From Hamburg to Rostock
My alarm clock was set to go off at 6:30, but I overslept. Luckily, it comes back on in regular intervals a good long while, and just after seven I finally heard it. I hadn’t packed anything the night before. The last week had been stressful for me, between working, looking after my son, and seeing off my brother, who had been staying with me in Hamburg the last two weeks. I scrambled to get packed and ready: we were set to meet at eight, and I needed at least 20 minutes to get to the main train station. I showered and managed to throw everything in my backpack without forgetting anything important, but I had to grab breakfast on the way.
It felt good to be on the street so early. I was nearing exhaustion, but it felt like I was on the way to something big, and this feeling buoyed me immensely. I stopped at Penny on the way to the Reeperbahn stop to get a Laugenbrötchen and a cup of coffee. There was a certain sense of being in the know on the ride to the train station. Two girls with backpacks got in after a couple of stops, and I felt a certain kinship that must resemble the feeling of belonging to a social scene and meeting your compatriots on the way to an important event.
The first real sense that this was not a normal morning came once I reached the main train station. A cadre of police officers clad in forest green stood in the large hall where the protesters had gathered. I met my contact group in front of McDonald’s and we went down to the track. My demonstration partner Jefe made a joke about the coffee he held in his hand; it was from the same place as he bought it before we left on our last adventure.
By the time we got there the platform was packed. A number of cops were standing feet away from black-hooded Autonomen, but there was yet no animosity from one side or the other. Nazi demonstrations were planned in several cities this day, and the police were on their way to bolster the numbers of their colleagues in Schwerin.
As the train pulled in we saw that we had landed exactly between two doors, meaning if we managed to get in the train, we’d be standing. People sat on the stairs and in the doorways, leaning against the walls and shared a seat. The mood was exquisite: there was shared expectation and hope in the air.
The journey was interrupted several times, once allegedly when the police tried to find and remove an individual who couldn’t wait to express his disobedience and decided to pull the emergency exit lever repeatedly. We saw nobody be forcibly removed, which did nothing to rule out the possibility for us.
When we finally arrived in Rostock—it took twice as long as usual because of the delays—there was a summerlike feeling in the air. If science has discovered that mammals secrete nanoparticles when in heat to attract the attentions of a sexual partner, it can only be a matter of time before it is found that people secrete substances in all kinds of situations to alert others to their condition. The air certainly felt charged that morning getting out of the train.
Thousands of people covered every patch of grass, singing, laughing, drinking, and waiting. The festival of resistance was about to begin.
