Monday morning was the Opening Ceremonies of the Congress in a wing of the New Palace...a beautiful, if fru-fru room...
and like all conferences everywhere, this meant speeches....
followed by music....
followed by more speeches...
but after that, we joined friends for a delicious lunch...
which made sitting through the speeches and chamber music almost worthwhile.
In the afternoon, Dave went to lectures and then, before going to the evening reception at the art gallery, he and I enjoyed a quiet dinner in the hotel.
...and now, before the reception pictures....just a few words about this:
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| (picture from internet) |
Stuttgart city planners and government officials want to bring Stuttgart into the 21st century, e.g. Stuttgart 21, by bringing the highspeed rail to the city. They drew up plans and held the appropriate meetings and so forth and so on right on through the proper government channels (sort of like the Vogons in Hitchhiker's Guide...). Everything was fine until the first cranes and equipment showed up to take out the wings of the railroad station (a building which survived the bombing of the city in WWII). Then the locals went "what the heck?" and began a grassroots movement to stop everything...especially when they discovered that it was going to cost significantly more than the politicians had said (as an American, I'm shocked...aren't you?). And then they found out that part of the park was also going to have to be dug up and trees cut down (some over 200 years old...also missed in the WWII bombing....) and now the environmentalists have also gotten involved. And there is such discontent that it threatens the government elections up to the very top...So there are demonstrations galore.
Including during our evening reception! Because the Mayor was giving a speech welcoming us to his city, the street filled up with 7,000 demonstrators blowing whistles and yelling and waving banners. We had to have a police barracade around the building...I took pictures through the windows while the speeches inside were going on....
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| just a small section of one of the streets outside |
so a lot of us just hung around the gallery until long after the mayor left...with the demonstrators banging on the windows and walls to make as much noise as possible....
and even when we left in a group, the demonstrators actually screamed at us, as though we were part of the problem...it was quite obvious they had no idea who was attending the reception; all they knew was that we were important enough for the mayor to give a speech to, so that automatically put us on the wrong side of the question! Our European friends kept saying "don't worry; they are non-violent" - as an American who grew up in the 60s, my response was "there are hundreds of people out there (7,000 was the 'official' number gathered from news sources the next day)...-you can't guarantee they will stay that way!" It was kind of scary and I, for one, was quite relieved when we got past the demonstrators (they just screamed and let us pass) and returned to the hotel.
and, unfortunately, I proved right... because this week I read that the demonstrations have scaled up and violence has begun...and all of this over a train....
