States of Germany

At the same time, the right extremist party, so-called Alternative for Germany, AfD, which is the largest opposition party in the German Bundestag, wins elections, especially but not only in the eastern part of Germany.

Just recently, almost got the supermajority to have the first ever in German history right extremist, not to say neo-Nazi, Minister, President, Governor of one of our prominent Bundesländer in the East, And there are more local and regional elections coming up next Sunday in Berlin and in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, whereas Berlin is tending to the left.

Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, also the AfD on the rise, and we see that happening throughout Germany.

And this is not something that we can ignore.

Um, how did you get to be representing a German state here?

So in the post-Brexit era, about twelve out of Germany's sixteen Länder decided to have an official representation on the ground.

So five years ago, Baden-Württemberg was, I think, the second state to do that.

Very keen to say that I represent the whole of the UK, so I'm always on a, a bus or a train or a plane somewhere.

It was quite far away from where, where I was.

W- Was in another, um, Bundesland, they call it in Germany, which is a state, uh, uh, which is a state.

And I had to travel, like, 200 kilometers, but I felt...

I said, "Okay, it's my region." And I was very lucky not to have any urgent obligations at the very moment.

So I don't know if you're aware, but the Germans really like going to Mallorca, or Mallor as it, as it's called.

So much so that they call it the, the, the 17th Bundesland.

[laughs]

Um, because of just how, how much.

For the more global audience who's not really familiar with the, the demographics of Germany, uh, who, where is Kaiserslautern based, and also who would be your main rivals traditionally?

Uh, Mainz are the main rivals traditionally because Mainz are technically the capital of this, uh, Bundesland, this, this German federal state known as Rheinland-Pfalz or, or the Palatinate.

Uh, but they are more, um, the, the Rheinhessen.

[smacks lips] So, so the chant goes in Kaiserslautern, uh, Scheiß 05 instead of Mainz 05.

We briefly spoke about it at the beginning of the, when we spoke before this webinar, there are elections.

in Germany in a certain Bundesländer and there are elections coming up and you see a certain movement in certain directions, which also might influence, you know, heavily the job market or the situation in the business world of today.

So it feels maybe unpleasant or less predictable.

And it gives people maybe a feeling of being insecure and not exactly know how to handle.

[laughs] Well, I mean, it gets even more complicated than that, because like within Pfälzisch you have like Vorderpfälz and Westpfälzisch, and so like there's sub-dialects within here.

And then right next to us we have Saarland, the tiny little Bundesland of Germany, and they have Saarlandish, and some of our band members speak Saarlandish.

And so i- it's, it gets even more muddled than just English and Pfälzisch.

And then a lot of people of course speak standard German, of course, and so they'll switch to that for me at times.