After the reunification, there was a certain sense of foreignness because daily life in the former East German states was completely turned inside out - everything from the shops to the bureaucracy to the working world.

Sometimes we get so busy with our daily lives we do not take the steps and time necessary to be introspective.

My heart is mysteriously alive in the world of sounds - a totally different dimension from the daily life.

We needed 40 years to overcome East Germany. Sometimes in history, one has to be prepared for the long haul and not ask after four months if it still makes sense to keep up our demands.

If we remind ourselves of the fact that every fifth American today rightly points and perhaps also with a certain degree of pride to his German ancestry or her German ancestry, we can safely say that we, indeed, share common roots.

I'm not an exhibitionist; I don't have a compulsion to share the ins and outs of my daily life with a public audience.