May Day 2009, Berlin

Berlin's 2009 May Day Riot: Burning DumpstersBefore reading this entry: Google the title of this blog and read any of the news articles that come up. It’s all worth reading.

I emerged from my Adalbertstrasse apartment to the street around 4pm, and started walking south. After two blocks, I encountered a wooden hobbyhorse which prevented cars from entering the street. Music started echoing from the buildings to my ears, and a couple blocks more led me directly to the epicenter (or beginning of the epicenter?) of an outrageous, drunken, German festival. Beer stands and grills lined the streets, leftist punks and neonazis screaming at each other about how their respective extreme sides of the political spectrum were the only way to help end the economic crisis. It was easy to imagine, based on their appearances, that all of them were and would remain unemployed. Stages, like the “Antifacista Stage” played host to colorful musical acts, and listeners donning their finest Che Guevara t-shirts, responded with violent dancing.

Upon finally reaching the center of my beloved Kreutzberg, the intersection of Oranienstrasse and Adalbertstrasse, the crowd was too dense to even turn around. I kept pushing and shoving until I reached an alley that I recognized could lead me to a park which would probably be less crowded than the streets and offered me an alternative route back home. It took seeming hours to swim against the undertow of the crowd and make it through the alley and to the park, where I met some friends and sat down to catch my breath. It was so fun, but not the type of thing that I can personally handle feeling trapped in. We headed back to our apartments and agreed we would go out later for a drink.

When “later” was finally decided upon, we headed out of the apartments, the same route I had followed earlier that day. I was surprised to see that the hobbyhorses were still up and now guarded by a line of policemen. They let us pass through without issue, but when I reached the couple of blocks down I had reached before, I realized that this was the wrong route to take. The loudness of drunkards peacefully protesting and accidently dropping a bottle or two was now replaced by the loudness of drunkards attacking police officers and each other, casting bottles and stones. Before we even reached the intersection of Oranienstrasse, a teargas bomb went off and police retreated and even started to vomit, needing to quickly lift their face masks. So, needless to say, my “fight or flight” response kicked in, and I’m no fighter. When we started heading back to the hobbyhorses and our apartments, like many others, we were forcefully shepherded by the line of policemen that stood there and told we had to continue down. So, dodging bottles and coughing out poisonous gas, we went down. Fires in the middle of the streets raged, and gangs of police officers continued to press crowds in any direction they could possibly push them. People kept getting carried away, half of them by stretchers, the other half by police. It was no longer the fun, labor day festival it was.

I got a call from some friends that made it to a restaurant where the situation was apparently less extreme. They explained to me a route that would lead me to them. I turned down the street they guided me to, and immediately heard a huge bang from behind me. The crowd all started running down the street, away from the bang, and I ran too. I still have no idea what happened, but by the time I stopped running, I had made it far away enough from the riots for my sanity to partially return to me. I started laughing and laughing when I saw my friends, I didn’t know what else to do besides tell them how happy I was to not have been hit by a bottle or incapacited in any other way, and how much it meant to me that they were there, also in safety. When the restaurant staff came out to say that they were concerned the riots were moving in our direction, we finished our beers and headed home as quickly as possible.

Would I have done it again? Yeah, but only to tell this story and say that I survived the most intense riot that the 2008-2009 economic crisis has (thusfar) had to offer.