Alex was grinning. “Yes, sometimes the punks are throwing bottles
at the police!”
Alex, a tall young man with a ponytail who probably should have been
named Fabio, was renting us bikes and marking up a map with
suggestions.
“This is Mauerpark.” Circled emphatically in blue pen. “And
tonight is Walpurgis Night! In pagan times the witches came out that
night. People light bonfires all over, including in these parks. It
will be fun - you have to go! The punks aren't interested in you. You
just find a corner or something and watch.”
We nodded, rendered somewhat mute by the jet-lag haze as we had only just
landed in Berlin that morning.
“And tomorrow is May Day! You have to go to Kreuzberg!” Another
bold blue circle. “There will be a big street party in the whole
area with lots of music and food and then at night the demos start
again. Maybe some cars get set on fire! Just watch, it's
interesting!”
The word “interesting” covers a whole range of experiences, so we
couldn't really argue with that. Thanking Alex we rode off, first to
find beer and then to find punks. Armed with “Around Berlin in 80 Beers” and Alex's map we felt ready. More or less. Arrival day after
a trans-Atlantic flight is always somewhat surreal regardless of
where you end up, but Berlin amplifies this a hundred-fold as it is
an inherently surreal city. Take Prussians, cabaret
singers, Nazis, Soviets, spies, refugees, American G.I.s, misfits,
East German communists, anarchists, Turks, student rebels, artists,
secret police, filmmakers and currywurst kiosk operators, toss them
in a blender with their buildings and their art and their music and
then spit the result out across the urban canvas, sprinkled with more
than a few weedy empty lots and some truly spectacular large parks.
The result is an acid trip kaleidoscope of a city – not exactly
“beautiful” in the sense of the giant open air museum effect of
Paris, but thrumming with energy and life and promise. And deeply
deeply surreal.
But punks, you want to hear about punks. Properly fortified with
Berliner Weisse (google this if you are a beer person) and Berliner
Pilsner we rode up towards Mauerpark. It was dark by then. We locked
up the bikes beside a nearby square, under the elevated
S-Bahn commuter train line, scarfed down a currywurst (sausage chunks
smothered in curried ketchup – this is far better than it sounds)
and walked to Mauerpark. The street leading up to the park was
quiet, but ominously lined with paddy wagons. The police themselves
were arrayed at the edge of the park in nervous phalanxes. Oddly,
they were facing down the surrounding streets rather than into the
park. A young and, it must be said, very pretty officer standing at
the entrance asked us whether we had any glass bottles in our packs. "Nein", we said, and she waved us in. Perhaps we would have been
searched had we been wearing balaclavas, but as it was, security
seemed to function on a curious honour system. We walked with ever
larger groups of people towards the centre of the park where indeed there was an enormous bonfire. But no punks. Just young hipster
families, fire jugglers and a duo playing what can honestly only be
described as an homage to Kenny G. It was now clear why there were no
punks and why the police were facing away from the park. Perhaps it
was too early in the evening?
We tired of the crowd sporting man-buns and top-knots (if you are a
samurai warrior, fine, but otherwise this is 2015's version of the
1975 porn-stache: a style that went from cool to ridiculous before
you even realized it was a style) and the polyester neo-pagan vibe
and left the park. Across from the entrance on a street at right
angles to the one we had come down there appeared to be a commotion.
There was loud chanting and shouts. The phalanxes of police were
looking even more nervous, fiddling with their shields and putting on
their riot helmets.
Oh.
We were curious, but not that curious, so we headed back up toward where we had parked our bikes. Had we been more on the ball and
worked out the geography we would have realized that the chanting was
coming from a parallel street and was moving towards the square.
Before we could sort this out we found ourselves facing the
demonstrators, an enormous crowd of rhythmically shouting people
waving all manner of mostly red and black flags. We were about to
back up to get out of their way when scores of riot police formed up directly behind
us. Demonstrators in front. Riot police behind. Lots of both. In the
dark. In a strange city. Sleep deprived, jet-lagged and full of beer
we stood there slack-jawed and indecisive. In another time in another
place we might have paid a serious price for our sluggish brains and
reflexes, but this was 2015 and this was Germany. We stepped aside into an entryway to allow the mob to surge by. At first the police walked backwards in front of them and then formed marching lines on
either side to funnel them into the square. Nobody so much as glanced
at us.
And what were they demonstrating about? These were Marxist,
anarchist, trade unionist and feminist groups demonstrating in favour
of refugee claimants. The chants more or less ran, “refugees stay,
Nazis go away”. No bottles were thrown, no cars set alight. The
same thing the next day in Kreuzberg, where the largest street party I
have ever seen unfolded on block after block festooned with
anti-fascist graffiti, punctuated by stages pounding out death metal,
reggae, techno and rap (yes, German rap – it's ok to shudder). The
police – and again there were hundreds of them in full riot regalia
– stood by unobtrusively at the edges, swooping in only once to
scoop up a belligerent drunk. So much activity, so much diversity, so
much to hear and see, so much food, so much beer, so many people, so many people drinking so much beer and – here is a troubling fact – absolutely nowhere to pee. Hectolitres in and... How this
all turned out we don't know as we were tired and we knew with certainty that there was a bathroom back at the apartment.
