Stuttgart 21 – The escalation | German Language Blog

Stuttgart 21 – The escalation Posted by jan on Oct 13, 2010 in Uncategorized

This article is about one of the most current political matter that we have in Germany these weeks: The railway project Stuttgart 21.

The project is about building a new underground main station and new rail tracks in Stuttgart to make train service more efficient. Therefore a part of the park has to be deformed and about 300 trees have to be chopped down.

The project was planned for 15 years and since some months it is legitimized by the state and by law. The construction works have begun. But at the same time a protest movement appeared. So since weeks there are a lot of demonstrations against Stuttgart 21. The protesters complain about the unmanageable costs, the long construction time (about 15 years!) and ecological matters.

Some weeks ago, the government announced, that the first trees in the park could be chopped down on October 1^st. So on September 30^th police came to the park with about 1.000 people, water cannons and horses. At the same time a demonstration of school kids took place in the park. Through internet and other media, people saw that the police was there with a massive contingent and went there as well. The situation escalated when the police tried to clear certain areas for the construction workers.

After some hours I also had the chance to go there. This is what I could capture on camera:

No matter if you are for or against the project: This musn´t happen!!! Over 300 people were injured. Some of them seriously.

After this day, the situation got even worse. Now the politicians try to calm down the situation and talk to each other to find solutions to deescalate the whole topic. I hope they will find a way to do so!

Tags: Deomonstration, escalation, park, Police, politics, Project, Protesters, Railway, riot, Stuttgart 21, trees, Water cannon

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About the Author: jan

My name is Jan and I live in the south west of Germany. My profession is being a project manager at a company that creates digital media (first of all internet related things). This is my job since over a decade so I´m quite familiar with the web and its tools. Whereat today almost every school kid does. But that´s one of the main reasons why nowadays there are quasi no more limits in the internet and so it can be used for all imaginable types of things. For example learning languages! And that´s where we are at the moment. I first got in touch with Transparent Language when my family and I used to live in France a couple of years ago. I just had a break from work and by coincidence I produced some cultural videos in French. A few months later the whole blogging thing came up and I was lucky to be a part of it. So now my (second) job is to feed you with information, exercises, vocabulary, grammar and stories about Germany and German language. For being a passionate videographer I´m trying to do this more and more by videos. If you have any wishes or needs of topics that should be treated here, please don´t hesitate to contact me via a comment field. I´m open to your suggestions (as long as they are not too individual) and will try to satisfy your needs.

Comments:

André:

Ach ich frage mich, was passieren wird. =[
jeff c:

I can just see a bunch of bankers and politicians out to make some euros drooling in their meetings over this. Scary to see that a bit of nazi spirit still lingers in the cops. I always found german cops I’ve dealt with to be so much more mellow than american cops.
jan:

Hi jeff, I wouldn´t call it Nazi spirit! Actually you cannot blame (most of) the cops for the escalation. The whole thing is political. Whoever gave the orders is much more responsable than a single cop. And you know, there are always arguments for and against. So in this case, it´s really hard to say who was “the bad guy” if you know what I mean. Though the operation was way to tough.
Rajiva Kumar:

Ja . It all happens in name of ‘Development’. I am from Delhi, India. Government cuts trees and keep on asking us to plant and to care, not to cut etc. etc. just to save ‘Envoirment’. To prepare the city for recently held “WEALTH GAMES” lot of harm has been done to the envoirment – who cares ? What we are concerned about is concrete, concrete and concrete only.
In Hindi my slogen is :
‘ PARK NAHI PARKING BANAYEN,
APNE KO VIKSIT KAHLAYEN.’
( MAKE PARKINGS INSTEAD OF PARKS,
SO THAT ‘DEVELOPED’,
YOU WILL BE CALLED’.)

=>
MACHEN SIE PARKEN STATT PARKS, SO DASS ‘SICH ENTWICKELTEN’, WERDEN SIE GENANNT.

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