City Life – Ontij

How living here ruins your language skills

One of the weird things living in an international city is what happens to languages. How they shift, merge, mix, and get combined in a 100.000 different ways. How this on one hand improves your language skills, and you start recognizing languages, even when you don’t speak one word. And on the other hand, you tend to lose the skills in each language by itself. Because. You start combining yourself. The languages merge in your head. Or because some words from a language are simply untranslatable and you need that one specific word to describe exactly what you mean.

During my shift at the free shop, I take a small cigarette break outside. One of the many people bringing stuff pops outside quickly. Points at my shoes. What size do you have? “38” She grabs into the bag she’s carrying, and takes out never-worn sport shoes “Here, for you, you take them”. Pushes them into my hands. I smile, sport shoes aren’t really my thing, but I appreciate the gesture. She goes through the t-shirts we have outside, looking for something for her 15-year old daughter. Tells one of our regular guests her daughter is much bigger than her. She’s vietnamese, the daddy is italian. “He’s a BIG daddy, so I have a big daughter, much bigger than me”. The other customer asks what language they speak at home. “Well, german of course”. “You didn’t teach your daughter vietnamese?” She shrugs. “We live here now, no use for my language”. She asks me how old I think she is. I’m really bad at estimating anyone’s age (and I don’t care anyway), so that’s what I tell her. “Ah, that’s always what people tell us asian people, that they can’t tell our age”. She shrugs again, this time at the prejudice, it’s just how it is.

Just a sunny day at Tempelhofer Feld. My family is visiting, and we’ve decided to take the kids for some biking, skate-boarding, kite-surfing, and well, anything else you can do at an old airport-made-free-space for all. While we walk around the collective garden, a young kid climbs one of the self-built constructions in that garden, a wooden airplane. In a mixture of german, american-english and chinese he starts pretending to be the pilot. Mummy and daddy arrive, combining words from the same languages. After we leave the collective garden, we walk past the barbecue area. Where, no matter were people are born, or wherever their parents or grandparents were born, they have all adopted the favorite german summer hobby “Grilling”. A few Roma families have started early by roasting whole pigs. One of their small dogs starts running with us, his not-so-skinny owner trying to catch up. We fetch the dog and give it to him. Hearing him “tut-tut”-ing and scolding the dog in his own language while carrying it back. We stop at a coffee stand, where the guy serving the coffee easily switches between italian, german and I guess russian, depending on who he’s serving. When we walk away, I ask the kids to listen to the people around them, and tell me how many languages they are hearing. After one hour, they give up counting.

In the back of the free shop when hanging the t-shirts to the t-shirts and the pants to the pants, I overhear some broad-shouldered guys going through the children’s clothing. They keep repeating “dobre, dobre”. Since this is the first word I ever learned in serbocroation/bosnian, I can’t help to ask them what language they are speaking. We’re from Serbia, they tell me. Stop themselves: “but we’re not serbian, we actually have our own language, but we also use many serbian words”. When I tell them I’m planning to learn serbocroation, and happy I at least recognized the language, they smile. “It’s a beautiful language”.

A woman comes in looking for black shoes and black pants. It’s not for her, but for her afghan friend. He’s looking for a job, has been invited for a job interview and wants to look smart. We go to the shoes and the pants department together, and find some, but she’s not sure about his size. I notice when she talks about him, she suddenly loses her german language skills, and starts using Farsi words, though she’s most certainly a native german, from Sachsen if I’m not mistaking her accent. In the end, she decides he better come to the shop himself to try the stuff on, she’ll come with him to translate.

While passing through the – rather full again – shop, I hear one of our older customers compliment a younger one trying on a beautiful velvet jacket. She excuses herself, she’s portuguese, her german isn’t that good yet. The older woman just automatically switches to english, repeats the compliment, and they discuss the problem of having a cat and velvet clothing.

I always like to play some weird music from all over the world when I do my shift. When I play some music from Lapland, a huge smile appears on the face of one of our guests. She hasn’t heard yoiking for quite some time, and starts singing along in Sami. Another time, when I was playing some music from the balkan, I couldn’t help dancing a bit, and one of our regulars, who likes the irish line-dancing starts wiggling her toes. While we combine my tribal fusion moves and her irish steps, from the corner of my eyes I see how the faces of a few women from somewhere south-east of here light up, and they stop going through the clothing and, giggling a bit, start moving to the music too. The language of dancing is universal, even when the moves are like different accents.

It’s always fun to surprise people by starting to talk to them in their own language because you recognize the accent in their german. Especially a not-so-common language like dutch. The short confusion on their face followed by a happy “what? you’re dutch?” is worth it. At work, some of the projects which I take care of like to surprise ME though, when they recognize the dutch accent in my german, and practice the (sometimes little, sometimes a bit more) of dutch they know. One of those people told me, though being german himself, he has a dutch wife. Funny how recognized where she was born because of the accent he had in his dutch (except the german one of course).

On a random friday at the free shop, I made some fresh peppermint tea with the herbs I saved with foodsharing the day before for our guests. Unfortunately, it’s not that popular. On a regular basis, people start telling me what kind of OTHER mint, from moroccan to vietnamese they prefer. Just not regular peppermint. In the end, a discussion arises between our guests how many sorts of mint there actually are, but the tea stays undrunk. Next time I’ll mix it, just like the languages we use.

Just after I close the Free Shop and start the cleaning and sorting, I hear a knock at the window. Two kids around age 12. I point to the sign, and say, sorry, we’re closed. They look a bit disappointed. But ah well. I go back cleaning. They persist in knocking. So I open the window. They point to a nice blue and yellow bike behind them. “We want to give it away”. I have to tell them we don’t have enough space for bikes. Oh. Disappointed faces. “We tried to give it away, since it’s such a good bike, and we’ve outgrown it. But everyone thinks we have stolen it.” They shrug, used to being misjudged: though speaking perfect german – except for the heavy berlin accent – they’re not exactly blond & blue-eyed. I go into the back, take a piece of paper and a pen. “Here, write “for free” on it, and park it against the fence over there, it will probably be gone soonish”. “Can’t you write it, we’re not german” “Neither am I”. Smiles on their faces. “You’re not?”. I laugh. This part of Berlin, how many people here are german, I wonder aloud. They start laughing with me. I write the sign for them, they stick it to the bike, park it against the fence, and themselves on a bench near it. Waiting for it to be taken. When I leave the shop, both the bike and the boys are gone.

Heading home, I pass the local squatting pub. I hear people discussing their favorite bands in german, english, spanish, french and dutch. The sign of the irish small restaurant on the corner advertises its meals in english with some german and french words randomly put in between. I do some quick shopping. A woman and her boyfriend are discussing what food to take for their dog in a mixture of italian and swedish, sometimes falling back on another mixture of english and german to avoid misunderstanding. Outside the shop, a few guys balance their skateboards on the handlebar of their bike, stop to buy some mate. At least, that’s the only word I definitively recognized from their conversation, the rest was some kind of combination of at least four languages, which I stopped trying to match with the language patterns in my head.

Taking a shortcut through the park, a few adolescents rap along to some german hiphop music with a turkish accent. On the grass, a group of ravers is having an intense political discussion in english. I recognize at least a greek, a polish and some scandinavian accent in their english, and it’s littered with german words when they can’t find the right word in english. I pass the senior hooligans in their corner of the park. Where the differences between russian, hungarian and original berlin, or about which football team is the best, are smoothed out with cheap beer. I greet the woman from my favorite evening shop, who stops talking to her friend in thai to say hello to me in german. At a recently opened little lunchroom, the owner corrects his dog sniffing another dog’s behind in arabic, before continuing to serve his customers. They are using yet another language – one I can’t place, indian? – between them. Coming home, the preparation for the african mass in the church behind our backyard has started, and through the open window I hear the preacher switching between english and french, both with a heavy african accent.

And at the playground, the kids don’t care about the languages, they just create their own.

Note: all doodles made by myself when enjoying the parks or getting transported. See Twisted Kritters if you want to see more of them.

Frays and Strays: More Tales from the Seamy Side

Ever since I started volunteering with the foodsharing and the free-shop, I’ve become more and more familiar, and known to, the people who have no choice but to live of the scraps of this society. I started this work to preserve resources, mostly out of an environmental perspective. But I’ve learned a lot about how it is to lose out in the rat-race, never been able to participate in the first place, or restart from absolutely zipzeronothing again.

When I bring bread to the homeless, sometimes I find them hiding from the rain like these stray dogs in Sarajevo

Even though the foodsharing brunch is history, since the place where we gave out the food has been gentrified away, every homeless person knows me, and asks if and when the brunch will be started up again. I guess I’ll never get rid of the nickname “Lady of the cold kitchen”.

So much stuff, but still..

I meet many of the former guests at other initiatives: when I bring bread to the “Cold Aid” for the homeless. The queue starts at 6pm, even though the place only opens up at 9pm for people to sleep. The main language in that queue is russian. 99% of them are healthy, broad-shouldered males. They are the so-called luck-seekers. I’ve met some of those “economical migrants” back on the Balkan. When they shared their stories about being exploited in the EU. And still earning more, or at least something, than back home. They just laugh cynically when I ask them “why don’t you organize, why don’t you unionize?”. For each “luck-seeker” protesting against being exploited, there’s 10 who won’t protest. I meet them when I go to the bank, where I can open an account, and pull money out of the wall. For months, a Rumanian sat there begging. One of the people who did contracted, legal, work here, and never got paid. Since the sub-sub-sub-sub-contractor simply disappeared.

Other people fall through the holes in the “social” net. Because they are mentally unstable. The homeless woman I’m joking with one day, when she found a wok in the free shop “woman with wok looking for room” next disappears for months. Then she comes back. She only comes back when she’s mentally feeling good. Otherwise, she hides. Under bushes. Trying to grab a few hours sleep in a shopping mall, until she’s kicked out. Too afraid of people. Too afraid to take care of simple stuff, like getting her allowance from a bank account. Too afraid of filling out forms, and answering questions of strangers. And she’s a nice, friendly, open woman. She shared the story of her trauma with me. What happened to her as a child. And I understand why she is so afraid…

At the free-shop, sometimes clothing is hanging there for months, or too damaged. So, to make room, we hang those pieces on a “Stand of the last hope” for another few weeks, then bring it to other places, or, as a last resort, to a clothing container so it can be recycled one way or another. When I bring a huge bag to one of those containers on a cold evening, a guy calls me from the other side of the fence “is there anything warm in that bag?”. Shivering in his way too thin jeans jacket. Another “luck-seeker” from east from here. Since I know there’s nothing useful in the bag I’m carrying, I tell him about the free-shop. One week later he pops up. Carefully selects one coat, a warm hat and some gloves. Next week he’s back. Taking a friend of him with him. Showing him the children’s clothing. I hear him explain how we work, and the other guy politely listening. Also, that you can bring the stuff back, so other people can use it, and re-use it, and re-use it again and again. Funny how poverty makes people environmental friendly…

My best friend in Sarajevo, a black streetwise tomcat.

When the weather is a bit ok, we put some stuff outside in front of the free-shop. Sometimes people are bit scared to come in, and we’re very much aware of that. I’m hanging some more clothing on the stand outside, and a young woman approaches me. “If there’s anything you can’t sell, could you maybe spare it for me?”. I look at her. Point to our sign. It’s a FREE shop. Anything is for free. Seeing she’s a little shy, I take her inside. She just stands there, looking at the racks of clothing. Looks at me. “For free? All for free?” I say yes. “The books too?” I say yes. Her jaw drops, literally. And she starts jumping a bit up and down and dances in place. Turns around and gives me a huge hug. She takes very little, just a few pieces of clothing and one book. No place for storage when you live on the streets.

In the face of surplus, need can turn into greed, or into giving

Unfortunately for others, everything for free opens all sluices of hell. That’s why we have the rule of “no more than 5 pieces per person per visit”. Unfortunately, we have found our free stuff being sold on flea markets, in second-hand-shops or online. Recently, a second-hand shop opened up a few houses from our shop. You do wonder who would be stupid enough to open up a second-hand-shop this close to a free shop, but still. The joke in our little collective was immediately “well, at least they don’t have to worry about getting supplied”. And we already did spot one of our guests immediately stopping at that shop after leaving ours.. Of course, the stuff at least gets re-used, but one of our basic ideas is an economy based on giving, not on greed.

Stuff just left to rot in an abandoned farm

But sometimes it’s hard to stick to that rule, if you know people need it, like children’s clothing. Or, if a refugee family finally got their own place, but still need all the basics, cooking utensils, bedding. So we keep that rule loosely. However for some people, it’s just hard to not get greedy when facing so much stuff. We had to throw people out because they tried to take our speakers, or our own pots & pans. “But I need it”. So does everyone visiting our shop. Or our collective old guitar. Even putting it up in at least 5 different languages doesn’t help, if a guy tries to take the guitar (which spells on all sides “not for free, inventory”), and you ask, “can’t you read?” and he simply answers “no”. He can’t read….. This is how unfortunately some stuff we actually needed (a small lamp at the old pc we have for people to use, a little thingie we used for storing small stuff like jewelry) disappears…

However, people learn, and can completely turn around. We had to warn an elderly refugee couple multiple times, and I even went as far as packing out their bags, waving fingers about “no more than 5” until I realized I was actually unpacking her personal handbag… But they settled. And probably realized the free shop would always be there. And always full. So they started bringing stuff back they didn’t need. And now, every time they visit, first they bring us a pack of coffee, and a few packages of juice, and usually some sweet stuff. Then they disappear to the back, unload stuff, and yes, take stuff again, but no more than 5 pieces per person per visit.

Just like a little girl, also a refugee, quickly runs into the shop, drops the hat she’s carrying in the hat box and runs out telling us “I don’t need it anymore, someone else should wear it, it’s a beautiful hat”. Oh yes, another one of those people only coming here to abuse our wonderful western system. Right. They have more respect and understand the principles of “giving” quicker than quite a few of our regular, native, guests who come here every day, for years now, and still try to sneak out behind our backs with more than the 5 items. Heck, I even had a good-looking, well-clad woman asking another guest to distract me so she could run out with a small bag of clothing, probably holding 7 items instead of 5.. I just looked at one of our other regulars and asked “did someone just actually tried to trick me so someone else could “steal” in a free shop?” That kinda behavior I can only meet with contempt.

Needs that can’t be fulfilled…

When it comes to true needs. Socks. We can’t have enough socks. It sounds crazy. Socks are cheap right? But yes, socks. This friday a homeless guy came in. You got socks? I point him to our socks place. It’s always close to empty. He sighs, yep, socks are hard to find. We have tons of everything, but socks go like crazy. Socks and warm long underwear.. He didn’t look at anything else. Just socks he needed…

Living on the streets is even harder for a woman. Since there are only a few shelters with a place for women. And if no woman shows up til a certain time, they give the bed to a man. Homeless people are easy victims. They get beaten up more than most people. And this can be devastating.

One of our regular guests was doing well. She was looking better and better. Sometimes kept our toilet busy for 30 minutes, came out all made up with a new set of clothing, and the toilet smelling like cheap parfum for hours. Ok, most definitively not my style, but each his own. A few weeks ago she came in, I hardly recognized her. Wearing a hoodie, cowering. Her face one big mess. Hands shaking. Wrong time, wrong place, easy victim. Gone was all her confidence. Gone was also her concentration. Panicking cause she couldn’t find her bag. Which we later found outside, forgotten on the bench in front of our shop. One incident. Back to square one. And there’s nothing anyone can do about it…

Not even the officials can say how many people are living on the streets in this city. Guesses go between 3.000 and 10.000. Why? Because many don’t show up in the statistics. Since they’re illegal. Looking for work, and not having any luck. Or they did work here, and never got paid, and are too ashamed to go back home. Or, because their mental condition is so unstable, they simple don’t show up in anyone’s dossier. Strangely enough, those are the people who tend to give, even when they’re the ones lacking almost everything.

The Pros and Cons of Biking (and Public Transport) – Or: Shit, I have become a Berliner

It’s official. After 12,5 years in this city – with its wonderful public transport, that is, INSIDE the “Ring” – today I lost an important aspect of my dutchie-ness.

No, this is not the state of my own bike. It’s hasn’t been THIS unused (yet)

Wanted to see a gig in a nice location In Schöneweide/Lichtenberg. Outside the Ring. So, public transport is close tot non-existent after midnight.
So. I take my bike. 25 minute ride is nothing for a dutchie right?
No matter what weather conditions, right?

I DID get on my bike. Managed to get to Ostkreuz. Shitty rain, and fighting against the wind. Knowing I would have to bike for another 4km along a looong, straaaaight, road crossing an industrial park, and probably facing more wind straight in my face.

I turned around and went home… I actually turned around and went home.

Fck that Sht. I have become a Berliner. The kind of person who runs for the metro, even though the next one will be in 5 minutes. For whom the worst curse is “Schienersatzvekehr” (SEV, look it up…first page will be the Berlin Public Transport Company – BVG). Who efficiently waits on the platform there, where you know it will be closest to the exit when you get off. Who counts distances not in km, but in how far it is from the nearest metro station, and how many times you have to change trains. Who plans routes through the city by how many stairs you have to go up or down, not the fastest one, since there’s usually at least 5 ways to get anywhere.

Bikes in my Backyard.
Note the fact the snow heaps on the saddles are 20 cms or more.
No, you don’t ride your bike in Berlin Winters

There was a time I didn’t understand the question “till when do you bike?”
This has changed…
OMG.. this has changed…

I.. have.. been.. berlinerized…

The Dangers of Biking when Work & Party Traffic Cross

Berlin is a musical city. There’s very talented people playing in the metro every day (and quite some untalented, but that’s another story). There’s tons of gigs all over the city, every day. There’s not even one “guide”, on paper, or online, which will, or can, give a complete overview. And this is like, every day. Not just the weekend. Every day.

On workdays however, when four bands are playing in one place, because of the “neighbor-problem”, the set of each band will be too short. It doesn’t matter though, if it ends up with the the audience drumming on stage, and the singer/base-player in the audience. Quality over quantity is the attitude by now of both bands and audience.

Sometimes you have to chose unfortunately. But when you’re lucky, you can combine two gigs, depending on where the neighbors start complaining on what hour and the bands have to stop playing (Prenzlauerberg and Mitte around 10pm, Kreuzberg around midnight, Friedrichshain, well.. errmm… you relocate the band to a park or so) . And if you have a good mode of transport. A bike works pretty well.
It can be risky though.

On a workday, traffic around 8pm is busy. Late-shift-commuters meet the early party tourists. So, on the 15 minute bike-ride from Friedrichshain to a gig in Kreuzberg I got almost driven over by a bus, two taxis, and a wheelchair.
Yes. A Wheelchair.
Not to mention I almost drove over a woman on bike staring at her phone, and quite a few tourist who don’t have a clue something like bike paths exist.

Oh. And this is Berlin. So on the way back you see a guy taking a pic of his girlfriend on the Oberbaumbrücke, she wearing nothing more than a latex bikini, a floppy hat and an open raincoat. It was after midnight, temperatures drop to 5 degrees celsius.

Another taxi driver makes room for you to pass a cop car in full alarm, parked on the bike lane, with a roadwork in the middle of the bridge and the tramtracks somewhere there too, because something happened again at the RAW again (how come they station 300 cops for months in a row in front of a squat, but they can’t seem to manage what happens at the RAW, where there’s actually crime, and victims..).

At the boxi square, after avoiding clashing your bike into many tourists again, and again, you pass a couple of guys pushing a cart which was filled with the usual protest gear. I almost shouted “which demo did I miss this time?”

Oh, and of course I forgot to bring a bag to the gig. Even though I KNOW I will buy vinyl at an event like this. Long the multi-functional pali shawl, which can be folded in anything including a bag. And then awkwardly holding it with one hand, while preventing accidents with your other hand when driving a bike through Kreuzberg & Friedrichshain on a night out… One eye on the traffic, one eye on that (hopefully still) unbroken record.

Still very thankful for that one taxi driver, who made room for me and my fragile record.

Note: all doodles made by myself when enjoying the not-so-risky public transport. See Twisted Kritters if you want to see more of them.

Hot in the city

It’s hot, so in the evening, I open my windows to let the cooler air in. My cat likes this and sits in the front window. I’m working on my computer, and all of a sudden I hear strange noises. There’s an elderly man trying to pet my cat through the open window and the occasional plant, but she runs off. I walk up to him, and he tells me, he always wanted a cat. I ask him why he doesn’t pick up a cat from the shelter. He looks at me with sad eyes: “you need a house first before you can give a stray a home.”

I work in the tourist part of Berlin. So I’m actually quite used to people asking me if they could ask something, usually the way. So, when I cross one of the busiest streets in Berlin, and an well-dressed, white-haired, balding guy asks me if he could ask me something, I answer “sure” and walk up to him. Then he tells me “did you know Hitler was an english agent?”. I sigh, wave dismissively and turn around. Behind me, he shouts the address of his website. I roll my eyes and think “another one for the list”. When I walk down to the coolness of the metro station (it’s almost 40 degrees celsius outside), I pass a guy wearing a full cover plastic asbestos-overall, chewing his sandwich utterly relaxed. The sun sure brought out the freaks…

Redoodled drawing of my cat when I was 5

When I put the cat basket on the back of my bike to bring her to the vet, my cat usually announces World War III. A black guy with a grey beard walks past, makes “poor kitty” noises. The moment I secure the basket, I see him stop in his steps. He walks back, gives me a sympathetic look, opens the box of chocolates he is carrying, and offers me one.

Sunday morning 7 am, I wake up because of some drunk people talking really loudly in front of my house. I sigh, turn on the other side and wrap my pillow around my head, hoping they will walk on quickly. They don’t. I’m slowly but steadily getting really annoyed. So I sigh again, aggressively pull up the blinds, and stick my head out of the window: ey.. people, mind moving on a bit, trying to get some sleep here. They tell me “oh we’re really really really sorry, we’ll be quieter”. Only when I go back to bed I realize one of the two was wearing a one meter tall, at least 50 cm diameter, brightly colored velvet hat. I still hear their discussion over the traffic noise when they moved to the busier street a few 100 meters further.

It is said hot weather brings out hot tempers.
If this is the hot temper of the people of this city, it can get a lot hotter still.

The slowest way to travel 6km

Every 21st June, there’s the “Fete de la Musique” in Berlin. But for years now, the “Nachttanzdemo (night dance demonstration) offers a different perspective on what music, and alternative culture means.

2016_Overig_Nachttanzdemo_2106_geel Superficially, it seems to boils down to a lot of loud music, mostly techno, and crawl-dancing for four hours on a route that normally would take you max 20 minutes by foot. Like every year, I wonder why – musicwise – it is mostly the “rave-oriented” scene which is represented. Other sub-sub-sub-cultures need their “Freiraume” (free spaces) and are as affected by the Gema as the rave-scene..

The amount of people triples or even quadruples during the demo because nobody expects it to start on time; it is twice as long because of the cops in front and in the back; the “spätis” (evening shops) along the route are doing the best business of the month: and following the cop vans, there’s another crowd of “flaschensammler” (empty bottle collectors), just as happy as the “späti” people.. (oh, and of course lots of tourists grabbing their smartphones to document another example of local culture). At least the “Lauti” didn’t run out of gas and had to be pushed (prolly because the sound systems should be kept running).

We dance on the Traveplatz (lovelingly sometimes renamed to Raveplatz) in the “Südkiez” against gentrification. Against the weird phenomena, how an “interesting” neighborhood attracts new inhabitants, who next protest and call the cops for exactly that, what made this neighborhood interesting in the first place: the music, the life on the streets & in the parks and the little self-run shops and pubs. Against Order and Regulations, which causes pubs to close, parks fenced off, live music banned, dogs leashed, or makes it “necessary” to visit an alternative pub with 12 cops to make clear that pub should hang a price list of the drinks on the outside.

2016_Overig_Nachttanzdemo_2106 We dance in the “Gefahrenzone”, the danger zone, where since january more than 1.000 people were controlled by the cops, “just because”. And again and again, house projects are invaded for, again “just because”. A good excuse is always to “protect the youth”. You know, there might be a 17 year old illegally drinking a beer without permission of his/her parents. That’s enough to be allowed to try to break into a pub, which already let the blinds down.

We dance over the Frankfurter Allee, and into Mainzerstraße, a street which used to be one block of squats, and next to a street where so-called investors try to chase the renters out by “renovating” or any other more or less legal way. The house of one of our regular guests of the foodsharing brunch is one of their latest targets, the people living there already organized themselves and will fight back, but the money and the resources are on the other side, and they’re very much aware of this. The first arrest takes place in the Mainzer. Why is unclear. Later on, I hear somebody was at the wrong place when a expensive car lost a bit of air in its tires. As if the person responsible for it would hang around..

We dance at the corner of the Boxi. Where more trouble starts, and the cops block the demo, but no one knows why. All we do is dance. There’s a fire show, and more people join the demo. By now, both sides of the demo are almost hermetically closed in by cops in full riot gear.

It’s unclear why.

But we dance on. The live singer on one of the trucks starts rapping her frustration about the arrests, and next, the identification numbers of the cops making those arrests. The atmosphere changes slightly and becomes more grim. But we dance on.

2016_Overig_Nachttanzdemo_2106_detail We dance under a full moon over the Modernsohn Bridge, where a group of other alternative techno people just put a tent with drinks on the middle of the bridge to chill out, dance and look at that full moon. I pause to enjoy the sight, and hang to the side of the bridge, chatting with one of the “gabber” people of the bridge party people. We share a cigarette, and agree how beautiful the moon is. And though we might be on different ends of the spectrum of the alternative scene, we agree on the DIY mentality and the fun of spontaneous, unregulated things that just happen, because some people just had an idea, and made it come true.

We dance on towards the “Media Spree”, where the mainstream music industry established a bridge head. We dance to Gema-free music, and celebrate a culture, where sharing is more important than selling.

We dance because it’s our “Kiez”. To reclaim our streets. To celebrate our projects, our lifestyle.

yuppie-city_zw This is our Kiez. We are our Kiez. I look around me. I see the people from the foodsharing. From the house projects. The urban gardeners. The free shop. The senior hooligans of the Traveplatz. The people from the silk screen printing workshop or the hacker spaces. The straight-edge people of the vegan lunchroom, before vegan became hip. The collective bike repair projects (happily throwing a racing bike between them on the rhythm). The semi-homeless people of the Boxi park. The bee-keepers of a trailer camp. The independent sound system in a self-built transporter bike. The people who care more about their dogs then about themselves. The jugglers and acrobats of the children’s circus.

I hear at least 12 different languages, and see every skin or hair color naturally or artistically possible. I watch a muscular, deeply tanned, punk with a skateboard, dance next to small, skinny, grey-haired metalhead who keeps trying to do air-guitars to techno beats. Both completely covered in the golden glitter thrown around by a tall guy with a braided goaty in a flowery mini-skirt. The fat-bellied elderly Traveplatz alcoholic cheering with some teenage refugee girls, offering his beer, which is politely refused. A peroxide-blond bearded guy trying to keep up with his crutches gets help from some southern-europe technoheads full of piercings and tribal tattoos. The queers, the freaks, the losers, the weirdo’s, the bald heads, the dreads, the hairy ones, the bare-footed and the big-booted, we’re all represented here.. Without us, the Kiez would not be the same, and rather dull.

And we dance on.

To show, you can evict the houses, push the renters out, ban the music, clean the parks out, remove the street art, kill the guerilla gardens, regulate the pubs.

But you can’t evict the ideas, the dreams, and the willingness to make them happen..

The Art of Transporting Awkward Objects

The dwellers of this city don’t have many material resources. So they have to be inventive in many ways, but surely when it comes to moving bulky objects. And I don’t mean the average pram with or without kid, painting equipment, a cello or just another mountain bike. Anyone living here has observed at least once how someone moved house, including laundry machines, their massive record collection, grandfather’s clocks, tropical plants, couches, dog houses, fitness equipment or a complete aquarium system including fish, by using the extensive public transport.

Just a very few examples of what I’ve witnessed…

Taking a break in my shift at the free shop, I sit on the bench to drink my coffee. A few guys pass by, with a heap of wood on a skateboard, rattling over the cobble stones. They look a bit exhausted, so I point them to the coffee and tea we give out for free. Happily they accept the invitation, and after they find out it’s a free shop, and has a music section, some discussion arises on how to securely stash the wood outside. After I wonder why they are so worried about a bit of wood, they show me pictures on their phone. Turns out this is the third partial transportation of a piano. Yes. In three phases. A complete piano. On a skateboard. When they find out we also have a piano in our shop (to be used, not to be given), their day is made… So is mines. They know how to play.

Stuff awaiting transportation on a street in Berlin — Stuff waiting to be carried away on a street in Berlin. Hopefully it’s not by bike,,,

One of the first sunny days in spring I decide to spend some time in the park. I’m sitting in the grass, which is, according to a sign ignored by many people, not to be sat on. A shadow falls on the stuff I work on. I look up, and two guys carrying a huge two-person-bed-frame pass by. I overhear one saying to the other: “This one’s better than the one we have, isn’t it?” I guess, like so many people here, they regularly replace their furniture by what other people put on the streets…

Half an hour later, another shadow falls upon me. Two other guys. Crossing the park carrying a monumental, two by two meter abstract painting wrapped in bubble plastic. I just, well, acknowledge this and go back to my handywork.

Even if you have your own wheels, transportation can turn out to be hard, long, work. For the Foodsaving brunch, we pick up the buckets full of food from the restaurants with a hand-kart, with huge bags, or bike trailers, but sometimes we have the luck of doing it with a small electric car-sharing car, and it goes much faster. Well. That is. If all the buckets had fitting lids. If they stayed on top of each other. Of course, the one bucket which spills its contents is the one with waffle batter. Of course, that’s the one where the lid didn’t fit. Waffle batter is very fluid. And sticky. And runs fast… We end up removing not just the carpet in the trunk, but the cover of the backseats, the backseats themselves, part of the carriage under the backseats, and half the electric wiring underneath that. But we might not have been able to get rid of all the batter… We joked around of putting the heating on, so the batter would become waffles, and easier to remove. So if you step into an electric car-sharing car of which the backseat smells like freshly baked belgian waffles, that might be the one.

Awkward objects come in all shapes and sizes. Managing their transport can be hard work. On the way back home from a visit to nerd paradise I run into a group of young – obviously not so sober – streetpunks, completely dressed up in patches and studs. Half of the group is in front of me on the stairs, the other half behind me. As I take the last step up I hear one of the women of the group screaming anxiously. I look behind me. No worries. She stumbled on the steps and fell down, but managed to keep her beer-bottle straight. Though quite a bit of the beer stirred out of the bottle and gushes downstairs, most is still inside. Since the catastrophe is manageable, they move on.

Shift in the free shop. A woman runs in, out of breath. “My neighbor! My neighbor! He’s putting plants in garbage bags to throw them away! And they’re still alive!” Though the vegan crowd inside the shop doesn’t mind a dead vegetable or two, if anything has even a remote chance of life, it should be saved. So quickly a human chain is built, people handing plant after plant along a few streets, from the evil neighbor to our place. A few dozen of plants are saved from the shredder, re-potted with bigger pots and the flower soil we coincidentally also had to give away, and consequently adopted. Though if they would survive the ride on the back of a bike under a luggage strap might be another matter.

Not just the human city-dwellers have to be stubborn to get their stuff where they want it. Taking a little stroll I stop on the sidewalk because right in front of me, a little sparrow is very determined to get this ONE twig for its nest. It must be the perfect keystone, or keytwig. Unfortunately, it’s a bit big. Well.. actually at least 3 times as long as the bird. And hard to balance too, one end has far more side-branches than the other, making it heavier on that side, and also hard to get a grip when you have such a small beak. I have fun watching its determination for minutes: every time it tries, only to lose it a few feet, or wingspans, further. Another human passes me, and the bird flies in the tree, eyeing the wanted twig, now forever out of reach. I can’t help myself. I pick up the twig, and put it halfway up in the tree…

For a nice illustration what you might experience traveling the Berlin metro system, including quite some awkward transportation, check out this vid (yes, I know it’s an ad for the Berlin transportation company, but it made me laugh, since indeed, it is very recognizable):

Random snapshots of just-being

Another set of impressions of the beauty of small lives hiding in the darker corners of a metropolis

In the free shop, from the corner of my eyes I notice two of our regular guests exchanging a piece of clothing. One of them is a fanatic knitter, always scanning the shop for left-over pieces of wool. She shows a sweater which the other customer liked, but which was just a bit too short, and therefore put back in the racks. The knitting lady secretly took the sweater home, found a matching color wool, and made the sweater just long enough. Now she surprises the other regular with the finished product.

One of the alternative projects organizes a small protest against gentrification in front of their “shop”. It rains, an icy rain, and people dance with their scarfs pulled up to their noses, gloves and beanies on the jungle beat. One of the regular, more run-down-looking, guests of the foodsaving brunch passes by, asks me what is going on. He introduces me to his boyfriend, a far younger, tall, and good-looking blond guy. Just as I wonder about the combination of the two, the older guy quickly continues: “you know where to get a beanie for him for free? His ears are freezing, and he doesn’t own one”. Only then I notice the slightly absent look in the eyes of his companion and realize who’s taking care of who.

A former roommate who fathered 23 little black & white rats

On my way to work, I see a plain looking lady with her – obviously mentally disabled – daughter sitting on a bench, waiting for the Ubahn. In front of her feet, there’s a huge cage, with a small white & black rat feverishly washing itself. Next to her daughter, there’s another cage, full of straw and probably also full of cuddles. Walking along the streets near Checkpoint Charlie on the way back, I see something moving from the corner of my eye. I look, and there’s a tiny little brown mouse, looking back with beady eyes. Must be rodent day today.

During the foodsaving brunch at the end of the month it is busy again. Many of our customers have a bit of month left after the end of their money. One of the guys tells me, we saved him again, he hasn’t eaten for two days. Another guest counters: Berlin isn’t a city at war, you can always find food here. I just politely step out of that discussion. A bit later, one of the other regulars brings me a gift. I always walk around with lots of black markings (I don’t call it make-up, too many people ask me if those markings are tattoos…), so she presents me with an eye-pencil, and look, it is even still packaged. I’m very happy with it, because maybe it’s a small gift, but she obviously got hold of it thinking of me (though I actually don’t want to know how she obtained it.. I’m afraid she took an, albeit small – risk for it).

Rodent-On-Wheelz - doodled in the metro — Rodent-On-Wheelz – doodled in the metro

Doodling one of my twisted kritters in the metro coming back from a noise gig, I notice the guy on the opposite bench secretly glancing at my paper. When I get up to catch the next line, he shouts “wait”, fumbles in his backpack, and hands me a flyer of another music event the next week. I look at it only when I get out and just have to laugh: how come in a city of millions, a guy looks at my drawings, and gives me a flyer for an event with experimental and industrial bands I happen to like. Not exactly mainstream, if 100 people attend to something like that, it’s a lot.. so this is just a bit too much of a coincidence. Just before the doors of the metro close, I walk back to stick my head around the corner “I was already planning to go there, but thanks”.

There’s a huge protest against the “danger zone” which was forced upon a part of the neighborhood a few weeks ago, resulting in dozens of cops invading squats, stopping people to ask for IDs, closing off streets and a general feeling of unease towards this “surveillance” from the people living here. Surprisingly – also for the organization – a couple of thousand show up. The atmosphere is peaceful and joyful. I watch someone I know making soap bubbles for the refugee kids hanging over the fence of their “emergency shelter” in front of which we gather. They don’t really have a clue what the demonstration is about, but sure are enjoying the soap bubbles. Afterwards, I realize you shouldn’t breathe in those bubbles when trying to catch them in your mouth. Still coughing up a soap mixture hours later.

In the free-shop, one of the regular customers shows me something undefinable she found, and asks me if I think it could be made into a lamp. She can’t do any “real” work, she tells me, but, well, you have to get under the people, so she spends her daytime at a “disabled center”. She’s always looking for stuff she can rework in something else, then brings it back to the shop. And after more than 15 years of “well.. it’s a way to stay social, sitting at home is so boring” she has become quite capable in upcycling stuff. I don’t think she realizes she has been pioneering a recent trend among the more well-off citizens for such a long time. But well, she doesn’t really have a choice: her creativity is caused by being poor.

Berlin. The end of winter. But still winter. Not that Berlin people care. February is still here, and already the smell of smoke of a campfire lingers in my hair. Walking past the Boxi square with minus 5 or so, I hear music coming from a group of people playing while sitting on the swings and the slide of the play-ground.

On one hand, yes, there’s literally murder in the streets: a guy bleeding to death after been stabbed by unknown people right in one of the busiest club areas. A gang racketeering a small underground club for “protection money”, so the people decide to stop their events, cause it’s not safe. Cops finding all kinds of excuses for breaking into an alternative project and confiscating dangerous goods such as heating-coal, fire-extinguishers and small bags of garbage. It’s like the alternative scene is being squashed between organized crime and “law and order”. On the other hand…. in the little dark and hidden corners, where people sometimes have no choice but to be resourceful and creative, dreams and ideas are kept alive, solutions are found by cooperating and making use of what is at hand. Just like the little rodents which you almost accidentally find in unexpected places at unexpected times, it’s hard to exterminate dreams and ideas. Thank goodness…

Impressions – Undermining “planned Obsoleteness”

One of the things I like about Berlin are the “artisans”.. not the artists, but the artisans, the crafters. Those people who do miracles with your old stuff, and whose eyes light up if you bring some “inherited” piece of equipment or material. Stuff, of which other, more “official”, shops tell you: not worth fixing it, please buy our newest product.

A Flash of Time

Such as the analog camera I inherited a long time ago from my grand-dad. When I got it, I brought it to an official photographer shop. They told me: already the money you would have to pay us for opening it up, would be more than the camera is worth. So I let it dust away in my cupboard as a memorandum. Until I told one of my colleagues, a hobby photographer, about it, and when he heard it was a Leica, he immediately send me to an artisan repair shop nearby.

There, they didn’t tell me, forget that old camera, here’s our newest digital product. The shop-owner, who I suspected was close, if not over, his retirement age, opened the case, started whistling when he saw the camera. I could see he could hardly wait till he would be able to bring it to his “laboratory”. Three days later I could pick it up. He took the time to let me hear the sound the shutters made, showed me how innovative the light meter on top of the camera was, the mechanism of the film transporter, and in general, what a wonderful little piece of pure mechanical, no circuit boards involved, machinery this camera was. I showed him a separate objective which came with the camera. He scratched his head and asked: “may I? You got 15 minutes?”, took it back to his laboratory, handed it back and said: here, it’s completely dust-free now. No, free of charge of course. From the corner of my eye I saw his much younger colleague (daughter?) sigh and shake her head. There was more stuff in my grand-dad’s camera case, including some unused films from the 50s or 60s. Totally unusable by now. Those films now are an exhibit object in this shop’s display window.

This Cow Died Almost 100 Years Ago

Another object I inherited is a long, leather motor coat my grandma used to wear in the 1920s and 1930s sitting behind my granddad on his motorbike. The coat is heavy, it weighs close to 15, if not 20, kilos. It’s very thick leather. But it’s warm, and utterly cool looking. Though too big for me. So it was gathering dust, cause when I went to a leather shop to ask how much it would cost to make it my size, it was way over my budget, and indeed, at least 3 times as much as a new leather coat would cost.

Until I moved here. Again, I looked at that coat, such a beauty, such a pity. And too much sentimental value to give it away or even sell it. So I thought, what the heck, and searched for a leather worker here in Berlin. Found one close to where I live, and dragged the coat with me. Unpacked, it resulted in quite a few exclamations from the shop owner, and another artisan was dragged from behind her sewing machine. Such LEATHER. They just don’t make it that way anymore. People like thin, supple, leather nowadays. The shop owner shook her head, tut-tutted and dismissively waved at the new leather coats hanging in her shop.

Yes, of course they can make it fit my size. The only problem might be the machines can’t take that good, thick, quality of leather. Nowadays, we’re simply not prepared for it anymore. But… She looks down at the coat, and tentatively feels the leather again. Again, she mumbles something like, they just don’t make it this way anymore. She looks up and says: I have to try, I simply have to. So she takes my measures, which takes sometime, since she’s very precise. A week later, I can pick it up. Perfect fit. And a bit lighter too, since I am skinnier than my grandma. I leave after a lecture about greasing leather. But, nothing beats how that coat keeps me warm during the harsher days of the Berlin winters…

Re-Tired and Re-Soled

Sometimes, there’s stuff I didn’t inherit, but just love, because it lasts me a long time. Such as my bike. There’s a dutch bike repair shop in Berlin, where “my” bike hangs on the wall as a museum piece. Where, if I go there, at least 2 of the guys wipe the oil of their hands and, almost drooling, point out the drum brakes to each other. Where I almost always get advice, or some second-hand replacement part, for free, just because they love the fact I’m still keeping this piece of history in good working order. And if they charge anything, it’s not much more than the material costs.

Or like my trustworthy big leather boots. After 10 years of good service, and 3 months of oil & rust after working on something also build-to-last, a 50 year old DDR-high-sea-fishing ship, now serving as an alternative music venue (and still sea-worthy), the soles of those boots cracked, straight down the middle. I went to 5 normal shoe repair shops. They all shook their heads. Way beyond repair.

Until I found on the internet the address of an orthopedic shoe maker. I went to his shop. A stooped, older, and very, very grumpy guy wearing a leather apron lets me wait for quite a few minutes before coming from the back. He looks me over critically and tells me: I don’t DO shoe repairs, I’m a crafter, a specialist, a maker of shoes. I start to look sad. He’s my last hope. Those boots have lasted me 10 years. His quite bushy eye-brows go up. 10 years? he asks. Let me see them. So I take them out. He slides his finger over the stitches. That’s good craftsmanship, he admits reluctantly. Ok. Leave them here, two days. So I come back in two days. There are my boots. Shined up to the max. He straightens his shoulders, rubs his thumb along the side of the new soles, looks at me, and there’s a hint of a smile on his face. They’ll last you another 10 years now, he tells me proudly. I burst out in thank yous, but he waves me out of the door, bends down to his next project “it was an exception, ok? I don’t do shoe repairs”. When I leave, he looks over his shoulder: just take good care of them, grease them regularly, will you?

Wobbles And Knobs

Today I brought my old amplifier to a repair shop, because the socket for the phono input was doing weird stuff. I talked to the guy on the phone beforehand. Yes, of course he can fix it, he can fix anything. Of course, he’ll give me an estimate what it costs. So I unplug my amplifier, wrap it in bubble plastic, and step on my bike, and 1500 meters further, in between a vegan restaurant and a shop selling exclusive designer bags, is a dusty shop full of cables, spare parts, and reassembled hifi equipment.

I step in, and an elder guy in a blue coat with glasses comes from the repair room behind the counter “ah, you phoned. Let me see her”. He carefully unwraps my amplifier, and, almost caressing it, immediately brings it to the repair room, starts plugging it in, wobbles with the knobs, and agrees with me, yes, the old stuff is so much more reliable and long-lasting then the new stuff. IF you take care of it. And he starts telling me anecdotes about what he all found in amplifiers and tape decks. He quickly gives a preliminary diagnosis of the problem, and tells me, he’ll phone me tomorrow to give an estimate of the costs, and how long it will take. Repairing will be quick, but waiting for spare parts might take a bit. I immediately feel like my amplifier is in good hands, and tell him about the old Thorens record player I recently got and which needs a bit of love (& cleaning).

His eyes light up even more. Though, he’s skeptical. Thorens is a name, a label, not all is as good as the name pretends. But yes, he’s more than willing to check it up, clean it, bring it in good state, give the mechanical parts a bit of grease. Max 60 euros, if nothing is broken. And yes, he’s fast. He starts telling me about DJs from Hamburg or Rostock who travel to his shop. With sparkling eyes he gives some anecdotes about what state he found their record players in. Proudly he says, he can repair almost anything. And fast. And good. And lasting. Good-as-new. IF you take care of it after it has been through his hands, of course.

The Crafty Fifth Column

These artisans, these professionals, are the silent force opposing – and opposed by – “planned obsoleteness”. They are threatened in their existence by a culture of throw-away technology. Where the warranty of a new camera or telephone is no longer than two years max, and even the bigger shops tell you: it prolly won’t last much longer than those two years. “Here, buy our newest product”.

I know. What they charge me to repair my stuff, simply does not cover the actual time they put into it. These are people who work with their hands. Who love when something of good quality comes into those hands. Something they can appreciate. Who truly take pride in their job. When they can bring something into, or close to, its original state. Technology, or craftsmanship which make their eyes light up, and, even with the most grumpy ones, makes the corners of their mouth go slightly up.

They hate doing shitty jobs. And if you bring shitty stuff, no matter how much quality work you put into it, it will still be shitty stuff afterwards. So yes, if you bring them quality stuff, they, albeit sometimes begrudgingly, love you for it. One of the – only – ways you can repay them (cause they usually undercharge you…) is to respect the quality of the product, and the quality of their work, by taking good care of it. And that’s what they’ll tell you again and again: take good care of it.

Rant – When A Flux of Pink Indians might not be such a bad idea

Cleansing the underground, cleansing the neighborhood, cleansing the population: A rant about bad things happening, over-reacting, pointing fingers, underbellies & crocodile brains, and my personal aversion against (self-)proclaimed protectors. And why it might actually come to me dressing up in bright pink, slapping faces with my house-shoes.

People sometimes tell me I’m a pessimist. I rather describe it as “I hate it when I’m right”. Or worse, when my more absurd jokes become true (hey, Life, that was a frikkin’ JOKE!). But lately, I’m beginning to lose that sense of pitch-black humor, and feel the need to hide under a blankie, being “sick & tired of waiting for this world to end”.

I’m sick and tired of hate. Sick and tired of generalizations. Sick & tired of polarization. Sick & tired of “cures”, which are worse than the “disease”. Sick & tired of (self-)proclaimed “protectors”.

Yes… many bad things happen. Thing I can’t, and won’t condone. Things I can’t and won’t laugh away. Things which make me want to hide in a dark corner. But the reactions to those bad things are so out of proportion, I have to shake off that blanket.

“Cleansing” the underground

Recently, an underground – neofolk – party had to close, because the owner of the venue where it took place received threats from “the Left”. I’m very much aware that, in some undergroundier than underground music scenes, there are some “bad apples”. I walk around in those scenes, and am not one of the people who shuts up when I spot “brownish” tendencies. And I’m not the only one. The reaction however, of some people outside that scene, to threaten the venue where a party from that scene takes place with violence, and on the net, start a hate campaign, is completely out of proportion.

Condemning a whole (albeit very small) music scene because of a few bad apples, and a lot of unfounded suspicions, will only lead to polarization. To the people who threatened the owner of the venue: you in fact give the opportunity to those few bad apples to take over that scene, because this kind of intimidation won’t make people give up their music. But it will make any kind of discussion completely impossible. I’m on the fringe of that scene, and consider myself an antifascist. Believe me, I can really do without the “protection” of some self-proclaimed, uninformed, self-righteous, outsiders.

And be realistic: the fascist threat isn’t coming from a few dozen people dancing slowly to neofolk music by candle light…

“Cleansing” the neighborhood

Another local “incident” of the past few weeks: cops invading squats in full riot gear because an uniformed person dealing out parking tickets was beaten up. Probably more than just the parking ticket happened, but still, beating someone up with 5 people is not ok in my book. Now I know dealing out parking tickets in Berlin is a risky job (just like telling people not to smoke in a small pub where the owner smokes himself). And really, not just in this neighborhood. It still is not ok to beat someone up for it. However, the reactions of the cops to this incident was absurd. It became the excuse to invade a local squat in full riot gear, and quite a few other actions following this. Resulting in the confiscation of a few fire extinguishers (hooray!). It was not exactly the first time the cops interpreted their task of “keeping the peace” in a rather, well… violent and disproportional way (for example last summer).

Dear cops: I applaud you. Very brave. It will most definitively help to release the tension in the neighborhood and make us all just love & want to hug you. Especially if you invade another house a few days later because of a small bag of garbage dumped 20 meters away from the helmeted, shielded, and well-insulated invaders. Or raid a small bakery because a few “suspicious people” are buying their breakfast there. Or get up a ladder in full riot gear to silence the music coming from a nearby balcony. Circling low above the neighborhood for days in a row with helicopters until deep in the night also makes me wish I had a bazooka at hand. And, as always, when such an “incident” happens, I just love being followed by a police van when I walk the streets with two friends of mine. Gosh, I never felt so safe in my life, having our own, private, surveillance unit.

Again, me, as one of the people living in the neighborhood, can do without this kind of “protection” from outsiders. Really, dragging people out of bakeries, invading a house because of some garbage thrown out, trying to intimidate with helicopters or following any group larger than 2 people on the streets, does not make me feel any safer in my neighborhood.

Again, this kind of intimidation won’t work, it will only lead to polarization. And again, be realistic: the chances that this will lead to a “bloody revolution”, the government being overthrown or Friedrichshain declaring its independence are pretty minimal.

“Cleansing” the male population

Last but not least. A very belated reaction to the “incidents” on New Year’s Eve in Cologne and other cities. Just to bring it back into memory (though I don’t think people have forgotten, yet…), on New Year’s Eve near the Central Station of Cologne, a lot, and I mean a LOT of women were sexually harassed or even raped, and subsequently robbed, on a scale rarely seen, by a mob of drunken men. This is bad. This is very very very bad. However, the reactions in the press, the social media and especially, the violence coming from “gangs” of hooligans and other self-declared “protectors of the german woman” were completely out of proportion. Within hours, the rumors about “nord-african” or “arabic” looking attackers, or “refugees” were all over the net, and the hate-campaign started. Again, leading to generalization & polarization.

Oh, don’t get me wrong. I’m pretty sure there are quite a few male chauvinist sexist pigs among refugees or people from the Middle-East. I just don’t think there’s more of them among those groups as in any other group… (hey, I’m a pessimist, remember?). And I’m all in favor of rooting this out. But…

Pointing the finger

What scares me are the reactions. First, I see people from whom I thought they had some kind of brain all of a sudden supporting the Pegida-movement.”oh, they were right about the hordes from the middle-east threatening our o-so woman-friendly culture”.

Already much has been said about this elsewhere, so I guess I don’t need to repeat the statistics in detail. Just a quick summary: most refugees are christians; gang-criminality, including robbery and group-rape (aka “gang-banging”), is associated with poverty & bad perspectives and yep, being an immigrant is associated with poverty & bad perspectives; rape is caused by rapists, not by the clothing the victim wears nor the “ethnicity” or “religion” of the rapist: there’s no statistical evidence of a higher occurrence of rapists within “refugees” or ” people from the Middle-East”.

Not to forget the instrument of robbery under cover of sexual harassment or grinding up (“antanzen”) is not exactly a new strategy. It is, unfortunately, a pretty well known, and used, instrument by petty criminals for example in touristic areas or by gangs in Berlin (who supposedly already have divided the different club-districts among each other). We had quite a few nasty incidents last summer here in Berlin. The latest trend I’ve heard about distracting someone to be able to rob him/her (usually her) is to set his/her hair on fire… This resulted in a completely stupid and helpless reaction of “law and order” (leave your phone at home, or don’t use it openly, don’t wear expensive jewelry). Which boiled down to another nice case of victim blaming. Just as stupid as the reaction of the mayor of Cologne: keep those men at arm length.. yeah, right… So the phenomena is not new, and to blame it on certain groups or the victims is pointing the finger in the wrong direction.

But well.. I guess the people who now all of a sudden go over to the Pegida camp are probably just as fact-resistant or susceptible of conspiracy theories as that Pegida guy I tried reasoning with (until he started denying the Holocaust, then the discussion stopped from my side).

The underbelly & the crocodile brain: fear is all you need

Second, I see fear. I see people sharing this “Taharrush gamea” (organized sexual harassment) phenomena when referring to Cologne, and being afraid this might become “normal”.

Well, except for the fact there’s a lot of discussion about this phenomena, especially about the (pre-)-organized aspect of it, rape culture isn’t exactly new. Any woman in any culture, also in our oso beloved western culture, does not at least take a deep breath and mentally prepare herself before walking through a mob of drunken young men. One of the yearly events in our neighborhood I hate the most, the so-called “Biermeile” on the Frankfurter Allee, I mostly exactly hate because of this. I think the average hair color there was some darker shade of blonde, and I observed a higher occurrence of mustaches. Also, I do not enjoy walking past a club just around the corner on a saturday, which “clientele” used to consist mostly of young white males from the surrounding countryside. It changed ownership a few times after that, now programming mostly russian artists. The cat-calling and harassment diminished, but sure as hell is still there. Typically enough, it was the least when that club programmed popular turkish artists… Again, I don’t like generalization. Not when it comes to blonde hair, or mustaches, or being from the countryside, or russian or turkish.

Again (yes, I’m a pessimist), I’m quite sure all groups have quite a few male chauvinist sexist pigs among their ranks. Believe me, there’s no pre-organization needed for sexual harassment on a huge scale. Just add alcohol, add “group dynamics” or male-bonding-rituals: many of these men would not try to grab you, or even do some cat-calling if they were on their own. My impression is that often, they are more trying to prove themselves in front of their mates, than actually trying to get their hands on you. Though it’s still frikkin scary and disgusting. Add the above named factors, and the crocodile brain takes over and any woman suddenly becomes a potential prey, who “should know her place”. And me, as a woman alone, I rather avoid places on a weekend night where I know I might bump into a group of drunken men, exactly because of this.

Oh great.. there are the protectors again

Third.. I see this “phenomena” of “we have to protect our women from the invading hordes” and these self-declared protectors patrolling public spaces (and beating up anyone dark-skinned in the process). Protectors. Oh really. Knights in shining armor. Sure. Need a white horse? Get real. I’m a woman. Not german, and probably a tiny bit too dark to be considered “worthy of protection” by those self-declared protectors. But heck, even if I was german and a platinum-blonde, I’d rather pass on that protection. I wouldn’t trust it. Rely on a group of male chauvinist pigs to protect me from another group of male chauvinist pigs? And expect them not to turn on me to “express my gratitude” for being protected? I don’t think so….

A flux of pink indians

Nope. If I would see any group phenomena which would actually protect against large scale, organized or not, sexual harassment of women, it would be self-organisation. Of women solely, yes. Non-aggressively of course. What I’m thinking of, is something like the “pink ladies” (or Gulabi Gang) in India. If you don’t know what this is, look it up. Rape culture, again, is everywhere. And in India, a group of women, wearing pink saris, organized themselves to educate, to protect and, in unfortunately some cases, to avenge. And how did they avenge? By beating rapists with house shoes, and thereby publicly shaming them…. I don’t like revenge, I don’t like publicly shaming.. but heck, I laughed me ass off with a vid of a group of pink ladies slapping a group of rapists with house-shoes and giving them a good verbal bashing… Thereby making clear that sexual harassment is not cool, it’s not normal, it’s not something any woman asks for, no matter where & with whom she is or on her own, or what she wears, and it’s something you should be fukking ashamed for even thinking about it.

And believe me. Male chauvinist pigs won’t like women organizing themselves. Not the so-called aggressors, and not the so-called protectors. One the regular demonstrations I participated in, was the so-called “witch-night”, when a huge group of women only, went on the streets to claim them back. No other demonstration I participated in, not even the most controversial ones, met so much verbal, and also physical aggression from the “general public” as that one. Yes, from males. No matter what age or background or even “intellectual” level (heck, one of the most aggressive reaction usually came from the balcony of a fraternity, and from mostly white, university students).

Yep.

We don’t need reactions which are out of proportion and only lead to more hate, more generalization, more polarization.

But a Flux of Pink Indians… I’d like to see that happen on the Biermeile on Frankfurter Allee next year… Actually, I might even put on a pink sari for that..

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