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BERLIN - TEMPELHOF IS NOT BURNING BUT THE PHOTOJOURNALISTS WERE ON FIRE

When I heard a whole bunch of noise outside of my window in my Neukölln flat Saturday night, I thought, yeah, it's probably the Sufis and Seventh Day Adventists once again, trying to drown each other out on one of their religious missions around my neighborhood. It turned out to be the police though. Germans have started approaching squatting as a mass event that's publicized, like a rave. So on the occasion of the hyper-marketed mass Tempelhof airport squat--which attracted Europeans from all over--the masses of cops were acting as if the squatters hadn't opted for grassing a vacant airport, but instead were planning to burn down the Reichstag or something. Since I had to run some errands, I decided to get out there and follow them and their escort of photojournalists, who seemed to be desperately waiting for someone to finally start lighting stuff on fire…

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After the mass rally I was handed a tiny piece of pink paper and another blue one. The whole thing was meant to be a highly sophisticated way to split the crowd into two divisions. I trusted my gut and went with the guys with the pink flags.

Most of the time we walked in front, next to, or behind police troops.

At least the locals seemed to enjoy themselves.

My plan to blend in with the Keffiyeh I snatched from my roommate was a bit over-the-top. No one else was wearing one, so the other squatters probably thought I was an undercover cop or something. Actually it was pretty easy to tell the difference between cops and squatters: the happy, peaceful guys were squatters…

The annoyed ones in uniforms weren't. By the way, people were filming and taking pictures all the time. Journalists filmed squatters, who filmed police guys, who filmed squatters (the journalists constantly filming both sides in a wanky attempt to portray "both sides of the conflict").

This is the notorious fence. Whenever someone displayed the courage to just as little as poke it, the police guys freaked out, dragged him away and arrested him. I think they must have been bored.

Without taking any rebellious initiative whatsoever I found myself in a sitting blockade that squatters did in front of a massive water cannon. Lucky us—we had umbrellas. Still, we were closed in and then they carried us away, which was pretty much the most exciting part of the whole event.

It went downhill from there, the rebellious energy just faded away like that. So I decided to follow through with my errands, while the "tough guys" kept hanging out at local park "Hasenheide." Later that day I read that the squat was successful after all—two people and one bottle of beer entered (and left) the abandoned airport building. All in all a pretty mellow afternoon. How about next weekend, same time (but maybe without bats)?

JULIANE LIEBERT