Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama landed in Berlin Thursday, kicking off the European leg of his overseas trip amid high expectations.

The German capital is the first stop on a whirlwind tour that will take the presumptive Democratic nominee to Germany, France and Britain in an effort to burnish his foreign credentials.

While in Berlin, Obama will meet with German leaders, including Chancellor Angela Merkel and Foreign Minister Walter Steinmeier. He will cap his day with an open-air speech before an expected crowd of at least 100,000 that his campaign has described as a "substantive address on U.S.-European relations."

The address comes in a city where several U.S. presidents _ including John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton _ made significant addresses.

Former German President Richard von Weizsaecker said the Obama event could help pave the way for a new trans-Atlantic relationship.

"Kennedy said the famous sentence, 'Ich bin ein Berliner,'" von Weizsaecker told the Bild newspaper. "Obama could send the Berlin signal: America is counting on Europe for its future."

"We have long believed that nobody in America is interested in our continent any more," von Weizsaecker added. "The appearance and the speech of Barack Obama are evidence that this preconception is false."

After landing at Tegel Airport, Obama's aircraft taxied by the soon-to-depart plane of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who visited Berlin this week for talks aimed at luring German companies to invest in his country.

Obama met with al-Maliki in Baghdad earlier this week.