He bursts into the make-up suite waving Brezels. “I hope there will be enough to go round!” He’s been down to a Swabian bakery. “They told me they wouldn’t be opening until ten, but I was there at nine and they let me in.” A Swabian bakery in Berlin! The Swabians, I should add, come from Germany’s far away south-west, the area around Stuttgart. It’s the region where Dieter Kosslick spent his childhood (much of it, we discover, hanging around in a very atmospheric local bakery). Since then, he’s come far: these days he’s the director of the Berlin Film Festival. And he’s my latest guest on Talking Germany.But it isn’t just the Brezels. He’s also brought along his mother’s cookbook. A treasure trove of Swabian treats. Such as Maultaschen – lovely stuffed noodle “pockets”. Or Spätzle – delightful egg noodles. And he’s keen to show us a Spätzleschaber: an implement that’s used for cutting the noodles into the boiling water. There are, by the way, plenty of tasty-looking sites on the Net offering good Spätzle recipes in English (try, for instance: http://www.allthingsgerman.net/blog/food-drink/spaetzle-swabian-noodles/).

Anyway, as Dieter Kosslick stands there with his Brezels and his straightforward charm, you can understand just how and why he’s played such a big part in maintaining the Berlin festival’s proud reputation as the largest publicly attended film festival in the world. He’s a natural communicator. He likes people. When I ask him what the best thing about his job is, he clearly means it when he says: “I get to hug everybody. Just imagine, I get to hug Catherine Deneuve! Or even George Clooney.”

So, is the formidable Mr. Clooney as good-looking in real life as he is on screen? “Oh, yes. Better in fact!” Is it looks alone? Personality? Intelligence? “All three and more. And it helps that he laughs at my jokes. But there’s one other star who’s serious competition.” And the honour goes to? “Jake Gyllenhaal!” Dieter Kosslick doesn’t officially have a favourite female star from the Berlin Festival’s red carpet. But aside from the ever-beautiful Deneuve, it’s clear he very much admires Meryl Streep – and has a real soft spot for the wonderful Frances McDormand.

He disappeared from home when he was still a tiny boy. He survived the war. Then he got into snake charming. And that was all before the serious adventures began. So just how old was he when he departed on that first expedition? “I think I was three or four. People can’t quite agree. All I wanted to do was to visit my grandmother on the other side of town.” It’s Rüdiger Nehberg speaking: adventurer and activist – and my latest guest on Talking Germany.

The war years must have been tough. He was, after all, just ten when the Nazis capitulated. His family were among the last Germans to leave Danzig – present day Gdańsk. Two years in an interment camp in Denmark followed. So, what does he remember of his first decade? “Above all, the feeling of Ohnmacht, of helplessness.” His parents were clearly kind and understanding, but life at home was all too staid and settled: “There was no action.” So, at just 17, Rüdiger headed off (on a bike) for Morocco (and his first encounter with snakes).

Later he became the first person to introduce survival training to Germany: “It’s all about overcoming fear and learning to live with deprivation.” But fear hardly appears to be part of Rüdiger’s makeup. One of his three(!) transatlantic crossings was on a tree trunk! (http://speyer.technik-museum.de/en/en/ruediger-nehberg-tree) Now surely, that must have been scary? “Well, I’m not a good swimmer,” he admits, “but my boat was literally unsinkable. It was safer than the Titanic! The waves were sometimes eight meters high. But the boat went up and down – just like a lift.” This is clearly Rüdiger’s idea of fun. And sometimes he almost sounds like a character from Tintin: “Because I generally had the wind behind me, all I needed to do was to hold my shirt open like a pair of wings and I flew forward.”

Rüdiger Nehberg is such an enthusiastic narrator that it’s easy to forget that there’s a serious side to most everything he does. These days he’s a very effective activist against the shocking but widespread practice of female genital mutilation. His campaign has taken him to some of the highest places in Islam. The remarkable thing is that his voice – the voice of an outsider – is being heard. That he is having an impact. “And a big new development might be lying just ahead,” he assures me: “But there’s still work to do.” Rüdiger’s next destination on this latest journey is Mecca. I wish him well.

I like interfaces.” Well, that’s an understatement. It comes from Stefan Willich. He’s a remarkable man, who’s been very successful in two different fields: medicine and music. And he’s managed to draw his two passions together with the creation of the World Doctors Orchestra. “I find it productive to bring things together,” he says, with another display of understatement. Would he call himself an idealist? “No, no,” he protests, “I’m a hard-nosed realist, who likes developing things that are new.”
Stefan Willich, my latest guest on Talking Germany, is far from understated when it comes to the role of shared music-making: “Choirs, orchestras and other ensembles, are great places for learning a really broad range of skills, including emotional skills. Orchestras are places where you learn to play as a team. You learn how to develop strategies. What’s also important is that you have to learn to make up for both your own weaknesses and those of others.”
It’s the same kind of thing, I suggest, as the team sports that were so central to my youth. “Absolutely,” says Stefan Willich: “But there’s a problem there because in German schools these days sport and the arts are both underrepresented.” Which, fits in well with the long, tortured and ongoing debate here in Germany about the education system, where critics complain that young boys and girls spend too much time staring at the front of the class, and too little time working in groups to develop their curiosity and interactive skills.
Clearly, being able to play in a team is a very important skill. But, to achieve as much as this doctor-conductor, to run first a medical institute and then a music academy – as he has – you need to be a very disciplined and determined individual. Even a little driven, perhaps? So I wonder about Stefan Willich’s own family environment and his education. “I’m extremely fortunate,” he says. “I grew up in a protected home. I had an excellent education.” A fortunate man indeed.