We arrived at midnight yesterday (well Friday) and after a pleasant arrival at the Independent Media Centre in pretty central located Friedrichstrasse we went to the convergence centre in Evershagen to crash out for the night. It was pretty crowded and hard to find a space to put down our sleeping bags.
We woke up early in the morning – at about 7 am – and were shocked to find the police already totally blocking access to the city centre but for pedestrians and cyclists.
After we made our way to the campsite, we were pleasantly surprised with the camp, which is also at least today in danger of being overcrowded and is very well situated in walking distance of a train station and the city centre and the IMC and not too far from the convergence centre.
There is no running water, though, but otherwise it is a nice place to hang out at and people have spared no efforts to make it as comfy and friendly and welcoming as possible. It is also a self-organised space, too.
We pitched our tent up and went to the mass demonstration [pics]. The whole trainstation was overcrowded, because the idiot of an architect put only very small doors into the brandnew building. There were huge masses of people and some nice talks and speeches from the stage, most of them in German though, but they stressed the feeling of unity amongst the protesters who the interior minister had tried to seperate into non-violent and violent, but the liberals and everybody worked hard and really well together to put a stop to his intentions of getting the different groups conveniently fighting each other instead of focussing on the issues and the US government climate bullshit. Luckily enough the activist scene here in Germany is too clever and too well educated to fall into this trap.
Anyways lots of groups with lots of tactics and approaches. We were hanging out a little bit at the anticapitalist block, which had the best music. But then the cops narrowed the route down to one lane and so we got hold up a little bit and somehow ended up far behind at the attac block, and then apparantly at the harbour there was something happening but dont ask me what when and why, but found myself at one time in between police and stonethrowing protesters. Luckily someone pulled me in a bush and the tree protected us from any stones, but we did a quick run out of it during some break. We had some food then, the price of which was quite affordable, and listened a bit to the music, which was interrupted from time to time to try to get police and stone-throwing protesters agreeing to a peace treaty.
We went off then after meeting some friends and socialising to go in search for a nice toilet and missed the rest of the afternoon entertainment. Unfortunately my camera is not that suitable for fast actions, because the shutter takes about several seconds before actually taking the picture, so I gave documenting the rest of the rally a miss.