Christine goes to LaD.I.Y.fest Berlin!
Chilling in the Netherlands could only last so long before the need for ultimate adventure takes over. Jon and I had met a rad grrrl, Lizzy from Seattle, at La Fargassa and had invited her to come visit us at Kim and Wim’s house should she be in the area. She took us up on the offer and came to visit bearing great news: Ladyfest was happening in Berlin in a few short days! “Let’s hitchhike to Berlin” we said!
Some background information. Ladyfest is a community-based, not-for-profit global music and arts festival for female artists that features bands, musical groups, performance artists, authors, spoken word and visual artists and workshops; it is organized by volunteers. Each festival is organized locally and independently of other Ladyfest events in other states or countries, primarily by volunteers, and most proceeds are donated to non-profit organizations.
Needless to say I was very excited to go to the Ladyfest Berlin, especially since this particular one had a D.I.Y. theme which is something else I get very excited about!
Lizzy and I took off on Monday morning. The day we didn’t get far at all. We ended up in Witten, a very small town we arrived in after a lucky last minute ride with the happiest girl I’ve ever met who took us 45 minutes out of Dusseldorf. The bulk of the first day was spent languishing at a truck stop on the highway for 4 or 5 hours where NO ONE gives rides even though we thought it was a great idea what with all the truckers and all. Nope. So we had a great first night we camped by a river in a secret location that the happy girl told us about. The river was beautiful, and we were initially really happy to be there until we took a look down towards our feet. We were walking in tall grass but barely touching the ground for all the slugs. It was either slug hatching week or the slugs were gathered together for a festival or something, but no matter where we looked the ground was thick with slugs. Ugh! You couldn’t walk without killing a dozen! Ugh! Ugh! We ended up finding a lovely out of use drainage ditch and pitched our tent there. The slugs stood on the banks and stared at us intruders. No bother, we had a nice dinner and watched the beautiful sunset and went to bed.
In the morning, around 7am, we heard some male German voices outside the tent. Not directly outside but in the vicinity. I stuck my head out of the tent to greet the faces of three very confused and befuddled looking older German city workers who were there to do something with our new homeland and had not been expecting to come across two American girls in a tiny tent. We waved friendly and they retreated to give us space to get our stuff together. We did so and packed out of there chuckling and waving at our new friends who stared in abject confusion the whole time. We laughed and guessed we’d given them something to talk about all week. We walked on to the train station where we took a train to Dortmund. It was at that point that we realized the conductors hardly ever come on board to check fare tickets and if they do then you can say you just got on board and that you only need a ticket to the next stop or so. Then you pay like 4 euros for a 20 euro ride, etc. (note: the train system is REALLY expensive in Germany, a one way ticket was 80 euros) Once we figured out we could train hop this way we put some serious miles beneath us.
The second day we got to within an hour of Berlin with a combo of train hopping and hitchhiking and walking long distances.
The second night we camped just a little ways outside Berlin. We had gotten very close to the city but it was 8pm and we were not interested in trying to navigate finding a place to sleep in the dead of night. So we pitched our tent a short walk from the train station, between a river on one side and the train tracks on the ridge above us. We saw the train tracks but the first train didn’t go by until after we were in bed and it was so loud that the earth shook! We laughed so much! I put my earplugs in and had a fitful night sleep but hey…what can you do in a situation like that except try for sleep and wait until the morning?!
We had a lovely river on one side….so peaceful….so placid….
and then our neighbor the loud and rumbling train to our left.
So the next morning we woke up really early and were on a commuter train to Berlin by 7:15am. We arrived in Berlin central station by 8:30 and began to try and navigate the largest train station I have ever seen in my life. Luckily there were a lot of resources at our disposal and so by use of the internet cafe, the bookstore and the variety of maps from the info center we were able to contact our couchsurfing host, confirm the location of the day’s kickoff brunch and find out which train to take. Brilliant! We found the location with no problems and arrived as the first ones there, they had just finished setting up the vegetarian brunch with more fresh food than we’d seen in days and we were absolutely thrilled. It was a lovely space!
In the days that followed Lizzy and I spent the daytime running from one amazing workshop to the next and being immersed in fantastic revolutionary discussions with awesome females and our nights dancing to great bands sometimes in clubs and sometimes in open air collectives but always surrounded by great energy. It was such a good time, indescribable!
We took turns breaking wood with our bare fist at a self defense workshop called Wendo:
…we ate amazing falafels and drank German beer with our new friends….
…we read zines hanging from the ceiling inside a zine spaceship made of tinfoil…
…we saw awesome female musicians and artists perform at Schwarzen Kanal (a GLBTQQ community of trailers in the reclaimed space of an old communist industrial yard)…
LaD.I.Y. Fest Berlin was AWESOME and INSPIRING and a highlight of the trip for me so far. I encourage you to check out the program of events at their website: http://ladyfest.lautr.com
On the last day I was there, Sunday, I decided to spend the day sightseeing Berlin by myself – a chance to decompress from the week and to take in a city with such a different history than I’d seen up to that point. It was a great day, I left the apartment around 7:30am and was in the middle of the city by 8 which commenced 12 hours of straight sightseeing that took me through Berlin and to the outskirts where I visited a concentration camp. Here are some highlights:
In the plaza, in front of the Brandenburg Gate a symbol of Cold War division where the Berlin Wall used to stand, a fake communist soldier and a fake american soldier and I all hoped for peace. After I paid them one euro, that is.
These people were all cued up for getting inside the Reichstag which is Germany’s parliament building located in the center of Berlin. During the Cold War it was part of West Berlin and the Berlin Wall ran directly behind it. I was not interested in standing in that kind of line so instead I took pictures.
…but the Reichstag doesn’t look so impressive anymore when you can just pick it up and put it in your pocket….
…I also picked up the Siegessäule along the way, a golden statue of victory which can be entered and climbed to the viewing platform on the top much like the statue of liberty. I did so and enjoyed the view at the top (along with the 50 other people crammed and jammed into the windy platform).
I spent the day gawking at architecture like I hadn’t seen anywhere in Spain, France or the Netherlands. Architecture guilded in gold and crazy buildings covered in statues of people. Fanciness and fussiness and a different kind of beauty alltogether.
At one point in my wanderings I overheard an English tourguide talking about a concentration camp just outside the city which you could pay 30 euros to bus to. When the tour group took a break I took him aside and asked if there was a way to get there on public transport. Turns out I could take one of the city trains to the end of the line, walk a ways and get there. So I did.
Just outside Berlin over 50,000 innocent victims of the Nazis perished at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in conditions of appalling brutality. The camp became a training ground for the coming holocaust and ultimately the center of the whole concentration camp system. After the Nazis were defeated the Soviets turned the camp into a gulag for their own political enemies. Thousands more were to perish over the next five years. Visiting this enormous site, walking the grounds and through the extensive buildings alone on a dark and rainy afternoon, was a singular experience. Both emotional and detached, moving and scary and overwhelming. I didn’t take any pictures because that seemed really wrong somehow. But I did experience it and I recommend that anyone in the vicinity of a concentration camp make it a point to go once in their lifetime because it is really, and can only be described as, a singular experience.
The next morning, Monday, I got on a train by myself with the aim of arriving in the Netherlands that evening. I rolled in to the station at 9pm and Jon was there to meet me and we were both really excited to be back together after a week of seperate adventures. I had an awesome and amazing and life altering week in Berlin and can’t recommend that city highly enough. I can’t wait to go back for Ladyfest 2009!
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