The new US president is set to travel to Germany at the beginning of April within the framework of the NATO summit. He’s set to meet a number of EU leaders in the southwestern German towns of Baden-Baden and Kehl. There's already talk of the German chancellor Angela Merkel being left out in the cold during Obama's first European trip since taking office. Are these the first signs of transatlantic tensions between the US and Germany? Certainly,the German and US leaders have very different ideas about how best to tackle the global financial crisis. We gauge opinion ahead of Obama's visit.