Vandalism and Arson by Left-wing Extremists

Among the interns, we have a chat group. Word was going around that there was a large police presence at the end of the street. Curious as to what was going on, I grabbed my camera and my roommate and I headed out.

We indeed found a large police presence, a couple cars, a van, a bus, and a bunch of officers standing around talking.

 


We began with our investigation and the first thing we saw were these tires:



Burned out, but no damage to the ground our cars near them, which was when I noticed that the street was very wet. The tires had been moved there after they were extinguished. We hadn't missed the fire department by much.

There were also many fliers distributed, lying in the street soaking wet.



After researching some of the information on the flier, I found that this is not the first time such an act of arson has happened here. There supposedly lives a neo-Nazi on the street which intersects ours. He is the front-man of a neo-Nazi band and has already been arrested for distributing their CD's. His car was set on fire in February.

After thinking we had seen at all we were on our way home when we noticed that the hostel had also been vandalized with some sort of tar-based paint and one of the windows had been broken:

        

The next day, we found a news article which reflected our theories and gave us an additional piece of information. That that chain of hostels had let the right-wing populist party "Alternative for Germany" have meetings at one of their hostels, and it could have possibly been vandalized for that reason.

Interesting stuff.

It's been a long one

This past month has been quite busy.

After writing the first blog post we have been doing something practically every day except for two weekends and this four-day Easter weekend.

I'll go chronologically through my photos to present what we've done, because a lot of what we did was procedural and really only pertinent for people taking part in the program. The aforementioned visit of the Reichstag:

Some Soviet Graffiti from 1945

The Assembly Room in the Reichstag for the Bundestag

Glass dome atop the Reichstag

The Brandenburg Gate as viewed from the dome

One of the massive flags flying above the Reichstag

These photos were all from the first week.

Monday and Tuesday of the second week included such events as a tour of the Bundestag library and applying for the residency permit. We had Wednesday free before leaving for five days for the introductory seminar in Berlin-Köpenick, in a hotel in the middle of the woods on a lake.

Over those five days we had a schedule of things to do from 9 am to 9 pm every day. It included such events as intercultural training, two simulation games where we wrote a constitution and an emergency summit for a city where there were refugee problems, as well as visits to representatives of various minorities in Germany, such as Roma and Sinti, Jews, and Muslims. In our down time, we played billiards, table tennis, foosball, and a handful of us went swimming in the lake. It was cold.

The high point was the "pluralism evening" in which people put out food from their home countries and there was a variety show by us written in the few hours before it started. There was some musik, a couple good videos, and one piece inspired by Bertolt Brecht's Epic theater. It received mixed reviews.

We finished our five day stay in the hotel on a Monday, which meant we got no weekend that week.

The third week was filled with a lot of touristy stuff that is also tied into the understanding of the modern German culture, such as a visit to the German Historic Museum (photos to follow), a tour of the Bundesrat (Eng: Federal Council, similar to our Senate but still different), a visit to an exhibition entitled "Everyday Life in East Germany" which showed objects from everyday life in East Germany, and a tour of the Deutscher Dom (Eng: German Church), which is not really a church, but rather a former church owned by the Bundestag and serves as a permanent exhibit for the parliamentary history of Germany.

Courtyard in German Historic Museum

Massive Painting with Incredible Detail (Eröffnung des Reichstages im Weißen Saal des Berliner Schlosses durch Wilhelm II.) in which the Kaiser calls the parliament into existence

False hand from the early 20th century

Scientific exhibit which one stood in the Buffalo Museum of Science. There were buttons which corresponded to different body parts. When a button was pressed, the body part would light up and a voice would explain what the body part did.

German Church (Deutscher Dom)

Inside the German Church (Deutscher Dom)

3D illustration of the Reichstag and its various rooms

Assembly hall for the Federal Council in the former Prussian House of Lords

The rest I'll keep short and sweet because most of it is not interesting to the non-politically inclined, and especially those who are not familiar with German politics.

We did a third simulation game where we simulated a session of parliament, including going into the various committees and writing laws or suggesting changes to already exiting pieces of proposed legislation. It was an interesting exercise but too short and rushed.

The third week starting March 20 had us visit three different political foundations in Berlin, where it was explained to us what their positions are, what they do within the country and also abroad. We also had the opportunity to visit the television studio of the parliament and see the control rooms where the various cameras are controlled. In addition, we visited an additional studio of another media company in the city. I visited Deutsche Welle, a company which focuses on reporting international news to audiences outside of Germany, in German and 30 other languages.

After that we had a four day weekend due to Good Friday and Easter Monday. Since the weather was nice, I went out and took some photos. While out and about, I ran into some of the other interns and we made plans to have an Easter dinner at my place since my roommate had gone home for the weekend.

There were two Moroccans, an Egyptian, a Hungarian and myself in attendance for the dinner. There was way too much food as usual, but we finished it all off the next day.

      

All in all, it was a nice, quiet day where we all finally got some rest and relaxation in after all the events we had attended in the previous weeks.

On Tuesday, we visited former concentration camp Sachsenhausen. It was at one point a massive compound but has been reduced in size in the post war time to a smaller, but still quite large memorial to the victims of the camp.

Wednesday was "fraction day", when leaders from the various fractions in parliament came and explained their fractions' and parties' platforms and politics. There are currently four fractions in parliament, and as such we were broken up into four groups, with each group visiting two different fractions, and then at the end, we had to present one of the fractions to the rest of the groups who did get to attend the presentation from the fraction themselves.

Thursday was a feedback day where we shared our feedback with the people in charge of the program and then prepared a presentation for working in German parliament, which were summaries of presentations we had heard earlier in the month from the people who actually work with the various committees, such as petitions, European committee, and others.

On Friday, we had our presentations, five from five different groups. Later in the afternoon, we did a video bus tour, where we watched videos in the bus showing different areas as they were in the past, from the early 20th century to just after reunification and compared them to how they look nowadays.

Here's a link to an album of photos from the first month.

Stand by for another forthcoming post.