The wall is gone, the division remains

I heard an amusing story the other night on ABC NewsRadio about the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel.

Apparently she's found some habits of her communist, East German-upbringing hard to break... such as stockpiling consumer goods.

The 56-year-old German leader says she tends to over-stock the cupboards in her Berlin apartment "because you used to just get what-you-could... in an economy where things were scarce".

"Sometimes I just buy things because I see them... even though I don't really need them at the time," she said.

You'll probably hear lots of amusing anecdotes like this over the next few days as Germany celebrates the 20th anniversary of re-unification.

>> Read more at ABC.net.au