MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

President Bachelet travels to Germany

President Michelle Bachelet begins a four-day state visit to Germany on Wednesday morning, which will include visits to cities she once lived in.

Bachelet and her mother, Ángela Jeria, lived in exile in East Germany between 1975 and 1979, following the death of her father in one of Pinochet's jails.

Bachelet's tour will begin in Berlin, where the mayor will hold a banquet in the Chilean president's honor at the Brandenburg Gate. She meets Thursday with the German President Horst Koehler and her old friend German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

"The years I spent in Potsdam and Leipzig were happy ones," Bachelet told German magazine "Die Zeit" in fluent German.

Among her many stops, President Bachelet will travel to Leipzig University to receive a medal of honor. As a medical student at the university years before, Bachelet met Merkel.

Merkel was recently ranked the world's most powerful woman by Forbes Magazine, and Bachelet was ranked 17th.

The state visit comes at a time where relations between Germany and Chile are strong. Germany is a large importer of Chilean goods and has offered German technology to build renewable energy plants (biomass, solar and wind power) in Chile.

By Charles Sanchez The Santiago Times