Costs, benefits and the debt crisis: these are the defining quantities when Europe is mentioned today. With his five Streiflichter (sidelights) on the continent, Alvermann recalls the wealth and diversity of European culture and history. The first of his photographic short stories leads to Warsaw. In October 1956 Alvermann went there to tell of a restless city where, even in the long shadow of Soviet tanks, the soft rush of the Vistula could still be heard. For the second tale he smuggled his camera in 1962 into Tirana, into the closed-off Stalinist Albania.