雅思阅读材料：德国人喜欢回忆_雅思英语阅读

雅思阅读材料：德国人喜欢回忆

　　After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, East Germans confronted a new shift when their currency was replaced by the Deutsche mark as part of the reunification of Germany. Just over a decade later, the euro was introduced, first in electronic trading, then, on Jan. 1, 2002, in the cash economy of an initial 12 European countries. That number has now grown to 16 countries, and is soon to be 17. All of them claimed to have signed up to standards of fiscal discipline, but some of those pledges now seem illusory.

　　In symbolic terms, the new euro bills with their bland, architectural neutrality almost seemed to represent the end of national pride and history: gone were the great navigators, poets, playwrights, inventors, ideologues. In came bridges.

　　But in many southern European countries, the new currency offered a rite of passage into a club of northern prosperity and stability.

　　The euro opens the geographic door, said the Rev. Manuel Horacio Gomes, a Portuguese priest who was part of a broad campaign by the Roman Catholic Church to spell out to congregants the pros and cons of the euro.

　　The perils of that particular portal took less than a decade to emerge in the debt crises savaging the euro zone this year, with bailouts in Greece and Ireland, and nervous governments in Lisbon, Madrid and elsewhere pondering how far the contagion will spread as speculators seek to exploit the currencys frailties.