Germany's Bonn thrives, but it's not Berlin

By Kerstin Gehmlich BONN (Reuters) - A decade ago, when Germany's chancellor and the country's parliamentarians packed up to move to Berlin, the future seemed bleak for the small Rhineland city of Bonn they left behind. Today, Matthias Schultze, who works in Bonn for a U.S.-Korean project developer, sees a buzzing new city when he looks out of his office window in the building that used to house Germany's parliament. Forty years after John le Carre set his thriller "A Small Town in Germany" in Bonn, the city that was West Germany's Cold War capital is still home to six ministries and a new cluster of information technology and development groups. Although it is only one one-tenth the size of Berlin, it is outperforming the new capital in terms of jobs, its population is growing and science centers have given it a new face. IT... [read full story]