Monday 23 August 2010

Stuttgart 21

Stuttgart 21 is a plan to move the existing Main train station in Stuttgart, underground. Our current 'Bahnhof' is an end station, so to speak, that basically means that the trains arrive in the station and then have to reverse out again to carry on with the journey. Now the local government want to dig under the city and build extensive new railways so that trains travelling from all over Germany will be able to save about 10 minutes of their journey time. In doing so, they will also dig under one of the large parks in Stuttgart city centre, and that means that they will be uprooting a large number of the beautiful 400 year old trees that presently stand in the 'Schloss Park'. It has also been rumoured that when they dig the tunnels, they are not exactly sure whether the city will hold up!! We have seen something like this fairly recently in Cologne, when a building literally sank into the ground. A terrible tragedy that really wasn't necessary, and that we do not want to see again. The entire project will end up costing more than 4 Billion Euros. Surely there is better things to be spending that money on!
Here in Stuttgart there has been a lot of unrest because of this Project, every Monday evening (in fact almost everyday now) there are large demonstrations outside the Station. All over the city you see stickers and slogans against Stuttgart 21.

This is the most common one, and they are stuck on every corner post box, bus stop and basically anywhere they'll stick.
On Wednesday, Philipp and I went to a massive Demo with Philipps father and his partner, who came in from Karlsruhe to show their support. In fact, they come almost every week. The mood in the crowd was actually really nice, mostly because it was a quiet march, and people were talking and passing around information that they had heard. I even heard one guy telling some people of a beer that has been specially labelled and sold in a couple of Bars here and that from every bottle sold, 21 cents goes towards general costs like the badges and stickers against Stuttgart 21. There were signs everywhere and lots of people had dressed themselves up to emphasise their point. There were Police everywhere, but no trouble. We walked from the Bahnhof up to the Schloss Platz (the square in the middle of the city) and gathered there for what I can only call a mass shouting session. At exactly 7pm, after a few speeches from the leaders of pack, the entire square erupted with the noise of between 20,000 and 30,000 people. The hair on the back of my neck was completely on end!!


3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey Madi,
Just wanted to tell you that i love reading your blog! its like a tiny highlight in my life. its so nice to be able to read what you're up to at the moment and what its like in Germany. keep it up! and please post some pictures of you flat now, i wanna see it!
love from Lucy (in Australia) xx

Madox said...

Hey Lucy,
this just made my day! It's so great to know that people read this blog, since its probably very boring for someone who doesnt know me! So, thank you for reading! :)
Photos of the flat are coming as soon as i've tidied the place up enough to take some respectable ones!! Today, im on a mission to get it done!! watch this space!!
Lots of love from Stuttgart xxxx

Anonymous said...

Love your post, thx! Keep up with that great work!
ina