On Friday, we stayed in the camp and I did the interviews I promised for my dissertation project. Many people were already packing and leaving, and the atmosphere was relaxed, so I hoped to get some good insights and talks; it was hot as usual with the sun burning down, definitely, more than 30 degrees and campers stood at the exit of the camp waving DIY signs to catch a lift to the BEACH!!!. I first talked to a friend of mine from IMC UK, but the minidisc recorder seemed dodgy, so I just asked people hanging around the info tent and the IMC tent.

Thursday night was short, so after the more autonomous protesters gave up their 4.30am morning walk and I was back at about 6 am, I decided to go back snoozing a bit in the tent, as I had only 2 hrs sleep at most. Another protest started off at camp Reddelich to join protesters at the Westgate, but without the black-blocky people and I met all the other IMC UK volunteers, who had slept in for the morning walk. They decided to join that march, so I thought that as I had a car, I could either catch them up later or go to a different event, so we had everything covered.

Wednesday was the day of blockading actions. These seem to work amazingly well, with even the little steam train “Molli” being blockaded as well as the three gates in the security fence. But it is not sure how much of a difference it actually made, as this year’s G8 summit has the whole Wednesday scheduled for arrival, with the first official event being dinner on Wednesday evening. We first went with a car to the rally points to blockade the airport Rostock-Laage. Unfortunately, not many activists were present at the two of the four points we visited, before organisers dissolved the legal rally points at 2pm.

On Tuesday, there was a court case decision about the blockade of the airport and it seemed to get legally restricted to only a few people, about 50 or so, therefore we went over first to Bad Doberan to stock up on energy foods and then moved on to Kuehlungsborn, where we had a dip in the very cold Baltic Sea. We saw some police boats shipping along and some helicopters and a lot of police escorted convoys. The press centre is located here, they have already been under heavy criticism when they refused about 40 journalists accreditation before the summit, most of them because of their left-wing opinions and declared them to be a security risk.

Today we moved on from the Rostock inner-city campsite to the one nearest Heiligendam, the location of the G8 summit. There were several reasons for this: we met friends from imc uk at the gig yesterday, who told us they would relocate here, as most of the British protesters would be located at the Zapatista barrio and fed by the Anarchist Teapot food collective from Brighton. The vegan, animal-product free and therefore animal-friendly food was great, with soy pieces I haven’t had in years and good veggie stuff with salad and curry potatoes in a variety of sauces, and the team there is working round the clock to provide food and finally proper Black Tea with Milk and coffee round the clock.