When rumors swirled that Barack Obama would speak in front of the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, Germany, during his European trip next week, it was reported that someone in the Bush Administration approached a German official at the G8 Summit in Japan to question the appropriateness of the location of the Democrat’s remarks.

The German press soon reported that German Chancellor Andrea Merkel deemed the location, one of the last remaining points connecting East and West Germany, off limits for an Obama stop – not because of Bush’s concerns, but as a matter of fairness. If Obama spoke there, then any candidate running for any office, in any country around the world may want to speak there.

Today the candidate told reporters aboard his campaign plane that his campaign has been “trying to coordinate with folks on the ground in terms of finding an appropriate site, but we didn’t have a particular site in mind.”

Obama said getting his message out is more important than the location of the speech. “Our goal is just for me to lay out how I think about the next administration’s role and rebuilding our transatlantic alliance and so I don’t want to the negative to be a distraction. What I want to do is just work with folks on the ground to find some place that’s appropriate,” Obama said.

Earlier this week at a town hall in Virginia, Obama gave a sneak preview of that message. “Although our military power is unmatched, the real challenges, the real threats, that face not just our security but world security today can’t be solved just by one country because they span the globe…We’ve got to worry about and spend time thinking about building alliances and restoring relationships with countries all around the world in order to deal with our national security,” he said, prefacing that he didn’t want to “spill” too much about the top secret trip.

The campaign has not made announcements on the specifics of Obama’s visit to Germany.