On June 19, United States President Barak Obama will visit Berlin for the first time since he was elected in 2008. In a schedule that begins with a meeting with German President Joachim Gauck, and then with Chancellor Angela Merkel, he will follow in the footsteps of his predecessors John Kennedy, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, to deliver a much anticipated speech at the Brandenburg Gate — an honour that was refused to him on his last visit during his 2008 bid for the White House.
"What will Obama tell us, the Germans, today?" asks Bild, which presents a few ideas on its front page: "Mr. Wowereit, open this airport!" A demand that combines an allusion to the comment made by Ronald Reagan to [then Soviet leader] Mikhail Gorbachev ("Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall") and the much delayed opening of the Berlin Brandenburg Willy Brandt Airport. Or maybe, "I know what you did on Facebook yesterday" a reminder of the Prism espionage scandal.

The aloofness shown by the US president towards Europe also has Spiegel-Online wondering what message Obama can convey. The news website makes some suggestions in the form of a letter —

Mister President, Dear Barack Obama,
[...] There is no reason to believe that you are interested in the current problems facing this city or this country in particular. The catastrophe of the local airport must be all the same to you, and as for the euro crisis, it is up to the Europeans to take care of it [...] We have, you cannot deny it, drifted a bit apart in recent years [...]. So, please, don't say anything as banal as "I love Berlin". It would be ridiculous. No, just say the most relevant thing that, as President of the United States, you can say about your relation to Berlin, Germany, Europe and the rest of the world: "I am an American".

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