Politik und Köln

Two big things of interest have happened since spring break. Unfortunately, my camera ran out of battery, so I cannot supply many good pictures.
First of all, Angela Merkel came to speak in Münster. This was kind of a big deal: like when Obama went to Decorah. A lot of people went to the Domplatz to see her, including Jake and I. I don't think anyone else from our group went (lame)...
Angela Merkel is the Bundeskanzlerin or Federal Chancellor of Germany. From what I understand, she is the closest to our president. She is the one with a lot of power that is also head diplomat and, to some extent, figurehead for the state. She was coming here because there will be an election in Nordrhein-Westfalen (North Rhine-Westfalia) for the Ministerpräsident (basically the governor). Frau Merkel came here to support her party, the Christliche Demokratische Union (Christian Democratic Party), in a political rally. Something interesting about German politics: the CDU is one of the most right-leaning parties. They are considered to be fairly conservative. However, from what I understand, Merkel would agree with Obama on quite a lot. In other words, our liberals are fairly close to Germany's conservatives (I had this conversation with my host father before spring break). But that's enough politics for now.
So Jake and I went to the Domplatz right after class, so at about 4:00. Merkel was not set to speak until 6:00, so we just went to look. There was a lot set up: a beer and sausage stand, a CDU stand, a big inflated thing, and a large stage, all surrounded by those temporary crowd control fence things. So I went home to eat Mittagsessen, planning to come back in time to see Merkel. Jake stayed in the city and worked on things (it would be an hour bike ride both ways and there were only two hours, he figured, not much point in going home and coming back). I met Jake again at about quarter after five in the city. We went to the Domplatz again to find it much more crowded. There was no longer much chance of standing inside the fencing stuff. It wasn't so bad though. At about half past, the candidate, Norbert Röttgen, spoke. All he talked about was debt. That and how the incumbent, Frau Hannelore Kraft is evil and just added lots of debt (my host brother apparently went to the rally too and, when he got home, complained that Röttgen was boring since all he talked about was "Schulden").

Frau Angela Merkel at the CDU rally in Münster.

Eventually Merkel got up to speak. I actually don't remember what she talked about for the most part since, by that point, I was kind of bored and did not have very much attention left to pay to her. But it was pretty cool. Unfortunately, I did not get a good picture because my batteries decided to die. But so the picture here is the best I was able to get. If you look at the full-size, Frau Merkel is visible in the black and red, pretty much right underneath a sign of her.

The second thing of interest that has happened since spring break is a little excursion. Last Friday, a few of us decided to go to Cologne (Köln in German). The primary reason for this was to see the Kölner Dom (the catherderal of Cologne) which is the tallest Gothic construction in the world. It is tall enough that when you get out of the train station and see it (it is only a few hundred feet from the door), you look up and up and up and don't believe that it is a real building. It rather looks like some sort of illusion. Nothing should be able to be that big. But it is.
So we saw the Dom. We also climbed up to the viewing platform close to the top of one of the towers. It was pretty neat. After that we went to a museum about ancient Roman stuff (Cologne was one of the primary cities of the Roman Empire of this area). It was kind of cool, but it got very repetitive: I can only see so many busts of supposedly different goddesses and bowls of supposedly different regions or areas before it gets redundant. After that, however, we went to the chocolate museum. That was pretty neat. It talks a lot about the history of chocolate and how it is made. I enjoyed that very much.
We stayed in the chocolate museum until the close (Jake and I liked that one whereas Phil and Nick liked the Roman museum-so it was all good). Then we went wandering a little bit. Nick wanted to take a picture of a certain hotel because it had a funny name (Hotel Ace, but in German). So we looked for it, found it, and found that the name had changed. So we just walked back to the train station, ate, and left for home on the 9:20 train I believe. It was lots o' fun.
Well that's all for now.
Bis später,
Marcus