Schramm insists that she remains unafraid.

"I have been threatened many times by neo-Nazis, who have seen me remove their works,” she says. “And once, I came across big letters written on a wall that read: 'Schramm, we will get you'.

"Another time, I found my photo illegally posted on a well-known neo-Nazi website, where the subtitle indicated that nobody would care if I was dead," Mensah-Schramm describes.

She filed an official complaint over the violation of her personal rights. "Unfortunately, that got me nowhere because the server for the page was based in the United States," Mensah-Schramm says.

In fact, German authorities are facing a growing challenge when it comes to online enforcement.

Extremist groups are turning to web servers in the United States to host their content and spread their messages beyond the jurisdiction of local authorities. While displaying of Nazi symbols and the incitement of racial hatred are outlawed in Germany, neo-Nazi websites take advantage of free speech laws in the United States.

As the retiree counts sticker number 70,076, removed at a bus stop outside a local high school, she turns and says, "There are these small, but very rewarding moments."

"A former neo-Nazi, who had massively threatened me in the past and later exited the scene, stopped me on the street one day," Mensah-Schramm says with a choked voice. "He took off his sunglasses, looked me straight in the eyes and said that he wanted to thank me for never giving up my fight.

"I was so overwhelmed by the gesture that I started to cry," Mensah-Schramm says, before walking off to complete her mission of the day.

by Andy Eckardt, NBC News Producer 

ATHENS – Greece’s recent financial and political crisis has led to tension between once friendly European neighbors.

Many Greeks blame the German government, as the major economic force of the European Union, for the radical austerity measures that threaten to cause a decade of misery for many Greeks.

The tone hasn’t been helped by some graphic depictions – such as a poster seen around Athens depicting Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel in a full Nazi outfit.

"Almost every German tourist who visits our restaurant these days asks me whether the Greeks hate Germany," Christos Mentissidis said Sunday as he set up tables and cleaned the floors at the Greek Taverna, a tourist-frequented restaurant in the heart of Athens.
"I immediately tell them that only a minority complain about Germany and other rich EU countries. But, it hurts to see what kind of image is painted of Greece in this crisis, here and abroad."

For Mentissidis, 50, the differences are personal – he spent nearly 20 years living in Germany, where he worked as a taxi driver, at a security company, at Lufthansa Cargo and in several jobs in Greek and German restaurants. Perhaps more significantly, he has a son who was born and raised in Germany and still lives there.

"Both countries are home for me," Mentissidis said. "But the love for the country where I was born was a little stronger in the end.”

He returned to Athens in 2006, but said he was immediately disillusioned by the corruption and byzantine bureaucracy of his homeland – and now is even contemplating going back to Germany. 

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‘It was a great mistake to come back’
"I once was asked to pay a bribe at a dentist's office in order to get an early appointment for a simple filling. Otherwise, I would have had to wait two months or more for the treatment," he said. 

"Corruption, tax evasion and the whole pension plan structure are just some of the burdening problems here. Nothing is secure in Greece."

The recent upheaval has also had a direct effect on Mentissidis’ bottom line because his job is at a restaurant that appeals to tourists.

"This year started great for us,” he said. “In May, tourism really picked up and we were quite busy, with lots of foreigners visiting our restaurant. But then the first violent demonstrations happened and pictures of burning cars and masked protesters … were sent around the world and suddenly, we saw a decline in business of more than 40 percent.”

However, that doesn’t mean Germans have stopped going to Greece – it remains a popular beach destination and statics show there was actually a 6.5 percent rise in Greek tourism this past summer – supported by a jump in the number of German visitors especially to the Greek islands.

Mentissidis is not alone. As private businesses suffer, tax revenues shrink, meaning the Greek government cannot pay salaries and pensions to more than 2.5 million people.

"Economically, it was a great mistake to come back to Greece and I am very worried about the future," he said.

Bluer skies
It’s a different story for his 26-year-old son, Themistoklis, back in Germany. 

"When my father returned to Greece, I strongly considered going with him, but I am so happy now that I stayed here. There is no future for young people in Greece," said Themistoklis, 26, during a recent interview in Ruesselsheim, a town close to Frankfurt, Germany’s financial capital. 

While Greece's unemployment rate currently hovers above 16 percent, with the jobless rate among 15-24 year olds soaring to 42 percent, Themistoklis has a job as a machine operator at a big pharmaceutical company in Frankfurt.

There are, however, constant reminders of the plight of his ancestral country.

"Every time people in Germany hear that I am Greek, there is no other topic than the [economic] crisis and I often have to justify things when I hear negative remarks about my country," he said.

The young man and his Greek girlfriend say that the "unnecessary tensions" are often caused by adverse depictions in the German media and, on the Greek side, by references to the 1941-45 Nazi occupation of Greece.

The situation was not helped when Greek Prime Minister Papandreou announced last week that he planned to hold a referendum on the European bailout measures (a decision that was later reversed).  

"Take the euro away from the Greeks!" was a headline on Germany's mass-circulation tabloid BILD after Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy raised the prospect of Greece’s exit from the Eurozone for the first time.

"We've had enough!" BILD wrote in the article, signaling growing exasperation in Europe's largest economy. "We're spending hundreds of billions of euros to save the Greeks and now a referendum there should make clear whether they want to make savings at all. Now we want our own referendum: No more billions for the Greeks, Greece out of the euro!" the article wrote.

But that would be a worst-case scenario as far as Christos is concerned.

"Despite all the criticism I am still very proud to be Greek, but the last thing we want is a return to our old drachma currency," said Christos.

But he’s not dismissing a return to his old stomping ground. "With all the chaos here, I am strongly thinking about going back to Germany, where I would rather take up a low-paid taxi driver job than approach retirement age in a country that lacks a real system.”

NBC News’ Andy Eckardt is based in Mainz, Germany, but is currently on assignment in Greece.

MAINZ, Germany – Where did Germany's fairytale princesses go? Well, royals actually stopped playing a political and social role in Germany back in 1918, when the country's last emperor, Kaiser Wilhelm II, stepped down.

But, it certainly did not put an end to the Germans' strong interest in all things noble. More than 10 million people in Germany alone are expected to tune into one of the six German channels that will carry the British royal wedding live on April 29.

And some Germans will even make the trip across the channel to pay tribute to the newlyweds in London.

For a group of German aficionados of British culture and history, six men, who call themselves "Friends of British Royalty Germany Section," the upcoming royal wedding is truly special.
 
"We have been practicing a barber shop song for weeks, which we intend to perform in the streets of London on our upcoming trip to the British capital. This will be the highlight of the year for us," says 50-year old Bernhard Zanders, who heads the so-called “gentlemen's club.” 

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"You are the flower of my heart, sweet Catherine" is the main line of their altered version of an old tune called "Sweet Adeline," which these die-hard fans of the British monarchy have been re-writing and rehearsing for weeks.

On the wedding day, the German travel group plans to perform the four-voice serenade and a little lullaby after the ceremony, under a window of the building, where William and Kate are believed to be spending their wedding night.

Windsors are German
To get into the mood for their journey, Zanders and his friends held a special birthday party for the queen last Wednesday – an evening ceremony in which they played the British national anthem and raised the union jack flag.

“A rite that actually required the consent of the British consulate because it is considered an official state act,” Zanders explained, who has been meeting with his group every two weeks for the past 15 years.

But why the Windsors and not King Gustav of Sweden or King Juan Carlos of Spain?

"The Windsors have a truly German background," said Zanders, "which has always made me feel a special European connection to the British monarchy.”

As a matter of fact, Britain's Windsors are descended from German stock.
 
The royal family's bloodline reaches back to the German ducal house of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. In the old days, the "Coburgs" were closely related to many European princely families and furnished the sovereigns of several royal dynasties in Europe, including Belgium, Portugal and Great Britain.

Eventually, Britain's royal family managed to shake off their German roots, but some of their German family members are still part of Europe's glamorous present-day aristocracy. Like Prince Ernst August V, the third husband of Princess Caroline of Monaco, and also the head of the deposed royal House of Hanover. He is the great-grandson of the last German emperor, Wilhelm II. He was 385th in the line of succession to the British throne – until he married Princess Caroline, according to Wikipedia.

Love for royalty
Short of German kings or queens to go crazy for, people in Germany simply look beyond the borders to European countries which still have active royal households – like Sweden, the Netherlands, Denmark, or yes, the mother-of-all-monarchies: England.

Republicanism and democratic systems are nice, but many Germans will tell you stylish princesses, golden wedding carriages and all the other glamour that surrounds these royal dynasties are sometimes even better.

"The love for anything royal reflects the yearning for an ideal world, it is a modern-day fairy tale for many people," says Norbert Loh, a royal expert at "die aktuelle" tabloid magazine in Munich, who has been reporting on European royals for more than 30 years.

While Loh admits that the majority of his readers are above age 50, he also says that the broad media coverage of royal celebrities makes today's monarchies no less popular among the younger generation.

"I get many, many letters from teenagers who read my 'royal moment' column. For them, especially the young royals, like Prince William and Prince Harry, are real pop stars," said Loh, who will be acting as a royal expert during German television ZDF's six-hour coverage of the royal wedding on April 29.

For all things Royal Wedding, see msnbc.com's Windsor Knot blog

MAINZ, Germany – In Germany, football (or soccer) is often called the “greatest minor matter in the world.” On Saturday, which traditionally is the weekly game day in the country, Germany’s number one sport really became a minor matter with regard to the worrying news updates that were flocking in from Japan.
 
On several occasions, the moderator of the top rated sports program “Sportschau” on public television ARD reminded viewers of the catastrophic situation in the Far East country. And, many of the after-game interviews with coaches or players were focused on questions about the status of friends and relatives in Japan instead of game results.
 
“This is terrible; we could follow the whole drama of events through the pictures on TV. Especially the situation in the megacity Sendai affects me a lot, as I played for the Brummell team there,” said Wolfsburg coach Pierre Littbarski, a former German soccer star, who is married to a Japanese woman. 

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Makoto Hasebe (VFL Wolfsburg), Shinji Kagawa (Borussia Dortmund), Shinji Okasaki (VFB Stuttgart) – all well-known Japanese players, who are big stars in Germany’s top league, the Bundesliga, and favorites of many German soccer fans.
 
“The good news first: Shinji Kagawa is in good health after the earthquake in Japan” read the headline on the official website of leading German soccer team Borussia Dortmund. A note of comfort for the team’s fans, as Kagawa is currently recuperating in Japan from a sports injury.
 
With respect for their Japanese teammates and the Japanese people in general, most players wore a black “mourning band” around their arms during the matches and in many stadiums a minute of silence was observed before kick-off on Saturday.
 
All eyes on Japan  
“Pray for Japan” was the Sunday headline of Germany’s mass circulation BILD newspaper.

Germany has a large Japanese community, one of the largest in Europe, and many were following updates from Japanese TV on the Internet all weekend.

The biggest concentration of Japanese ex-pats can be found in Dusseldorf, where more than 8,200 Japanese alone have found a home. More than 490 Japanese companies are operating in this western German city, which is located on the banks of the Rhine River.

Organizers of this year’s “Japan Week” – scheduled to take place from May 21-28 marking 150 years of German-Japanese friendship – say that they are not certain, if celebrations will now be able to take place as planned.
 
Over the past few days, journalists and residents of the city have been rushing to Japanese restaurants, supermarkets and Japanese travel agents, asking their Japanese neighbors about the status of their families back home.
 
“We are constantly updating our guests and our 45 Japanese employees with what we know from Japan, which is a lot and nothing” says Bertold Reul, the general manager of the Japanese hotel Nikko that has been operating in Dusseldorf for 33 years.

"All of our flat screens at the hotel are tuned to German, English and Japanese channels that are carrying news from Japan," Reul told NBC News.

WIESBADEN, Germany – Could a German resort town become Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s new home in exile?

Media reports are speculating that Germany, because of his previous medical visits to the country, could be Mubarak’s next stop.

The rumors were triggered by a recent report in the New York Times, which claimed that secret talks were being held between the U.S. government and Egyptian military officials over a possible German exile for Mubarak.

For years, statesmen and politicians from Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and even Yemen have been treated in cities such as Munich, Berlin or the spa town of Baden-Baden.

The list includes Mubarak, who underwent a gall bladder operation at the University Clinic in Heidelberg in March of 2010 and had back surgery at a hospital in Munich in 2004. There were also rumors that Mubarak was being treated for cancer here, but the Heidelberg clinic has refused to comment on his medical status, citing Germany's strict data protection laws.

NBC’S Andrea Mitchell reports that intelligence experts and other foreign policy experts advising the White House believe arrangements have already been made for Mubarak to go to Baden-Baden, which he has visited in the past, when he agrees  to leave Egypt.

According to Der Spiegel, the plans for his exile are so far along that there have already been talks with a private luxury clinic, the Max-Grundig-Klinik nestled at the edge of Germany's picturesque Black Forest near the southwestern town of Baden-Baden.

 However, the press spokeswoman at the facility refused to comment on the issue.

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Political debate
While European leaders are still grappling with how to deal with Mubarak, it should comes as no surprise that politicians across the German political spectrum have been quick to comment on whether  Germany should host the ousted dictator.

On Sunday, Elke Hoff, security policy spokesperson for the liberal Free Democrats, said she would welcome Mubarak, if it helps to stabilize the situation in Egypt. But she added that Mubarak's possible stay should not be considered “political asylum.”

Elmar Brok, a European Parliament member for Germany's conservative CDU party, told the Frankfurter Rundschau daily that, "The German government should discretely signal to Mubarak that he can come to Germany if he wants to.”

Cem Özdemir, a leader in Germany's Greens party cautioned, “Germany cannot be a luxury sanctuary for deposed despots.”

He added, "Care must be taken to ensure that Mubarak doesn't use a stay at a German hospital to duck his responsibilities toward the people of Egypt."

But officially, the German government has remained mum.
 
"There have been no formal or informal requests to grant Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak exile as part of an extended medical leave in Germany,” said Steffen Seibert, German Chancellor Angela Merkel's spokesman.  "Therefore, there is no reason for the federal government to deal with this question even hypothetically," he said.

If it brings a peaceful solution, he’s welcome
Yet, even Egyptians living in Germany, who have been protesting against Mubarak and his regime, say that they would not necessarily oppose the idea of Mubarak finding refuge here.

"If Mubarak does not continue his political activities from afar, and if this helps to bring a peaceful solution for our country, then why not," Sarawat Ramadan, a leader of Germany's Egyptian community told NBC News on the phone.

"Most Egyptians I know would favor any type of solution, if it leads to stability and freedom in Egypt," said Ramadan, who recently demonstrated against Mubarak along with 1,500 people at a Berlin rally.

Others remain opposed to the idea.

"Mubarak stands for a system that is based on oppression and corruption," Thomas Krämer-Engemann, a commentator wrote in the regional Wiesbadener Kurier newspaper.  "He [Mubarak] does not need us and our sympathy, and we also do not need him.”