the perfect topic seems to be just beyond reach...

Ich bin schon wieder an der Arbeit, und ich weiß wirklich nicht, was ich machen soll. Mich für ein Project zu entscheiden ist sehr schwer. Ich habe schon vieles gemacht, und ich habe eine gute Idee von dem, was ich nicht machen will. Dankmäler sind nicht so interessant, und wir haben sie in Deutsch 322 schon besprochen. Die will auch nichts mit der Mauer zu tun haben. Ich habe schon einen Aufsatz über sie geschrieben, und sie langweilt mich jetzt. Vielleicht machen ich etwas mit den Türken. Sie sind neu, und das könnte vielleicht interesstant sein.

Alright, now it's time to get serious. When thinking about a project topic, sometimes my German just comes out. Don't worry though; nothing to important is in that section and I'll hopefully pinpoint some interesting things in this blog.

Picking a topic and committing to it for the next several months in a little bit daunting. I've already been in a class about Berlin's memorial culture and depiction of memory, so I'd like to stray away from that. The wall is another thing that would allow for a million questions and answers, but after spending all of last quarter writing about how and why it came down, I don't think I could talk to someone who wanted to keep it or put it back up without laughing. I just don't think they'd get it.

So right now I have two big ideas that are floating around in my head, both of which involve the immigrant population, but at this point I’m not sure how feasible one of them would be. I would like to focus on the Turks in Germany’s social system and their ability to integrate. Rather than focus on something like head scarves, I would like to focus on the school system as a whole. How has the dramatic increase in non-Germans influences in the school system affected the population? Has this sped the imbalance that already threatened the system or slowed its demise?

How do Berliner’s plan to fix their school system and what would an ideal system look like?

One of the other questions that interests me is the effect the Turks are having on the German language. Most commonly when a large migration of population occurs, the language is dramatically changed. Berliners take great pride in their dialect and post signs throughout the city about how to “pronounce” things correctly. Have the Turks had any influence on the German dialect spoken in Berlin? Have they refused to German and what effect has that had on Germans and Turks? How is this reflected in the cityscape? What Turkish words (Döner) have been accepted as German, even though the people have not been? This is an interesting project, but I don’t know who feasible it will be. I’m sure that I would have to consult some Linguistics professors. This project would be great, because I’m thinking about doing German linguistics for a master’s degree, but that’s way off in the Future!

I would also be interested in doing something with the German neo-Nazi party, but I’m not sure what. When I was in Germany, there was supposed to be a neo-Nazi rally and it just ended being a huge citywide protest, which was interesting. I would like to know what average Germans think of this party and what their platform is. I’d also be interested in meeting some of their voters.

Here are some pictures from the Tuebingen "neo-Nazi rally" July 2007.

That’s all for now!