German Government

Today we visited the Bundesrat (Upper house) and Bundestag.

The Bundesrat (Upper house)

The Bundesrat definitely wins in the better tour!  It was a private tour with a civil servant who works with public relations for the institution.  He took us around, explaining the history of the building and the process of the Upper house.  The Bundesrat is in the prior Prussian Noble house and has a lot of the original architecture (though updated).  Germany has a proportional representation system and coalition governments.  The delegates represent each Lander (region) of Germany, there are 16 in total.  The delegates do not face as much political pressure for reelection which allow them to do politics in a more sensible manner.  The parties must receive at least 5% of votes to earn seats, this is to eliminate the presence of radicals.

One of the last remaining guard towers from the Wall
can be seen from a window

An architectural innovation that symbolizes democracy.
It is motion censored, the poles represent goddesses and they "dance"
when people enter the room.  The tie this in because the Upper house moves
with the direction of the people (entering the room).

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The Bundestag in the Reichstag building
every piece of the architectural design symbolizes some
aspect of the country

The Bundestag is in the Reichstag building, which was the previous home of the Third Reich.  It is politically incorrect to call it the Reichstag alone because the word "reich" was used so much during the Nazi regime.  It is most appropriate to call it the Bundestag in the Reichstag building.

We took a tour around the building, learning about the processes and the history there also.  Unfortunately our tour was with a lot of other people and I missed many of the details.  However, it did stand out to me that plenary has stenographers that write in short hand.  The fastest can get up to 500 syllables per minute.  They only work for 10 minutes at a time because it takes so much concentration.  There are 620 members and there are no assigned seats so the stenographers must know each individual member and what party they belong to in order to record it.  Also the Bundestag has the most visitors of all Parliament houses in the world, especially because of the dome on top of the building that you can walk up.

The view from the dome of the Bundestag

We passed this display of a piece of the Wall on our walk to the Reichstag building.

A piece of the Wall