Not to open the proverbial can of worms, but what is the purpose of the Bundesrat then? Are they a more honorary positions?
Not really, though some grannies vote CDU 'cos they think it's more 'Christian'. I think this is a tiny minority though. Most people I know who vote CDU do this based on (a) their parents beliefs or (b) because they think giving money to rich people will boost the economy. The fools they are. OK I might be biased here.
Not really, they still have a real political function (see above, blocking important laws). It seems to be a bit detrimental to German politics at times, at least that's what I observe from outside.
Never thought my study of German history would help me on these boards, but . . . The CDU/CSU are the modern (post WWII) decendents of the old Catholic Party. The Catholic Party was formed in the late 1800's in respone to Bismark's anticlercial Kulturkampf. While Catholic in origin, I would suspect that today they are only nominally so.
At least more than in any other major party (of course there is also the fundamentalist christian PBC, but they are hardly a major partry ). It's not as important anymore as it was once, but catholic areas are usually mostly voting CDU/CSU (but this doesn't mean that they aren't exceptions). As said before, the Bundesrat has an important function. In short it's the represantation of the states on federal level. The Bundesrat has 69 seats. Every state gets 3-6 seats there, based on population (usually the minister president of the state (or in the 3 city states the mayor) gets on of the seats). How the members from each state vote is decided by their state government, they are not allowed to vote seperately.
The Bundesrat has about the same function here as the presidential's voting prosses with chairmen has in the US. It gives the states the feeling that they are important (and it does. Every election in a state will have influence on the federation's politics...) The Weimarer Republic had a similair thing, and one of the first things Hitler did was take the power from the states... so it has a strong symbolical meaning...
Well, kinda off-topic, but i just saw that, judging from the rep i got, my posts in this thread seem to be quite popular . Thanks, everyone.
Well in all fairness my initial post was about geography more than football so I suppose anything goes.
Back to the original post.... I traveled to Gelsenkirchen for the Champions League final back in May for ESPN. Many of the analysis on this thread are correct. Gelsenkirchen is part of a region that includes Dusseldorf, Bochum, Essen etc.... There are about 7 towns, all about 20-30 minutes apart, all pretty industrial... Downtown Gelsenkirchen is pretty beat. Most of the town shuts down in the evenings. We were looking to for a brew pub the night before the game and found very little. We traveled to Bochum the previous night because we were told that Bochum had all the night life. Granted, it was a Monday night, but the town was pretty dead. I must give serious props to the new Schalke stadium. What a palace! The grass grows outside and then it slides into the stadium. The roof is retractable. When it's open, it looks like Texas Stadium where the cowboys stadium. To be honest, given the rough industrial nature of the region, this luxurious stadium appears to be out of place.
See what you get? The German boards on Big Soccer always give a little extra Thanks for the political lesson gang. I've repped just about everybody here
I have to agree here. In my list of the ugliest town I have been to, Gelsenkirchen ist the number one. Part of my family still lives there and like it nevertheless, mostly because of the football club.
None of the cities in the real inner Ruhrpott are nice, Düsseldorf and Cologne are propably the nicest in NRW. If you want to see nice german cities go to Berlin, Hamburg, Stuttgart or Munich, but the Ruhrpott is where the most ppl live and somehow I intend in calling it the heart of Germany. It is worth to be there, at least for soccer games and to see the mentality of the ppl, which is complete different to Bavaria, Berlin, Hesse, Suebe or Northern Germany
I dunno, I never thought the Ruhrpott cities were that bad, especially compared to industrial areas of England or the U.S. I've been to Bochum, Essen, Dortmund, and lived in Leverkusen (although strictly speaking that's not in the Pott). Seems like they make an effort to keep their cities relatively green and leafy and "liveable", as it were. Cologne is overrated in my opinion. Yeah, they have a nice cathedral, but otherwise it's a pretty unspectacular city in terms of scenery. Of course that's probably because the Americans bombed the crap out of it during WWII, so I guess I have no right to complain.
Yes and yes and yes. I drive often to a client at the "Bergisches Land", and when I've time I drive over Essen - south -, that means through Werden and when I've a little bit more time over Burg-Altendorf. That remember me more to Heidelberg than to the Ruhrarea. Very nice is Bochum-Dahlhausen, Wattenscheid e.g. Hoentrop. The most ppl in Germany think the cities are newer, it's not correct, Essen-Werden is over 1900 years old.