Barack Obama meets with German Chancellor Angela Merkel

Barack Obama opened the European leg of his nine-day trip overseas this morning with an hour-long meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel as thousands began gathering in a park to hear the Democrat give a major speech on U.S. relations with Europe.

On a morning flight from Jerusalem to Berlin, Obama joked that expectations might have risen too high for the address he plans to deliver this afternoon near the Victory Column in Tiergarten, Berlin’s equivalent of Central Park in New York.

“I doubt we are going to have a million screaming Germans,” Obama said when asked whether he was prepared for such a scene. “Let’s tamp down expectations here.”

The scene in Berlin will mark the sixth day that Obama’s travels will provide fresh TV images of the likely Democratic presidential nominee in dramatic settings abroad.

So far, he has traveled to Kuwait, Afghanistan, Iraq, Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian territories. Obama is due in Paris and London on Friday.

Obama advisors hope cheering throngs in Berlin will illustrate the Illinois senator’s potential to restore America’s tainted image overseas. He is expected to touch upon his aspirations for tighter coordination with Europe in fighting climate change and terrorism.

“Germany has a great historical importance,” Obama strategist David Axelrod said. “It was a place during the Cold War where East met West. It symbolized the foreign policy challenges that we faced in the last generation, and that we were able to overcome.”

Still, the staging of the Berlin event has led critics to accuse Obama of being presumptuous about winning the White House. Merkel’s office complained publicly when his campaign was considering the historical Brandenburg Gate for the speech.

“I have always said that I think that the Brandenburg Gate is a good site for a speech of a U.S. president, or other presidents,” Merkel said Wednesday. “But a campaigning speech should not take place [there]. This might be seen as a bit old-fashioned, and there might be different opinions.”

Obama ultimately settled for the Victory Column. Even there, the Brandenburg Gate will be clearly visible, a mile across the Tiergarten.

The victory monument near the center of the park is a rare site for a political speech. It celebrates Prussian war victories of the 19th century. It is also where techno-music fans gather periodically for the world-renowned Love Parade dance festival.

Asked on his campaign charter plane whether he drew inspiration from the famous Berlin speeches of Presidents John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan, Obama said: “They were presidents. I am a citizen. But obviously Berlin is representative of the extraordinary success of the post-World War II effort to bring the continent together, and bring the west together, and then later to bring the east and the west together.”

Speaking just before his plane took off from Jerusalem for Berlin, Obama said he learned from his staff this morning that the Tiergarten space was “bigger than I realized.”

Asked if that was a good or bad thing, Obama responded: “It is a potentially bad thing. We are sort of on the high wire all of the sudden. It’s like, wait, how many does this accommodate?”

In Jerusalem, Obama paid a moonlight visit to the Western Wall just before dawn. It was a quick, unannounced stop at one of the Old City’s most sacred spots, a section of the Temple Mount’s western supporting wall.

Wearing a white yarmulke, Obama flipped through a holy book on a wooden stand as Shmuel Rabinovich, the Rabbi of the Wall, read Psalm 122.

Ten yards away, a man yelled repeatedly: “Obama, Jerusalem is not for sale!” After the Psalm, Obama walked a few paces to the Wall and followed the custom of putting a personal note between the stone cracks with his prayer left alongside hundreds of others.

He bowed his head and stood in contemplation for a few moments. The heckler continued to chant while several other men tried to drown him out by repeating “Obama, Obama.”

Obama and Merkel discussed the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as climate and energy issues at Germany’s chancellery .

Merkel spokesman Ulrich Wilhelm said in a statement issued after the hour-long session that Obama and Merkel also stressed the “great significance of close and friendly German-American relations,” he said. Other topics included Pakistan, the Middle East peace process, the transatlantic economic partnership, the global economy and “the need for cooperation on the international level and in international organizations to solve important global questions,” Wilhelm said.

 michael.finnegan@latimes.com