The last couple of weeks provided some interesting experiences in Berlin, both for "normal" spectators and celebrity hawks.

Berlin is normally not decked out in Nazi flags like it was some 65 years ago. However, on a recent weekend a street in the middle of Berlin was draped with Nazi flags and closed to normal traffic. The reason? It had become a set for Tom Cruise’s latest film about Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg, who placed a bomb in Adolf Hitler’s Prussian military headquarters in July 1944 in a failed attempt to assassinate the German dictator. Old German military trucks roared up and down the street as cameras whirred and curious spectators at the traffic barriers tried to get a decent shot. Cruise is said to have a remarkable similarity in appearance to Graf Stauffenberg, at least in a side view. He is said to have studied 8 months for the role in the film. Off the set Cruise makes headlines in Berlin wherever he goes, like attending a memorial service for German actor Ulrich Mühe, who died on July 22nd of cancer.