august: cleveland county

My thesis has finally been approved to the Oklahoma online database! You can read it here: https://shareok.org/handle/11244/44225.

It's about the left wing parties and how they can overcome ten years of power by the center-right CDU. I'm most fond of the parts about Thuringia.

It has been a month for international politics. It started with ridiculous fans at Euro 2016 and ended with the Brexit referendum. However, I'm still going to soldier on with my list of links that I bookmarked throughout this month.

The Bundestag voted to recognize the Armenian genocide earlier this month, which certainly didn't help German-Turkish relations, but was celebrated by Armenians in Germany and abroad as a major step for their people. This article (in English) discusses how the resolution was almost unanimous and possible difficulties with Turkey in the future.

Before the Euro 2016 tournament began, an AfD politician remarked that people wouldn't want Boateng as their neighbor. This is part of a larger trend in European soccer where even the national team isn't national enough for the far right.

Related to that is the radio stream I've been using to listen to the German games in Euro 2016. I don't have cable, so WDR has been a lifesaver!

I've been enjoying reading articles from Thueringen24, which has excellent local coverage of Thuringia. I believe they just launched last month; it's really nice to read reports from my German home! This article about a project by exchange students at the technical college was really interesting.

For anyone wondering at home, I finally finished my thesis. Of course, the Rot-Rot-Gruen campaign didn't start on Twitter until I was almost done with my edits - they would have been such a good resource for me! Additionally, Bodo Ramelow, governor of Thuringia, discussed Rot-Rot-Gruen in Berlin earlier this month. This discussion was set off by the news that German President Gauck won't see reelection; some believe that a Rot-Rot-Gruen government will be important for deciding the next president.

This episode of Stuff You Missed in History Class is all about the women of Bauhaus. I love Bauhaus architecture and art, so this podcast was right up my alley!

I'm always excited to see a good photoset from East Germany.

I'm still shocked that Brexit is actually going to happen. Here's the twitter round-up of the EU meetings the Tuesday after the vote.

Finally, it's been 40 years since the first woman was allowed to anchor the nightly news in Germany. She came back to talk about her historic role and to celebrate this anniversary. However, the first woman to do play-by-play commentary for the European soccer tournament was met with threats and complaints earlier this month, which shows that there's still work to do for equality in television.

This month, the biggest issues in German politics were the German-Turkish relationship and press freedom in Germany. The German comedy program extra3 made a satirical video about Turkish President Erdogan. This led to the German ambassador to Turkey being called in for a lecture, and prompted German comedian Jan Boehmermann to recite a poem about the leader that was quite nasty. The biggest part of the issue is that there is a section of German law that prohibits insulting foreign leaders. There's been a ton of coverage in both German and English, so have fun!

The Atlantic
Newsweek
bento - What young Turkish-Germans think about Erdogan (German)
Poll: The majority of Germans think Merkel is wrong about Erdogan (German)
German reporter forced to leave Turkey (Older, but still interesting)
Commentary: Give Back Your Medal of Freedom, Merkel! (German)

The rest of my links for this month don't follow a theme - they're just things that I found interesting:

bento reported on how the German emo kids of the 2000s turned out.
Berlin has truly out-Berlined itself: a vegan restaurant opening was shut down by the police.
Angela Merkel gave a speech on the 500th anniversary of the Reinheitsgebot (German Beer Purity Law)
The 30th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster is especially pertinent in eastern Germany, where the government gave children contaminated milk.
This article about how German coalitions are often named after rather obscure national flags was interesting, since I find the practice both amusing and confusing.
Erfurt got free WiFi in all its trams! This almost makes up for them taking the cozy East German-era trams out of service.
In adorable news, the governor of Thuringia, Bodo Ramelow, is now godfather to one girl from a set of quadruplets born to a refugee family in Jena late last year.

Finally, I can't decide if I like this band or not:

After a seemingly unending period of construction, part of the new InterCity Express train line that will eventually connect Berlin to Munich via Erfurt is finally finished! Now you can travel from Erfurt to Leipzig in less than an hour, and by the end of 2017, the travel time from Berlin to Munich is only going to be four hours, which is two hours less than it was when I first visited Germany in 2012.

You can watch a German news video about the event here.
This project is part of German Unity Transport Project 8, whose website is in both German and English. In addition, the new train line is part of a wider European Union effort to increase ease of transit within Europe.

When I was living in Erfurt, the train station had to be closed on holidays several times in order to get the part of the tracks immediately surrounding the train station put in place. This led to an interesting experience - Deutsche Bahn (the train company) had to bus people from Erfurt to Weimar or Erfurt East in order to catch trains from these smaller stations. The buses were quite crowded, which made for a memorable trip.

It's an exciting time for Erfurt. Once finished, the city will finally be on the line between Munich and Berlin. Up until now, that route passed through the smaller university town of Jena instead. This makes it a much more enticing spot for businesses since it will finally have great train connections to match its regional airport, which offers flights to London and Majorca, and the large amount of industrial space that is available on the city's outskirts.

Erfurt's train station, September 2013