Nazis meet their match

From the moment daylight broke until evening darkness set in, the sun shone down on us and made the last day of September very memorable. Angie had decided to stay at home as both her sisters were visiting Sepp today and as we later learnt, an early morning visit from an extended arm of the family which had been one of her "demands" yesterday and it not only worked but exactly as she predicted, it was almost certainly key in a quite remarkable transformation in Sepp's health.

When the two sisters were there, Sepp was able to sit in a chair for the first time, hold, turn and drink from a cup all by himself and be able to communicate well, no doubt also helped by having his false teeth in for the first time. Superb amazing news even though we are fully aware that it is not necessarily a breakthrough. The doctors still haven't actually come up with a cause or diagnosis of what is causing the problem but are now at least sending off some more samples for examination. I doubt though that he will stay in this hospital if further operative work needed and he can safely be transported. German health care system allows total free choice as to which hospital one uses, anywhere in the country. It certainly did not help that after the first operation when things were at their worst, the doctors said as much to one of the family directly at the bedside and Sepp registered every word including there had been an "unfortunate accident".

So we stayed at home. Well, I actually went out for a change.

Last night Angie mentioned she had been sent something via WhatsApp from a local friend that Angela Merkel was visiting our local town, Ottobeuren, today. The official reason was that she had been invited to attend the annual "Europe" symposium event held at the Abbey and Basilica and organised by the former long-serving German Finance Minister, Theo Waigel, one of the fathers and seemingly the name giver of the Euro. While very critical of some of the events that happened after the 2002 introduction eg allowing Greece to join and letting both Germany and France soften the rules, he still supports the idea of the Euro

Angela also expressed a long-held wish to attend a concert in the Basilica so that was also on the list of things to do.

Now as we have Bavarian State elections in two weeks and the ruling Bavarian conservatives. who are a sister party to Mrs Merkel's conservatives, are under threat of losing 60 years of "dictatorship" in Bavaria, it was also a chance to do some repair work on the recently troubled sibling's relationship and thus hopefully ensure a conservative government in Bavaria and help Mrs Merkel in Berlin.

The big threat to the conservatives is the ultra-right wing, Nazi-like  "AfD" who managed to get into the German parliament last year. Like elsewhere on this planet, immigration is the issue with which they score their points. Their policies on handcuffing women to the stove, banning gays and lesbians, don't want handicapped children in normal schools, want coal and nuclear power, ban abortion, women to accept being raped, no public media, everyone to be able to possess guns ..........

The AfD had virtually disappeared off the political scene a few months ago but the immigration debate started again despite so many advances (yes, still much more to do) and this was fueled by the Bavarian conservatives trying to move a bit more right to regain potential loses. And suddenly we had the demos in Chemnitz in East Germany last month and the whole nasty pile of worms were back.

And so, the AfD had organised a protest gathering in Ottobeuren today to shout "Merkel Out" etc but luckily two other groups also arranged counter demos.

Now I have long ranted about such matters here on Blip and elsewhere but not actually physically done anything and felt I really must go along and show my support. BUT the lovely weather AND it will be a hassle parking AND the police are advising not to enter the town AND  the "inner Schweinehund" Pig-Dog or lethargy.... To confirm that I shouldn't/needn't go, I took a look on the web as to the timing and happened to hear a short radio interview with the Turkish owner of a Kebab restaurant/takeaway directly on the meeting point of the marketplace. He said he had to shut up shop as no insurance would cover him and he has just moved into the totally new refurbished site. That did it for me. The guy and his wife are the most friendly, nice, integrated, fully German-speaking family, the father and children very active in the social and sports community and he has even been awarded the title of Honorary Bavarian by the community.

So it was that I arrived at the marketplace and witnessed a huge crowd of very joyous, smiling, laughing and chatting young and old citizens. OK from time to time it did get loud when the AfD lot tried to say anything as the whistles, shouts and singing drowned their PA system.

In fact, it was quite difficult to see the AfD lot. The marketplace is basically enclosed on two sides by houses, the open top end is the hill leading up to the basilica filled with counter-demonstrators and the opposite end was blocked by another mass. In the middle, penned by barriers, the 150 or so AfD supporters were trapped in a sort of 360° amphitheatre, the police more or less having to protect them.

In one small opening on one side, a rock band had set up stall plying good old Stones etc music and young and old dancing and singing only stopping occasionally to do some booing and whistling.

The whole atmosphere was like a carnival (see Extra Photo) and the AfD simply an occasional annoyance. It was great - not a single bit of trouble. I do though feel for the mass of police who were in their full heavy riot
body gear and having to endure the whistles but above all heat.

I have never seen so much security, police vans of all sorts many with high tech gear sprouting out the roof, others with closed doors and air conditioning no doubt coordinating communications and huge concrete blocks placed at all possible vehicle entances. A shameful display of what we have becaome as a society that this is necessary and of course very costly to all taxpayers. And most of it for the sake of 150 idiots who judging by the many out of county car registration numbers, had been shipped in.

Being good citizens though, it had been agreed all protest action would be stopped when Mrs Merkel arrived at the out of site entrance to the abbey. I left just before this so as to avoid any jams but heard later all had gone off peacefully. I don't know how they removed the 150 AfD people out without them being lynched. I do understood she also took a side-swipe at Trump during her speech.


Back home Angie told me there had been lots of helicopter activity at very low level above our house (only one seen in Ottobeuren which arrived as I left). So I suspect they had been "escorting" one or more convoys of the VIPs along the road directly passing our house.

Perhaps I could have stayed at home and waved Angela my support from the drive. But there again I only have small versions of flags from my boat -  a Union Jack, a UK commercial marine "Red Duster", and a German flag, the only people using it today were the AfD! I suspect I may well have been temporarily "taken out" by the police as I would have been inches or even centimetres from the car.

Having a problem getting a video link but here some idea of how the day started and built up.