Anti Iraq War Protest on 15th February
In early February 2003, four friends — Axel, Danni,
Philip, Sebastian and I — started off on a journey from
Wuppertal to Berlin to take part in the protest against
the Iraq war on the Strasse des 17. Juni. We travelled on
what is called a Schönes Wochenende ticket. In English,
it could be translates as the “beautiful-weekend-ticket”.
It is really meant for families, but can also be used with
a group of up to five friends to travel anywhere on the
German rail network. The stipulation is that you must
travel on the slow trains within one day and the cost is a
very reasonable twenty-five euros for everyone. As we
bought two tickets on the way there and one ticket
back, the round-trip cost each one of us just fifteen
euros per head. I was kind of roped into it by my mate
Axel Böhnisch, who thought I was a bit boring and
should do something more adventurous or he wouldn’t
be interested in me anymore.
Axel and His Father
Axel was an unusual character whose father had, as a
nine-year-old boy, been forced with a gun to his head to
march from Silesia to Wuppertal at the end of the war.
In practice, this meant walking from what is now Poland
to the western part of Germany. He and his wife were
disabled and so they decided they were going to let Axel
do pretty much as he wished as a child — if he got hurt
he got hurt, if he got killed he got killed and that was
that. They allowed Axel to leave school at fourteen and
work in a gas station on the motorway, save money, buy
a VW Eddie camper van and drive all the way around
Western Europe in it with his mates from Remscheid
grammar. They all busked singing ‘Country Roads’ for
the petrol and a can of baked beans for dinner. She was
allowed out into the forest to play late at night and, yes,
even for the whole night if he had wished this was a
most original step for a caring father. I experienced a bit
of that with him when we went midnight sledging in
Remscheid with his mates.
Boarding the Train to Minden
Our trip to Berlin began with the Regionalbahn (regional
service) to Dortmund in the Ruhr where we changed for
another, newer RB to Minden in Westphalia. Both times
we went right to the end of the line. We arrived in
Minden at eleven o’clock and the idea was to doss down
on the station for four hours until the train to
Braunschweig in Nether-Saxony came at 3.05. Axel was
first to lay down his Isomat comfortably, declaring that
it could have been much worse; we had found a little
hallway to an office where a door had been kicked in
and four of us had eventually bundled in there like
sardines, sleeping side by side with girlfriend Danni, the
fifth person, sleeping on top of boyfriend Phil. Dear old
Axel had just pretended to nod off peacefully as a joke
and the first of about five long goods trains came
thundering through. We were in for a rough night.
Thankfully, like true hipsters, they hadn’t forgotten the
grass, and that did help us to get a few winks of sleep in
between goods trains. After playing with the juggling
balls that Sebastian had brought we were just mellow
enough for sleep.
The Tannoy I'll Never Forget
We were woken up promptly by the announcement that
the 3.05 was to be approximately five minutes late, a
typically German good-will message to get up and catch
the train to Braunschweig. We scrambled everything
together and bundled onto the train. When we reached
Braunschweig we got a connection to Magdeburg in
Sachsen-Anhalt in the former DDR where we had a chat
with some of the local boys. My friends were quite
worried about them because they promptly told us to
‘get lost’. We were apparently from the West and we
had no right to protest in Berlin. In my relative linguistic
innocence, I remained totally unaware of this, instead
chatting up a young lady the rest of the way from
Magdeburg to Berlin.
Breakfast at the Lutheran Church Halls in Prinzlauer Berg
By the time we’d arrived, I felt very tired, but there was
no time for sleep. We were taken directly to the
Evangelische Kirchengemeinde (Lutheran Church Halls)
in Prinzlauer Berg where we were given a massive East
German breakfast spread by the very nice lady priest
who liked to chat about old times. In between the
politics, we talked about the little bread rolls she’d
prepared. She mentioned they were original East
German bread rolls that everyone had had from the
bakers in the DDR. After re-unification, the East German
population were promptly converted to the West
German Frühstücksbrötchen or West German Breakfast
Roll. Crusty and fresh each morning like from Lidl in the
UK. The truth is over time the East German roll was
missed and had made a massive come back. By 2003 the
East German bread roll machines were actually
valuable, because most of them had been thrown away.
The dough was white but slightly sourer, a little like Irish
wheaten bread but not quite the same — they have
more of a yeast-like taste.
Völker Hört die Signale!
After breakfast, it was straight out on the march with no
sleep after a twelve-hour journey through the night. We
walked from Prinzlauer Berg all the way to the
Siegessäule in the West (just past the Brandenburg
Gate) and were stationed about three quarters of the
way down the Strasse des 17. Juni near to the stage. The
picture above shows the view from the stage in the
opposite direction. Before approaching the march
proper, we had been confronted by some angry East
Berliners annoyed that we were taking up the whole
pavement. The priestess had responded by inviting
them to join us to which the answer was a swift “no
thank you” in abrupt Berliner fashion.
Chancellor Schroeder’s Lovely Comment
On the stage, we heard music from Veteran political
rock star Konstantin Wecker and some political
speeches. On the march, they estimated there were a
million of us but the actual number confirmed was more
like 500,000. The most touching moment was when
Chancellor Schroeder sent us a message from the
Bundestag up the road saying, “With regret, we’re on
America’s side, but to invade a country for purposes of
political expansionism is murder and to invade a country
for purposes of freedom, peace and happiness is
murder.” Considering Hitler did just that it really bought
the message home to me just how much we were
intending to follow suit in that situation. It was one of
the most profound political statements I’d ever heard. I
had been apprehensive about going on the protest
beforehand. I had believed in interventionism at first as
it had worked in the Balkans. Schroeder’s statement
completely changed my mind in an instant. It was the
word of an inspiring, charismatic leader who made me
believe I’d done the right thing. I’ve never wavered from
that position since. War is war; murder is murder.
In the Evening
After going back to the Lutheran church halls in
Prinzlauer Berg, we had some well-earned shut-eye until
about six o’clock when the others went to Kreuzberg,
but I remained in bed. I woke up later hungry for a meal
and slipped off to an East German Italian restaurant
somewhere around Friedrichsplatz. I had an appallingly
bad carbonara, which I assume was as the locals
expected it prepared, as with the bread rolls, from a
DDR recipe, but this time I wasn’t so impressed. I then
returned to sleep once again on a hard lino floor with no
pillow and just a backpack to rest on. By this time, I had
hardly slept for thirty-six hours. At the end of our time
in Berlin, we got up the next day and finished off the
previous day’s breakfast spread, thanked the priestess
for her generosity and set off back on the nine-hour
journey home.
The FC Magdeburg Fans
When we arrived in Magdeburg we were confronted
with some national socialists. A gang of unruly FC
Magdeburg fans got on board for a kind of joy ride to
Braunschweig and back. The nine-year-old son of one of
the ‘lads’ started running up and down the carriages,
shouting racial abuse about Germany’s first black
footballer, Asamoah. My friends confronted him and he
asked rather innocently to play with our juggling balls.
As lefties they thought this was sweet and rather more
what he should have been into at his age. His dad, an
avid FC Magdeburg fan, then came and asked us if we
were all German and to stop bringing his son into
disrepute, teaching him things he didn’t need to know.
After our lucky escape, I fell fast asleep. It was now
nearly forty hours without a bed and I was so tired I very
nearly missed the stop in Wuppertal and had to be
dragged off the train by a friend. I got caught in the
doorway in the process and I very nearly ended up
dead. One of the greatest and most fun experiences of
my entire life and it cost peanuts. Two of the best trips
of my life were with Axel.