Final blog post

Sweetys of the world, unite.... I am off, off for good, and the bougling world will have to deal with it, and deal with it fine. I don't necessarily want to discuss the absolute chaos in my room, the fact that I still haven't packed, that it's late and should be sleeping, that I've been going out to meetings and little political actions every night, that I haven't cooked in so long, that I'm going to spend the next ten days having cold showers and camping around in uncertain wheather, that I still don't know for sure that it's alright for me to show up at Karlshof after g8, that I keep forgetting to get in touch with my prof to check that he did get my paper, that it's going to rain on Friday when we're doing the antimilitaristic action at the bombodrom with our cardboard painted UFOs, that there's very little time tomorrow morning to pack, sort out, clean, tidy up, get the last items I need, and go off to [m]'s to drop whatever I need for the trip after g8 and my laptop before we both set off to meet up with the other clowns and catch our train in far northern Berlin... No, I don't necessarily want to discuss this...
I nearly feel sorry to leave Berlin now, now that I've met or gotten to know various people I would like to work with politically, now that I feel more secure about myself, what I want, how I want to interact with others. But I'm off! I had my last day at work today and saw envy in several of my co-workers' eyes who kept saying "ah yeah, four months off, travelling off to france, spain, portugal, that DOES sound good". And I left them behind, them and their prospect for a summer spent at the overheated office crooked up straining their eyes towards the computer screen writing meaningless reports feeling stressed up and pressured to work more, work more, work more, without daring to ask themselves why they do. How privileged, privileged I feel to allow myself to keep control of my life. I need to enable myself to have more freedom. Next year will go further this way.

But I realise I haven't necessarily explained where and how I will go off and what my plans actually are... so before I disappear, here's a short overview...

PHASE ONE - G8 summit and other activities around it, from June 1 to 9 or 10. This is what we've all been preparing for over the last month(s): The protest around G8, against the conceptions of democracy and leadership, power and government that is represented and mediatised through the event. And being there with thousands of other people who believe in self-organisation, consensus as a form of organising political decision making, environmentally friendly life style, and organising their life goals beyond comfort and consumption... will be inspiring and heart warming.

PHASE TWO - rural projects until end of june, early july. I will hopefully be able to spend several weeks in Karlshof (the non commercial agriculture project near berlin), and pay a short visit to a project near hamburg. Perhaps I'll also go back to Ulenkrug, where I went with [m] last december.

PHASE THREE - moving on to France, July. A few days in Paris, then off to Britanny with my old friend [X], perhaps also [C], working on mum's house for a couple of weeks.

PHASE FOUR - moving down south, mid or late July. If I decide to go to Portugal to the Ecotopia meeting, I'll slowly but surely make my way there. If I don't, I'll stop off in France at other projects - and head for the project near Madrid that I've heard of.

PHASE FIVE - slowly moving back north, September. And arriving back in Berlin on the last weekend of September, to face dreary weather but hopefully see lots of people who haven't totally forgotten about me...

And then - back to normal. One seminar to finish off, work, that sort of stuff. I'll probably be looking for another place to stay, cheaper, with more political people. We'll see. Slowly, gradually, trying to reorganise my life so that I'm less dependent on money. And 2007 already seems finished, even though it's also only just started...

So good night to you all, bougling people, you will hear from me through other channels.

La démocratie, c'est moi

Our mother clown found a video of the mini performance we did when sarkozy came to Berlin.
I guess it's only fun to watch for people who were there - but whatever, here it is all the same.

It will be about time I wrote a final post. Soon. Monday at the latest. I'm going to leave my laptop at [m]'s on monday evening and it will stay there until I come back at the end of september. Until then, there will probably be no blogging, but some emails to keep people updated...

My bedroom looks like it's been turned upside down. My clown's stuff are lying on the floor - clothes, games, plastic toys (made in china), my clown's passport which I cut up and prepared yesterday, tools, sleeping bag, tent, books, papers and flyers. There's packing and sorting that needs to be done, clearing and cleaning, hiding and throwing away... I got myself a biography of rosa luxemburg to read during my trip. I don't know if I should take other books - a question Ex wouldn't have even asked himself, I know...
Anyway, off I go for my last few days.

Oberkaporalie Bipbip

brunch this morning with my lovely girls [d] and [a] from work, on the grass along the canal - the luxury of berlin in the summer... enjoying the sun, free time, green grass, cheeky swans, and socialising with food and drinks lying on the blanket in between us. [a] has just come back from a work trip to the -stan countries. Before the trip she complained all the time about having to go there and how she really didn't feel like traveling, especially as she was in the middle of moving etc. She came back with a big smile and saying it had all been fun after all, in spite of having to conduct three interviews a day, in spite of sitting in a taxi in tadjikistan or wherever with a driver rushing at 190 km an hour on a pourly maintained dust track while eating sunflower seeds.
After they left to attend their respective chores, I stayed outside and read for a while, or alternated between reading and observing the overly numerous swans scratching their wings frantically. Summer in Berlin. Around me, several other people who like me could afford to spend the day lying in the grass enjoying the sun and the scenery. Beautiful life.

Eventually it got too warm and I packed and left. I listed all the items I still needed for the clowning and decided to set off. [r] called before I did to ask whether he could pick his glasses up, abandonned yesterday evening on the kitchen table. We went out for a coffee before I headed for humana, a second-hand shop, in the hope of finding the most absurd colourful clothes imaginable. I picked the stuff I would never otherwise pick - abominable colours, weird shapes, not my size - and tried to get some sort of "uniform" for the action on june first together - a anti-militaristic action. I got a kaki tank top and a kaki trousers as well as a frilly pink mini skirt to wear on top of the army clothing - army people don't like frilly pink things. I also found a hat, and several absurd items to fill my bag within - the idea is to have a bag filled with ridiculous things so that when the police asks you randomly to empty your bag, it goes on and on and on and on... x-tra large pink bras with little hearts on, ducklings, toys and whatever else...
I called [d] up who lives just nearby. He'd told us all he 'd bought lots of clown's noses, so I wanted to see if I could pick one up. He sounded busy but at home, so off I went to get my nose. He and his girlfriend were busy preparing for another clown action. Heehee, activities and preparation for political actions going on everywhere...

Back home, I tried my new soap bubble machine gun out - a bad buy, if you ask me, but I needed some sort of ridiculous army machine guns and wanted something that made bubbles. My flatmate seemed curious about the x-tra large pink bras with hearts on. And then it was time already to set off for dinner at [j]'s with [k]. [k] sent me an sms to see whether I'd pick her up with a bike. flatmate didn't have any bicycle plans for the night, he said, so I ruthlessly stole his bike once again and set off for the food coop first to get wine and the last of the mountain cheese, then to [k] and we both pedalled over to [j]'s place. We had an absolutely loooovely dinner enjoyed outside in the garden of [j]'s house-project and chatted until one in the morning, mainly about the berlin left alternative political scene...

I've decided my clown's name would be bipbip. And those who know will know whence that comes.

my banal friend [A]

[a] had always been a bit of mystery to me. when she wrote a few weeks ago saying she would come to berlin for the weekend, I was naturally happy and enthusiastic and made clear that she was more than welcome. she called early one morning and got me out of bed, and the phone call was so pleasant, as if we'd been in touch regularly. She pushed her visit back once, then once more, and eventually called again to say THIS TIME she was coming.

[a] is German, from the south, but i met her in paris, where she's spent almost ten years. she's now moving back to Germany, which is also part of why she popped in to berlin to visit me. I met her in late 2000 at uni - in the toilets actually. We were both in a class on social problems in great britain and I'd found her aura attractive and friendly. After the class or during a break, she smiled to me, a big warm friendly smile, as I came out of the toilet booth - and that had never ever happened in the toilets at Paris 8. I immediately liked her and we started chatting.

I can't really remember how often we met - I have the feeling it wasn't that often, but I realised this weekend that I'd somehow met most of her paris friends on various occasions. I never got in touch with her on those rare occasions when I was in Paris over the last years, because I was never sure how comfortable meeting up would be. I now think that was silly - but I simply couldn't really grasp her as a person.

[a] always said money wasn't a problem. "money comes and go". back then, i found that attitude very unusual - I couldn't imagine managing on my own in paris and felt that i would feel very panicky if, like her, i'd had no fixed job. but for her, "jobs come and go", and she'd always somehow managed. I admired this relaxed confidence. Gosh, I was only 21, and she was about as old as I am now.

[a] is an artist. she paints. she also used to work in an old person's home for two months every summer back in germany. she said she enjoyed being with old people, and linked this to her art as well - she liked using material that she found on the street, that was old, that other people felt was useless but that she felt had stories to tell and could still be used and transformed.

there was something v. paris about meeting up with [a]. Her chambre de bonne up up up on the seventh floor of her building on boulevard lafayette, the tiny twisted staircase that took one up there, her room overlooking the busy city's roofs. I was from the banlieue, I lived there, and being in Paris, in someone's home in paris, was still totally new to me. I'm not sure if I remember correctly, but I think she invited me over for dinner after our encounter in the toilets. we walked through paris, it was night, it was autumn or winter, we chatted in english. she called her boyfriend up, a new yorker, to tell him I was coming, another guy was there, a swede, we ate drank chatted - I wasn't used to having dinner at friend's, to having wine, it all felt like a different world to me. Back then I spent all my social time with Xa and Cam and then boyfriend Ni, playing badminton, having picnics, spending time in parks and playing music. We didn't cook for one another, us all living with our respective parents. we went to eat out sometimes. Now of course, I wouldn't find anything strange about eating at friends', and it's funny to remember now how bizarre it all was for me back then.

When I came back after my six months in berlin, in 2001, we met up again. She'd broken up with her boyfriend and decided to remain single for the next couple of years. I was coming back with my heart full of "I found the man of my life" and she patiently listened. We met in the museum cafe where she worked, somewhere around montmartre I think. At her place, too. And eventually she set off for ecuador, just like that, alone, with little spanish, and no real idea of where she would stay. She ended up there having no money because her card refused to work, hungry and starving on the street and making aquaintances with the people of the streets of quito - as so often before in her life, ending up in tricky situations but always protected by her aura and not being subjected to violence. She said she also spent a while with the hari krishna people, and I couldn't really put the spiritual dimension, that is so far from my life, together with my confused image of her.

Anyway, zoom back to the present. I came back from work on friday and saw that messages were waiting on my phone that I'd forgotten home - and realised she had arrived in berlin a half hour before and that I had to find out where she was. Eventually she turned up at my metro station and sent an sms asking to be picked up. I pedalled over and saw her nowhere. At the terrasse of a cafe though there was this woman with huge sunglasses enjoying a beer in the sun. She looked so normal, could that really be [a]? She waved at me and indeed it was her - she looked very different to what i expected. she had a little make up, her hair had been paid attention to, she looked more like a working class woman trying to look dignified than the fresh unconcerned artist I remembered. She looked --normal. She said she was reading some sort of romantic comic diary book, and told me enthusiastically about her new job - which will consist in large part in driving around and travelling a lot, as sales representative for some fair trade product or other. It sounded like too much driving and polluting for me to have sounded enthusiastic about, and I was puzzled about her enthusiasm for the tacky book as well. Had I been wrong about her all this time? But then I remembered to think about people in terms of processes - which I so often forget to do - and felt she was still as interesting as ever.

Now in her early thirties, she had for the first time decided to take a "normal job" to see how it felt and to come back to germany. She said she was entering a "banal" phase. I had to remember that she'd spent all of the past years with little money and living unconcerned by consumerism. I eventually felt she was entitled to enter a different phase although I was a bit worried about it.

We went out for dinner at the nicest pizzeria in town round the corner from my place. The restaurant is always extra crowded and busy, and we walked on the terrasse to find a place to squeeze in - when I heard somebody calling me. I looked down at the table next to me and saw my lovely friend [m] and her girlfriend [c] - and next to them, two empty seats. We sat with them and [a] started bubbling out all about her new situation - and I was still unsure how to feel about it. The emphasis on the driving was particularly disturbing, from an environmental perspective - and this was reinforced by the presence of [m] and [c] who are both very environmentally aware. I wondered what they thought of [a].
At the same time though, her candidness and maladroite self-acceptance was endearing - and most of all the curious mix and uncategorisable patchwork of her personality - and her obvious warmth and love for others. She asked [c] who had given her the love bite on her neck and refused to believe it had been [m] - eventually admitting she had never met a lesbian before, that she knew of. She said paris was full of gay men (including her best friend), but no lesbians. I think [c] and [m] were very puzzled by that.

We spent all of friday night and saturday all day chatting, until I eventually felt absolutely exhausted by it all, and dulled down. We walked a little bit through touristy mitte, but my energy levels were already too low to take the masses of tourists. Still, we caught up with one another's lives and it was comfortable to get the feeling I know where she stands now.

Sunday I had a brunch to go to - a getting together with the people interested in developing the non-commercial agriculture project, as well as non-commercial life in general - and it was good to have a break and be back in my little alternative berlin world. When we met again in the afternoon for a short while before she caught her bus back to hamburg, all was good and comfortable again and I'd definitely decided [a] was as special as ever. Banal yes, but special all the same.

AHEAD

more meetings, more networking, constantly exchanging informations on the camps, the infrastructure available up in hooligendam for the g8, training, gathering material, who's a sleeping bag, a tent, what else do we need, how do we get there, where do we want to stay, with whom... everything revolves around the first week of june, it seems ridiculous to even look beyond that on the calendar, there is no energy for anything else. first week of june, first week of june.

My friend [A] came over last weekend. That's when I realised how difficult it was to discuss what was going in my life these days - every event, every meeting seems connected to key words, the jargon code that automatically develops within a "scene" - just like the european commission people constantly talk in code ("the second pillar of the CAP"...) - just like students use codes and abbreviations - it's shorter, we know others understand it - until we're faced with someone who comes from a totally different background, and all of a sudden, the practical language appears to be nothing but an exclusion tool that renders communication opaque and difficult. Oh well, poor [A]. It was good to see her again though, even though I'm a little sorry I could hardly talk about anything other than political activities.

I've basically lost track of time... woke up this morning thinking it was tuesday, though unsure about it. Every day is packed, my diary is entirely scribbled over with appointments and addresses and numbers... spent monday preparing for the meeting of part of my g8 group, then at the meeting, then at the autonomous seminar I and another group organise - we had a speaker who told us about the development of self-organised, autonomous projects in berlin from the 80s till now, was fascinating - then a beer with the seminar preparation group along the canal, enjoying the sudden arrival of summer and super-high temperatures... sleep...

Tuesday, wake up with this feeling of summer holiday, no work to go to this week, warmth pouring in from outside, and freedom to choose how to organise my day... spent way too much time on the computer typing protocols of various meetings and sending infos around - and eventually set off to get myself a sleeping bag and all the stuff I need for camping. All the time I'd felt "ohmygod i don't have a sleeping bag i need a sleeping bag i'll never know how to buy a sleeping bag i've never bought a sleeping bag i'll probably never even do it and then i'll be without a sleeping bag and it'll be a catastrophe" - but i calculated how much i could spend on the sleeping bag and went off to the camping store and got everything easy peasy. i don't know why i'd developped such a panic around the sleeping bag issue. Found the tent mum had given me in the cellar, with it also found useful pockets to hide personal documents under one's shirt and keep them safe. I tried building the tent in my room to see how big it is exactly and whether I could fit another person in it with me (as well as bags). Having the tent in the middle of my room added to the whole atmosphere of summer holiday somehow. the tent is tiny though, it will be "kuschelig" (cuddly) if I take somebody along. Then off I set for the food coop plenum - chaotic and tiring as ever, most people have no comfortable plenum culture - and left early to pedal over to a friend's who had organised a wide g8-networking meeting at his place. 20 to 25 people there, discussing their plans and trying to figure out whether we could all camp together and build a friendly cluster. The plenum culture was much more comfortable - people raising their hands to signal they had something to say, keeping to the point, not mixing topics and not interrupting. Much better than the food coop people. back home, sleeping...

waking up, not knowing what day it is... tonight dinner with ex and [R], tomorrow brunch outside with friends from work, dinner with other friends, friday unclear, weekend spent creating a UFO with the clowns, monday free, tuesday + wednesday work, and thursday in a week, i'm leaving berlin... ONE flipping week left... need to sort out the papers in my room for the guy who's renting it while I'm away, make sure I don't leave anything private lying around... hectic hectic, lovely hectic.

Angst

woke up at 2.30 at the sound of stomping and growling dogs in the courtyard. I suddenly feared it would be more police raids - but my building is so bourgeois, I couldn't imagine anyone's flat being targeted. Mine? It was a ridiculous fear, i'm not involved in protest coordination or anything. But feeling part of the extra-parliamentary left scene is enough to lay in bed with a fast beating heart waiting for a bunch of men to smash my door open and storm into my bedroom in the middle of the night.
Outside though, all was empty. It must have been a neighbour. I eventually fell back asleep.

we - my g8 group and i - spent all of yesterday together preparing for our week up in northern germany. we talked a lot about our respective fears - for many these include fear of dogs, fear of police on horses trampling sit-ins. batons.
mum suggested i stick a pillow under my shirt to let those violence thirsty members of the repression teams think i'm pregnant. even if they don't fall for it, it might still be good to have a pillow around at all times.
god, i'm feeling exhausted just thinking about the week up there and all i need to do before. my long-time-no-seen friend A is coming over this weekend (last spotted in 2001 in paris), which is super great but also adds to the general hectic.

vive la répression!

isn't it beautiful to leave in a free country? To have the right to walk wherever i please in the city, have the right to carry banners expressing my views or other views as I please? Well, let me rephrase: WOULDN'T that be beautiful?
A gaggle of clowns and I went off to Pariser Platz tonight to welcome sarkozy in town. We'd decided to greet him enthusiastically and happily because he's such a great man and represents our values - more work, more discipline, more authority. We met ahead of time, got dressed in bleu blanc rouge, painted our faces accordingly, and prepared two or three cardboard signs that said "TRAVAILLER PLUS et vivre moins" and similar sarkozy-friendly words.
We marched on to Pariser platz, where the French embassy is and another group was protesting with kärchers in their hands. Five policemen immediately rushed towards us and stopped us from joining the square. They required a translation of our cardboard signs - the gathering was allowed under the condition that no signs insulting the new president were used -, checked our bags more than thorougly, asked questions. The gathering of people on pariser platz protesting against sarko was attracted by us and rushed towards us and started filming and taking pictures while the police was unsure how to handle us. Eventually we were allowed to go on the square, although it still seemed we appeared dangerous to them.

People were happy to see us chaotic absurd people arrive on the square, although more than one person wondered how in hell we could screem TRAVAILLER PLUS et vivre moins, or "Vive sarkozy, plusss de hierarchie!" - which I ended up chanting in a microphone and everybody - everybody! - chanted and repeated after me. We were all praising the new president and asking for more disciplin! How much more dangerous can a political gathering get... We created a human machine and worked ourselves to death. Saw Ulli whom I keep seeing at political gatherings - and Micha, whom I also last saw on may first. Micha thought we were really cool.
Eventually the gathering had to be broken off and - on police orders - we were not allowed to leave in groups. Which, for clowns, is a little problem. We started running around like headless chickens, then decided we wanted to go to the chancelor's office. We left as ungrouped as possible under brandenburg gate and headed towards the governmental quarter. The bunch of policemen and one policewoman followed us. Immediately after brandenburg gate, they shouted at me I had to stop moving. I was carrying my "travailler plus" sign, I was visibly part of a group, and that was just NOT ON. Plus I was heading in a direction they didn't want me to head in. I found the whole situation so absurd I just couldn't take it seriously - what, you're seriously going to try to stop ME from walking wherever I want, with the make up I want, and carrying the sign I want, especially such a conservative sign? Hello? Freedom of anything? One of our clowns came up to me while I was being dictated what was right and what wrong, and took my sign down for me. I was frustrated.
Another clown crossed the street and died dramatically near a tree with his sign in front of him. The policemen immediately ran over to him to tell him that was not acceptable. We were told to walk south, which we had no intention of doing.
We eventually headed back through brandenburg gate and onto pariser platz to take the train back to the clown's home. But first we all sat down on a bench. How pretty we were, all white and blue and red facing the french embassy. But even sitting wasn't allowed and the policemen came to us to move us away. We walked to the next bench, walked slowly on, and they accompanied us. Eventually we caved into the train station faking discretion. A few minutes later, the police came after us to check we were really going off. We screamed in horror at them and ran around to hide, but they didn't seem particularly amused. They saw us off on the train.

So, let's list it all: Not allowed to walk freely, not allowed to carry a sign enticing people to work more, not allowed to sit, not allowed to accidently be wearing the same facial make up as 10 other people. As I said: we're all terrorists now.
I'm a normal person, and I'm anti-violent. But I feel the stately repression is closing in on me , on us normal people, and pushing the confrontative front gradually closer. Boy what fun.

People didn't necessarily know how they should understand our signs and our vive sarkozy. Confusion is fun. I enjoyed the action. Felt exhausted afterwards though, and I'm already wondering how it will be to be a full-day clown in early June - with a lot more repression to face. excitement excitement.

i am a terrorist

the last couple of days have been quiet after all of Wednesday's excitement. The main final demonstration towards heiligendam at the end of the g8 summit has apparently been cancelled by the police. The state's nervosity is becoming increasingly visible. I've had enough of seeing policemen and women - it's the first time that I'm so closely confronted with state repression and that the physical involvement of resistance appear so visibly to me. How so state repression? It started with the police suddenly appearing everywhere on the streets. I was walking with C the asylum seeker and could feel the tension in him as everywhere we headed police groups stood around. As an asylum-seeker in Germany, he has no freedom of movement and is supposed to stay within a ridiculously small perimeter. If he's found walking beyond the perimeter, he has to pay a fine. Out of the 40 euros a month he gets from the state - oh, I forgot, asylum seekers are not allowed to work. In any case, he's black and that's an easy pray for bored police who are told to be on the streets and make the state's muscles visible to scare those lefty. C and i turned round and stepped into a small restaurant. Freedom reduction #1.

Wednesday was a moment of random state intervention - hundreds of police were sent to search through left cultural centres and meeting points throughout Germany - Berlin, Hamburg and Bremen in first place. They know there's been a lot of activities around the g8 and networks are so loose and difficult to see through, they just decided to come in and take what they needed - computers, emails, servers. It scares people in the region where the g8 summit will take place, who think that hordes of terrorists will come and destroy their region. Well, we will be hordes, and we will create chaos and confusion, but I refuse that the state uses the blanket scary word "terrorist" to describe actions that are visibly critical of official policies. Where's the killing? Where's the attempt to violently blackmail large portions of the population? The police will have the right to preventatively lock up people they think might be willing to use violence (whatever the definition of violence may be in this case). Preventatively!

Nonviolent resistance isn't free of violence. As this video of parents in Belleville (paris) trying to stop the police from taking away an undocumented grandfather away who was coming to pick up his grandchild from school also shows. I should probably read some gandhi before i travel off to northern germany.

another night on the street

after so many independent left wing hubs had been subjected to razzias today, the anger was great. Everybody was on about it, everybody knew there was a spontaneous demonstration tonight - and here we were all again, the left, back on the street just a week after may first. LOADS of police, we all got checked before we could get to the meeting point. The woman before me, short haired, asexual, got asked by the police-woman, who was surprised to see the person stand in front of her waiting to be touched up "You're coming to me? are you a female?". They left Mareike and I through without too much checking.
Everybody was there, it was insane, all of the Berlin left wing world, with anger in their bellies, and solidarity in their feet. Mobilisation had started sometime around 12, I had been one of the many people that had passed the info around during the day through mouth propaganda on the street and phone calls and email. When the demonstration started to protest against the criminalisation of G8-critical activities, there were hundreds and hundreds of us. Eventually we started guessing there must be thousands of us. Then R. and i evaluated about 5000 - which seems to be what mainstream media also think. 5000 after just one afternoon of mobilisation! Berlin mon amour.
I saw a bunch of the usuals I meet on such gatherings - also Flo, whom I hadn't seen in a while. Asked him how he was - he said he'd been woken up this morning by the police breaking in into his flat to raid it. They took one of his flatmates. It didn't sound like his sort of day.

We walked for an hour and a half through Kreuzberg, and finished the demo all tired- everything had been peaceful yet strong and determined. It was one of those identity-building moments. We were there when needed, part of it, showing our solidarity with the projects and people that had been randomly targeted.

It was good to be there with the group I will be going up to Rostock with - some of them I still know too little to feel entirely comfortable with, but it's important to feel comfortable with one's group in such situations - and trust can only develop through common actions and events. The next weeks will be hot. It's good not the be alone.
To those who may be worried: No fears to be had. I've got people looking after me on the demonstration, just as I'm looking after them. And we'll probably be going to Rostock as clowns - and the police wouldn't dare hurt little rebel clowns, would they? All good and inspiring.

flash mobbing

I had decided to stay home and finish my paper at last, instead of, as originally planned, go to uni for the special g8 workshops week. A girl came to check my room out - she might rent it while I'm away.
But then I got this sms from a friend saying the police had started going through all sorts of meeting points of the left social networks - taking computers with them, mailing lists, all sorts of data linked to the preparation of the alternative summit and the protest in June. It's not the first time the police tries to destroy left wing infrastructure, but this time I really felt touched, involved. Betroffen. There are too many police attacks against left social spaces. I started smsing around and D. and i set off for one of the places we knew of. About 50 people stood around, several cop cars too, but nothing much happening. We moved on to the Köpi - a large lefty centre, originally an occupied house, got sold yesterday, which adds to the general feeling of bitterness. There too, several people standing around, scarce information jumping from mouth to ear. We went back to Bethanien, D. taking me on the back of his bike. And there the plan started rolling - information moving between people, meeting points exchanged for actions. We spent the next several hours moving from meeting point to meeting point, getting informations about the next stop more or less at random on the street. Eventually we could recognise the faces of the people involved, see groups arriving on their bikes, spread information in passing on the street. An invisible network had formed. Eventually D. had to go off to an appointment, and I left because I couldn't follow the rhythm without a bike.
As the police visibly tries to impress and stop mobilisation for all the actions planned around the g8, the mood in the city gets more and more radical.

since then and meanwhile

I've been checking the news and couldn't help coming to the conclusion that sarkozy had done a really really good job of everything. So much so that I can't help admiring him. And I know that social fights will be strong, and I know that Royal would have been just as bad, except mobilisation against her from the street would probably have been weaker than against polarising Mister S. And so I've started calculating when I could go back to France and what I should do and what mobilisation would be interesting. The LCR wants to start mobilising soon - I might want to work with them. And another three weeks and I'm free to go where I please.

oh, btw. Sarko's yacht has sunk.
(what would happen if that did happen?)

Hip hip hurr--

Have had no time since the results came out to write about how I felt, each night for the past several days having been filled with two social meetings each. I've started to feel very tired today from meeting too many people and sleeping too little and planning too much - and also from my cup of tea this morning at breakfast jumping on me and depriving me of my tea. It seems I've become addicted to coffeine in black tea. I feel like a limp piece of cloth when I haven't had my tea for breakfast.
SUNDAY sunday... Lutz, who was visiting from Paris, had followed the electoral campaign with enthusiasm and horror, and repeated the whole weekend over that Royal could still win. I kept telling him to forget it as I saw how she made mistake after mistake and destroyed all her credibility. But right before I left the flat at 7pm Sunday evening, after having checked the news on line - super high participation, DOMS voting rather more left wing than usual - I was suddenly packed by an irrational glimpse of hope. Perhaps it wasn't all lost. Perhaps power wouldn't be given to the one who was so thirsty for it.
I travelled over to P'Berg to get the results live in an overly full location. It was once again a shock to realise I don't know any French people. It was the first time in a while I would step in a place without any known faces around - except a friend of Annika's, Aline, whom I'd met earlier in the week, and was there too, resigned and dull. Lutz was late, my stomach was turned upside down, I couldn't take the waiting anymore. 20 seconds. I called him up. 10 seconds. 3.2.1. And I exploded in rude words on the phone and hung up. Constantin and Caro who had shown up earlier than Lutz were outside but of no support - they hadn't followed the campaign more than most educated Germans. L arrived and we went across the street to eat and dampen the frustration. Lutz and I hung around afterwards for a while to get some of the speeches and the images of the frantic excited journalists busying around the Fresh Presidential Hand stuck out the car window.
I had an emotional shut down. L and I parted to each go to our further social commitments.

election angst

I went off to the embassy early this afternoon. No queues this time, probably in part because the embassy people had realised that their system last time with three queues was insufficient - this time there were eight embassy functionaries to check our passports instead of three. The embassy was swarming with french people clustered in communicative groups enjoying cafes in the expensive exclusive embassy café in the inner garden. I caught bits of conversations as I moved straight towards my Bureau de Vote "... et il a gagné des points après le euh le debat euh..." nod nod ".... ah oui et puis ségolène...". The room was smaller than last time - of course a much smaller table was necessary to present the bulletins. I picked up a Sego, accidently two actually, but the man insisted I take a sarko as well. I went off to stick my sego in the envelope, had my passport checked again, my name loudly mispronounced, the other man shouted back I was allowed to vote, I slid the envelope in the box, was shouted "VOTED" at, and signed.
Outside the embassy, french people stood handing out flyers for their own little french-in-berlin projects - a special newspaper, another guy selling wine. And there I was, back on Pariser Platz, and suddenly I thought - wait - didn't I pick up two segolene at first? Had I put the other one back? Hadn't I accidently stuck two segolene in the envelope? That would make my vote invalid. I still haven't really gotten rid of my doubts. Terrible feeling.
Saw J. yesterday evening at the McPlanet social event, who said he'd just found out his mum would be voting sarkozy. He's sent her loads of Le Monde articles in the hope that she would change her mind at the last minute...
Tonight, will look at the results coming out in a bar in trendy P'berg with L. He's still forcing himself to believe "she" can win.
Now that I possibly invalidated my own Super Vote, I really can't see it happen. It will be a sad evening.

in response to (not so) Anonymous

One of my favourite anonymous rewarded my existence with a series of twelve challenging questions I will now attempt, with the feable intellectual capacities that were granted to me by nature, to answer.

1. Why do you blog in English
Choosing a language to write in remains a tricky business for me. When I used to hesitate between French and English ten years ago, I am now torn between German and English. Writing in French is just not an option anymore. It's all a matter of which culture I feel more grounded in - and I insist on the "feel", as identity is an entirely subjective matter. Even though I feel more and more grounded in Germany, and German friends sometimes tend to forget that I'm not One Of Them, I'm only grounded in a mini-minimal zone of German culture, and I would never say I feel German.
Where the whole matter gets more tricky, is if I try to justify to myself the choice of English. Let's look at the facts: I spent 20 years in France, 7 years in Germany, and no more than a few weeks at a time in England. I've often been surrounded by anglophones, and I usually find it a lot easier to feel comfortable with anglophones than with francophones or Germanophones. But nevertheless, my exposition to British (or even American) culture, compared to French and German, doesn't go very far. In spite of all this, English continues to be my language of reference.

2. Did you see how the LAPD dealt with peaceful immigrant demonstrations on m'aidez?
No, I hadn't. Not good.

3. I love reading you - it flows, it's taking me somewhere.
Thank you. Very. Much.

4. Isn't it about time you settled down and became Executive Secretary for the Marketing manager of Total?
This is an interesting point, and I want to promise I will not discard it all too rashly. But no.

5. Isn't it sweet how Jacques (later years) tyootwaz Angela..
Jacques (the Early Years) is much sweeter. Although not as sweet as Sarko, the early years.

6. Love you
Right back at ya

7. Gonna send Tom for his 18th (remember) a collection of music and films that had an impact on me... Hendrix, Dead, Easy Rider et al of that ilk.
SSSSSSssshshhshh!

8. Bisous
I continue to spell bisoux with an X. I don't understand why nobody does it. It seems right, proper, appropriate, considerate, morally superior and correct. Could it be that I'm wrong and have been all these years?

9. You'll end up with a ber belly - just like me - in a week or two
No be belly, nor beer belly. My belly very flat and exercised. As were my biceps last week after an intensive move-helping-mission.

10. No ten.
Typical. Ab-so-lut-ly typical. You've never been a reliable ten giver.

11. I bet you don't know who this is.
Well, you're the anonymous guy, you know, the one with the beer belly who listens to hendrix - aaaah, your name as just slipped my mind, but I'm sure we've met. Didn't we meet last week in ER?

12. So....?
And now, for something completely different.
tadatatdatadataaaa
Number one: The Larch.

and it moves

onward and forward projects go. Went yesterday evening to a meeting of the Karlshof people who started a year ago a project for non-commercial agriculture. The idea of the meeting was to see what had been done and how we - people who want to support the project and the idea of a non-commercial life in general - could all contribute to its development. There were about 30 people there, including R, who is with me in the preparation group for the autonomous seminar on solidary economy, and lived on Karlshof for a little while.

I wrote to Karlshof a week or so ago to see whether they'd be ok with me showing up for three or four weeks in June. One of the 8 people had answered that it would be basically fine - but I still had a problem with the fact that I didn't know the people's faces and didn't feel like I'd really found the entrance point to the network. Finding the entrance key to social network is always a bit of a random process.
As I arrived yesterday, I saw a few faces I'd seen in other similar meetings, but no one I could go up to and start chatting comfortably with, until R showed up. And then, as the meeting started and we gathered topics we wanted to talk about, I started feeling more comfortable with the whole situation, more like I was in the right spot. I mentionned the Buschberghof example near Hamburg, who do community supported agriculture, and in fact nobody knew about it but many found it interesting, among others to have as an example of how such projects CAN function, in spite of people's scepticism.
We had a small break and I tried to play table football with V, the Karlshof guy who had replied to my email, before I revealed myself as the email writer. I was embarrassingly bad at the game, but it didn't matter too much. V stated again that coming over wouldn't be a problem, that I should just send an email with an arrival date.
I talked with another guy who knows of a similar project near Madrid. It would be really interesting if I could get the contacts and go there too. Another girl from Poland was also interested in the Madrid project and would be going this summer. We exchanged contacts, and perhaps we could go down together. My months of freedom are really taking shape, it feels great.

As for the Karlshof non-commercial agriculture project - the Berlin people are going to meet for a leisurly self-organised brunch in two weeks' time to discuss how we can organise the distribution in the city and see what else we can do.

I exchanged details with a few people and left to meet up with L, who has just come from Paris for the weekend, at the McPlanet congress. Kath was also there but left just before I arrived, as she was too tired. We seem to be experts at sending one another sms and making out meeting points but then not managing to make it to the meeting. Was good seeing L again, as well as many of the other people from the berlin environmental scene that I've been seeing randomly a few times a year for the past several years. I used to find it uncomfortable beeing amidst these groups because I do not belong to the organisation they are all in and I used to feel excluded by the perceived strong group identity. Now none of this matters anymore.

Full day again today - chaotic meeting of the seminar preparation group this afternoon, and several events in the evening. In a way, I'm started to be as socially busy as I was during my erasmus semester in 2001 - which is good because it makes me feel a lot more at home in Berlin, and wanting to come back to continue working on the projects I'm getting involved in. But I'm also getting a little scattered. Oh well, some balance will come in.

exciting first of May spent on the streets of Kreuzberg. Day started around 2pm, meeting up another bunch of students with whom I'm organising an autonomous seminar, and we gave flyers around the square before the start of the EuroMay Day Parade. Kept bumping into known faces and having pleasant little chats, which was more enjoyable than giving flyers out anonymously. The rebel clowns were there too, having fun and being absurd. There was music, concerts, street theater, and people could make their own thought-bubble to carry around - some wanted the "reintroduction of the 35-second working week!", others focused on hierarchy, the state, cops, and even, yes, sarkozy.
Eventually the demo started and I gathered with A from the seminar preparation group, and three of her friends, C., L. and D., behind the samba band. We walked and danced and chatted and gave flyers out on the streets of working-class neukölln, stopped for a speech on precarity in front of a lidl, and ended on Hermanplatz, from where we moved on back to Kreuzberg where all sorts of concerts were taking place. It was already around 6pm.
The streets were packed, beer bottles and litter covered the ground, everything was fun and peaceful, restaurant toilets had long queues of communicative people with bladders full of beer. Groups kept getting broken and finding one another again as drinks, food, toilets, other friends were sought. There was more bumping into people last seen months ago, more splitting up of groups as the chatting left one lagging behind, and more group reformation following unknown physical laws. I kept trying to get in touch with Kath. who was roaming around, but the network wouldn't work. It was amazing that I could bump into all sorts of people but systematically miss Kath. We eventually lost A and I stayed with C and L. We ended up at a concert of an old German rock band from the 70s that recently got back together, Ton Steine Scherbe. Weird to be surrounded by a mass of people singing along songs I'd never heard before.
More walking, more trying to contact other people to get groups together. We ate on the street, J. eventually found me and joined our group with his Palestinian clown friend. Night was setting in, the crowds were still strong, music still filling the whole of Oranienstr, no signs of violence even though so much alcohol had been flowing around since the early afternoon. We walked on, J. suggested we picked up beer at his place, the rainbow factory, which we did. The Palestinian clown decided to go back home as he wasn't too relaxed walking around in crowds surrounded by cops. As we walked back towards the music, we saw masses of police cars parading up the street in line, and on another street another line of green lorries. We suddenly interrupted our chat when we realised that we were faced with masses of whistling excited young men - behind us, lines of green men with protection gear and non-smily faces. Unpleasant to realise we were sandwiched right between the fronts. We weren't quite sure where to go, moved on the side, hid behind a bus stop. Photographers and cameramen were everywhere to try get good pictures of the "autonomous", as they are refered to, throwing beer bottles and stones at the lines of green men. T, whom I was supposed to meet with M and Co a little while later, called me just as I was trying to figure out where in hell we could go and what we should do. I could imagine the lines of green men spraying pepper sprays behind us and was rushing around incoherently speaking on the phone and making sure I wasn't losing my group. But nothing much seemed to happen aside from the cops and young men facing one another and glaring, and we managed to move away, but were stopped by another line of green men who directed us straight in the middle of a road with traffic and towards another group of autonomous throwing beer bottles - this time in our direction, as the cops were behind us. Thank you cops. We ducked and found a passage back to the concert crowds and to the meeting point where T, M and the rest were supposed to wait. J. had left us to go to another party. It was about 10.30pm.
More concert, dancing, more staring at lines of cops absurdly parading in one direction or another. I read there were about 5000 of them around in the city yesterday. Around 1.30am, we moved on to the party where J was in a tiny courtyard filled to the brink with people dancing. Left a few hours later, just as more cops arrived to close the party down. All in all, an enjoyable random first of may.