It's time for my monthly German wrap-up! The German side of the internet jumped right out of the holiday lull into new discussions about feminism, refugees, and sexism. Most of my links today have something to do with the New Year's Eve attacks in Cologne. Here's a bit of background from The Atlantic.

These horrible attacks have, as I said, sparked a huge national debate about refugee rights, feminism, and sexism in Germany. This opinion piece from tagesschau.de points out that sexism is not a new problem that the refugees brought with them. An English language article from Der Spiegel talks about the immediate fallout from the attacks. Additionally, earlier today the center-left SPD's local party office in Essen had to call off a planned protest against refugees. This shows how wide-spread and divisive the issue has become; the SPD's national and state parties have condemned the protest as going against the party's values.

In my old city of Erfurt, someone took out ads supporting the refugees and condemning the right wing ahead of an AfD demonstration.

In English: "Is Erfurt cool?" (In my opinion, the answer is yes!)

In less heavy news, I've rediscovered my love for German "Check" tv programs. Both ARD and ZDF have several programs that are a sort of consumer report for various objects - my favorite ones compare the supermarket chains. Here's one titled "Wie gut ist die deutsche Kueche?" ("How good is German food?") and another one called "Vorsicht, Verbraucherfalle!" ("Caution, Consumer Trap!") which examines the difference between the way food looks on the packaging and how it looks in reality.

Here's a helpful blog post telling ways to sound less foreign when speaking German. I felt quite clever since I already knew about "ischab" and "ne" even though I suppose those are two of the easier things to pick up on.

Besides that, I've been watching a lot of YouTube - I especially enjoyed Ella The Bee's planning videos this month, even if they're a bit more intense than the way I do things.

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Photo source: NYPL Digital Collections