Cold, rain sprays into faces of men who smoke a quick cigarette between dark slab concrete. Inside, in school foyer, Working Group of Social Democratic Women offers warm elderberry liquor. 1.50 Euro The small bottle, self-made, self-filled, self-adhesive.
On top right of label you can see red SPD logo in addition to female gender sign, including a green FIR branch and inscription "Merry Christmas". The proceeds are intended to buy gifts for poor children in city quarter.
© Michael Stern Martin Debes , freelance writer on author's page"The girls did really great," says Raik-Steffen Ulrich. He really says that, gals, and sounds so cheerful, as if he even lubricated lard breads, which re is for 50 cents piece for schnapps. Shortly reafter he stands on podium in hall and says in microphone: "We do not allow AfD to get opposition leadership. We want to be strong opposition. " It's pretty much only sentences for which he gets some great applause.
Ulrich is chairman of Erfurt SPD. On this sad November evening she rented auditorium of a gymnasium in Rieth, one of large slab-areas in north of Thuringian state capital. Some things have been done since 1990, blocks have been refurbished, supermarkets and tram lines are new. Neverless, in many places it looks as if GDR still exist, only with Western advertising.
Two big coalitions, two crashesMost of comrades, who are pushing mselves to party congress in school auditorium, prefer to live two, three kilometres furr south, where restored townhouses alternate with invaluable mansions. Also Heiko Gentzel lives re, in old town. He has, he says, still quickly drunk "a beer" with women at stand to tune in to Circle Party congress. Now he is ready to talk about what is going on in Berlin and what Gentzel is summing up with a rhetorical question: Why is it that all shit in SPD is always stuck?
He also has answer ready: it is up to CDU.
Gentzel must know. After working in GDR as a car locksmith on band, he, worker's representative, sat for almost a quarter of a century for SPD in Thuringian Landtag. For several years he even led group. He has taken on two major coalitions with CDU – and twice, he says, have lost SPD afterwards.
Date Of Update: 30 November 2017, 12:02
