If only I could go around the world and fish for people. If only I had a net that would filter only the 1000 greatest ones. I would put them all in a big bag, find a place big enough for all of them and organise a party with them on a long week-end. Damn! I would have the time of my life!
Well, I don't need to do all that. Someone I know already did it. All I have to do is join the party. It's called Berlin Beach Camp. It's an hospex event. It has taken place for 5 years. I'm just back from it.
A beach in Berlin? Yep, this city has everything. There are quite a few swimming resorts that are accessible with the mass transit system of Berlin. Wherever there's a lake or where the river gets large, they will build a beach (you can build a beach ; German engineers can build anything), some showers, a little junk-food booth, a storage room that can be used for small concerts, a fence and an entrance gate with a cash register. Some are small, some are big.
This time, there was a huge one booked for us (the 1000 coolest people on Earth and me).
I got there on Thursday at 11pm, after a long but fast hitchhiking journey from Brussels. I landed somewhere not too far and used the mass transit for the last mile. I got out of the bus at the last stop along with two other people. I looked at them: "Beach Camp?" - "Yep".
One quiet german girl and one speaks-all-the-time-heaps-of-bullcrap dutch guy. I shouldn't be so hard on him, I suppose that's how I come across to a lot of people...
I have seen the world of hospex slowly taken over by Mtv watchers and MacDonalds customers mainly under the impulse of the couchsurfing.org network, that owner's motto is "more donation" which translates into "more members, whoever they are". I was half expecting that this year, there would be a big screen TV, and that the conversation would be around football and getting laid for boys ; shopping and how men are disgusting for girls.
I got to the entrance gate after a 20 min walk through the darkest forest, replying from times to times to the Dutch guy ("you're really from Reunion Island?" "How was your flight?" "What kind of music do you like?"). There were standing most of the organising team. I leapted in their arms. They're distant friends that I see once a year. Most of us met in the legendary 1st hospex camp in Normandy in 2005.
It was night. I followed the signs to the tent area. It was in a little forest, which is a great improvement on the previous times (that happened at a different location). A tent becomes a fucking oven when it gets hit by the first rays of the sun. Trees help you sleep late.
Instead of pitching my tent on the first free spot, I walked around the camp a bit. There were plenty of people scattered around, and I wanted to have nice neighbors. I found a group of people that more or less ignored me. So I walked away. Then another pack that instantly opened up to include me. I chatted with them for a while. And then, I found another group that were sitting on the floor and that sounded nice. I set up my tent at equal distance of both.
Then went back to the entrance. There was a sort of outdoor bar, a sound system was playing some hard rock (yeah!).
I met my ex-travelling companion Franck that was walking around in T-shirt. I gave him my jacket and went dancing to stay warm. Temperature was annoyingly low. Nothing really tremendous happened. I met with old traveller friends, we exchanged a couple of cute stories. When the clock stroke 3am, I went to bed. There seemed to be no tentless person so I enjoyed the spaciousness of my tent, and the bite of the cold.
I woke up at 11am, 8 hours of sleep. I was hungry. I went around looking for friends to go shopping with. I ran into Flore, one of my best friends from France.
She had hitchhiked overnight and arrived at 8 in the morning.
She's fucking hardcore with pretty much everything in life. She hitchhiked for the first time with me one year ago. Now I should call her "Master". I was really happy to see her, we took some empty bags and set off to the shop ; that was just on the other side of the forest.
There was almost a queue on the one kilometre across the forest to the shop. In the shop itself, a typical German supermarket, half the customers were from the camp, some of them trying hard to decipher German-written labels.
I filled my 60L backpack with food, plus 3 bottles of cola, plus 3 boxes of super-cheap wine. I was going to fuel myself on calimotxo exclusively. Shit! One liter of it cost me 50c and it's 6° of alcohol!
I had packed Flore's stuff too so it was very heavy. On the way back, we passed by a lot of people that were going there. I saw two of them as a car was coming from the camp. I told them: "Come on! Hitchhike, they'll take you!". One jabbed a thumb out as the car was passing, and it stopped 20m later. I met those two again without recognising them in funny circumstances.
I dropped my bag at the tent and went around smiling to people. That was one of my main activity on the whole 4 days. I just walked around, smiling to everyone, and everyone smiled back at me.
I didn't really know why I was doing that and why I was enjoying it so much until it was over, 4 days later. In the streets of Berlin, I still had some smile-momentum and smiled to a couple of random people and soon stopped; because they mostly looked away in an air of annoyance or submission. But at the camp, everyone smiled back.
I smiled frantically around the camp. Until, after having smiled to a group of cute people, I had passed them, and suddenly I heard a stampede behind me that was growing closer very fast. I turned around in time to see a human body thrown at full speed already in mid air, jumping at me. I dodged a bit too late and go hit on the leg. The guy flew past and landed two metres further, rolled in the sand and jumped back at me. I took him in my arms and gave him a big hug. My friend Thomas from Leipzig. I was so glad to see him!
We went around together, telling whatever news there was to be told. The people of the camp had already anarch-organised themselves according to the following pattern, that lasted until the end.
The "tent village" always had one or two groups of people sitting in circle between tents, socializing. From there, on the way to the beach, there was a lump of concrete that looked like what would be a smurf bunker if smurfs built bunkers. Sitting on that there would be another group a bit more dynamic, as some would be sitting on the smurf bunker, some standing, some leaning on it and the group would change configuration often. Those usually were eating something, the smurf-bunker providing for table space.
Keep going and you'd reach the beach. On the way from the camp to the food booth would be one of the core groups. First a loose group of people juggling, and near them a pack of people sitting in the sand in all shades of shapes, doing some basic socializing and very often singing the dumbest pop songs as loud as possible as soon as someone started touching a guitar.
I usually stayed away from this one, but I saw that Flore was lying there reading so I stopped for a while. If I had kept on walking, I would have reached the food booth. There were a couple of tables and benches with always some people sitting. A lot at meal hours.
From there you'd walk on, parallel to the lake, and you would pass between the volleyball field, that was permanently occupied from 10am to 10pm and the bath area.
Near the water, there usually was another core-group of lazy asses lazing around. And if you felt like walking some more, you would soon reach the concert hall and, a bit further, the end of the beach that had a huge concrete roof in the back. But I didn't go all the way there. Remember? I stopped at the first core group with Flore.
The poor thing was already drunk. In the middle of the afternoon. She was having a hard time and fell asleep huging the beach. So I put my head on her ass and rested a bit. But the wind was too cold and prevented me to fall asleep. So I decided to speak to the people around me.
There was a girl that was not so far from me that I knew from the previous beach camp. I'm very bad at remembering people and I was quite amazed that I could even recall her name: Verena. The only contact I had had with her was that we had waited for the subway together on the way from the camp back to Berlin when the party had ended.
Sure enough she didn't remember me. She was busy trying to learn to juggle so she couldn't pay too much attention to me. Which suited me well, as I was more in a contemplative mood.
After having talked to her for five minutes, I realised why I hadn't forgotten her. She radiates a lot of good vibes. She did that while not even looking at me, minding her own business, sitting in the sand. Just imagine the blast if she tried. I enjoyed very much her company so I hang around. A group of 4 walked past, stopped, looked at us and said: "Do you mind if we sit with you?"
And that's how it went most of the time. You'd just walk into a group of stranger and instantly integrate it. If you were lucky enough, they wouldn't even ask your name and your country of origin. But I had work to do. Before departing Brussels, I had printed 200 flyers for a video-projection that I intended to give the following evening. So I set off to spam the whole camp with it. It took me a little while before I moved to the volleyball field.
I play volleyball once a year or so. But then, I play a lot. After the smile barrage, that was my main activity. This time I didn't play too long because I had tried to set up an Ultimate Frisbee match for 6pm.
So at 6pm, I dropped the ball and picked the disc. Ultimate frisbee is a bit like rugby, but without a ball, without the tackling and with a disc. We started playing with a minimal team but soon people joined and the field became overcrowded. And between the volleyball and the frisbee, I had already made a handful of friends.
I was in a rather euphoric mood, I remember I made Thomas laugh because I was commenting on a cute boy. He called me gay, and I retaliated by commenting on a girl next: "Look at that blond girl over there. Is she not the hottest thing on Earth?". As we passed them, the hottest thing on Earth looked at me, wide-opened her big blue eyes and yelled my name. What?
It turned out that she was a girl I had met last year's Beach Camp. It took me a split second to remember but I still looked silly. I had written a poem to her the night I saw her the first time. And drunk as I was, it must not have been a very good one. But she liked the principle I suppose. We walked on after having exchanged a couple of precious smiles. And then came the evening.
They had organised some concerts. I made myself some calimotxo and joined. One band was already playing when I got there. I elbowed my way to the front row (that's where you usually have the most space to dance) and put myself on an empty spot, near two girls that were flirting together. Ah well...
More people started arriving, it became more crowded.
The music was acceptable. I was little distracted by the two flirting girls that had started kissing. I figure that lesbians don't like to be annoyed by horny guys that have watched too much porn. But then, they were joined by the hottest-thing-in-the-world, that I will refer to under her real name from now on, since she has a significant part in this story: Lisa. One of the girls making out was a the friend that she came with. I started dancing with her, and so, with them.
It turned out that the lesbians were actually bisexual. We got into a kiss-fest. Me and three pretty girls, boy!
For a moment, I though I had died on that volleyball field and actually went to paradise. That is a big concert hall full of friendly people and bisexual girls, everyone knows that.
Anyway, outside the concert hall, there was a place where we could make camp fires. With the girls, we went there and just sat down, our front hot from the radiating heat and our back cold from the german spring. We just talked to people around, of things that I don't remember anymore, but given the alcohol rate in my blood at the time, no wonder.
I do remember though, that Lisa was a bit restless for swimming. We were on the side of the lake, and its undisturbed surface must have seemed as a provocation to her. At one point, she just announced: "Ok, let's go swimming", and I felt my legs carrying me up before I could decide if I should go. The other girls as well as a couple of camp-fire-kids came too. We took off all of our clothe on the shore, and I regretted my move as soon as my toes touched the water. It was way colder than my tolerance allows. But I guess my ego was stronger than my sense of conservation and I kept going. I didn't stay long and was out soon, dried myself with my t-shirt and went straight to sit and shake close to the fire.
After a while, one of the kiss-fest girls came to sit as well. I was still shivering from the cold water. I turned to her: "Let's go to bed".
I got up quite early, at 8pm. The kiss-fest-girl was on a horrible hangover and I just couldn't lie next to her and sleep. I put a water bottle by her side and left the tent, a bit hormone-disturbed.
I went to the table-space, where the people were usually having breakfast. It was way too early for it to be crowded, but there were quite some people.
The area was divided into "VIP" and "broke-ass" zones, separated with a symbolic fence. You got into the "VIP" by paying 4€ and you could access the all-you-can-eat buffet. I sat down with the other broke-asses and ate my own food.
And then it was another long day of smiling, being smiled to, swimming in the cold water (more to stay clean than because I love freezing), playing volleyball, walking into old travel-buddies, sharing food and stories and laugh and other good-time-related activities.
I was expecting to meet the girl from the night before during the day but she was nowhere to be found. I knew that there was a Berlin tour organised and figured she would be there.
I also met up with Patryk. A polish guy that works on the same project I was going to do the video-projection about. A sort of hitchhiker festival. I spent quite some time with him and it was really excellent time. He's that kind of uncomplicated and genuinly nice guy that puts you at ease without even needing to smile. He helped me refine my speech.
In the evening, I had to do my video-projection. I started preparing it around 6pm, when Miicoo, one of the organiser announced a huge storm on the speakers.
He said we had about 15 min to secure our stuff before it broke out. And it hit us right on time.
It was a beautiful storm. Thunder, lightning, wind blasting, and the electricity was palpable. It got me really excited. I had found shelter under the big concrete roof at the end of the beach, from where I had a clear view on the lake and the rest of the shore. Rainwater was running down the beach in our direction. It was really funny to see two german guys spring into action, one putting up a small dike, the other one digging a drainage canal. Oh efficiency, Oh organisation!
The storm ended just in time for my presentation. I just had to run back and forth to get some gear in the last minutes of it. I noticed that a quite large group of people had found it silly to shelter from the storm, brought a getto blaster under a log cabin and danced in the pouring rain all through it. I would probably have joined them if I had had nothing to do...
I did my presentation under the same roof that had protected me, facing a huge crowd of maybe 20 people, and damaged my voice for good because I didn't have a microphone...
After removing the gear for the projection, I went around looking for friends. Which I found in the shape of my tent-neighbor Masha. We walked together to the tables to get a fresh beer. I had already downed half a litre of calimotxo during my speech so I was significantly drunk already.
Leaving the tables after a long and a bit flirty talk, we went back towards the concert area with a little detour on the beach. Moonshine, quiet lake, few people... It was romantic enough so I kissed her. She had told me she was a good kisser and I was curious.
I was quite happy about it because I remember that, earlier in the day, I was sitting with Flore on one of the fountains (probably brushing our teeth). We had a conversation about sexual preferences and how we had complete opposite tastes. And I turned towards the beach, looking for good examples in the crowd, and picked Masha, my tent-neighbor, as the typical hot girl for me. On which she totally disagreed. Which is good. You need a bit of everything to make the world interesting.
In the concert hall, there were quite a lot of people. We elbowed our way to the front and found Lisa there, of course. I kind of liked the way she looked a bit jealous that I was holding hands with Masha. But we still danced together and had some good fun. The music was fine enough.
Another friend called Bilbo walked in and I took a break of my russian girl to go talk a bit with her.
That is something regrettable in such big event, that the amount of social interaction is so concentrated that it is difficult to keep a consistent one.
She is the one I always stay at when I travel to Berlin and I wanted to... well, be a friend a little bit. We took a walk around to the campfire area, where many layers of people aggregated around the flames. Under the concrete roof, people were grilling meat on barbecues, just cooking or sitting around. In the sand or at the tables.
Some were forming a little circle of musicians and bawling songs from the 1995 charts. We completed our patrol and dived back into the mosh pit.
Masha was still there. I was a bit afraid that a cuter boy would have snatched her. Lisa had found herself a boy too. A skinny cute guy that I had seen playing banjo and being silly. I think I would like him if I knew him better so I was glad for her. The night evolved slowly until the point when Masha was too tired to keep going. I was exhausted enough so we walked back to the tents.
The dawn was late enough that we could see clearly. On the beach, we passed by a guy that was taking off his clothe to go swimming. "Swimming in cold water wakes me up after a good night sleep" says he. "Well, we're going to get some".
Masha woke up early to go catch her plane. It took me a while but I got up as well to help her get her stuff together. Hangover was on the low scale, it was a sunny morning, fresh breeze and all...
I went for breakfast with my bag of food to the broke-ass area. There were only two people so I sat with them. It's already annoying enough to be eating the same stuff for the 7th meal in a row. Add the slight hangover and the last you want is to put up with a bitch-conversation.
The two kids I made the mistake to sit with were probably the worst possible case. One boy and one girl, the boy all over the girl, the girl trying to ignore him as much as possible. They obviously had spent the night together, obviously not fucking, obviously because the girl is "not this kind of girl". I was careful to spend a lot of time chewing my bread, as an excuse not to respond to her bickering about "this hookup-camp", quoting her terms.
But she had a point. The level of sexual interaction in this place was even higher than in a university (that population have the same average age). It seemed that, the above-mentioned bitch excepted, everyone had let to of his/her social locks on human relationships upon entering the camp-area.
That is why everyone was smiling back. That is why I could just walk into a group of friends, say: "hi, I'm Julien" and instantly become one of them. That is why when I took the hand of a girl I liked, and that liked me, she did not fracture my fingers, screaming nonsense about not being a slut. Except for the above-mentioned bitch, that felt as comfortable as the grand inquisitor would have felt in Woodstock. By the time I was too disgusted by my own food to eat anymore, Bilbo showed up and sat down with me. That was a relief...
I intended to join an excursion in the woods at 12pm, but I waited pointlessly as nobody showed up. As I found myself without plan for the afternoon, I went up to... well... the volleyball field. In the end of the afternoon, another storm alert was given. We could see great black clouds massed on the other side of the lake. The thunder was simmering.
I went to secure my stuff and back on the field, with the intention to run for cover when the first drops would start falling. They never came; but at one moment, somebody caught the ball in mid-air and dropped it. And we all raised our heads, feeling something really strange was happening, not quite knowing what. As we were growing more confused, one of us said: "what's that light?". And I noticed. The ambient light had changed color. It was redder than it should have been. That truely gave an impression of being on a different planet.
Then the light faded back to normal and we resumed the game. Until it was too dark to play.
A friend of mine had arrived in the meantime. If you're familiar with the concept of "boyfriend" and "girlfriend", you might want to refer to her as my "ex-girlfriend-but-we're-still-talking". If you don't, you can call her "Lea".
A bit later, I found myself talking about sex with Thomas and Rose, a friend from Amsterdam. I was trying to make the point to them that something in the women's nature or education makes them good customers of dominant behaviour. Thomas is a hard-edge feminist and was accusing me of considering women like walking vaginas. Rose on another hand was more receptive to the concept. Which is not surprising, since Thomas has nothing but second hand material to react upon whereas Rose could directly reflect on the concept. She was a bit uneasy with it and dragged me to a group of her friends that she said would be interested in the debate.
By the time I was half-way through my point, I noticed that one in the group was looking at me like she was going to commit murder at anytime. I went off to do something else. When I joined the group two hours later, they were still at it. The murder-girl was steaming with rage. When she saw me, she burst into tears and said she hated me. I suggested a fight.
Fights are good to drain bad energy. We met on the beach and I waited for her to strike first. But our fight ended very quickly as she was more interested in speaking. We went for a walk on the beach and she told me that she had been and was still victim of an abusive boyfriend. I couldn't have dreamed of a better illustration to my assertion.
Because even though he was abusive and violent, she wouldn't let go of him. I tried to give her a piece of rationality and we came back more or less friends.
There were no concert planned. And there were much much less people. A lot had left in the afternoon to go back to the life of social codes and monotony that they might have choosen for a destiny. The others had gathered around the campfire or under the storm-roof, that are both at the end of the beach. I was out of calimotxo so it was going to be my sober-night. Lea on another hand, was drunk enough that I avoided hanging around.
One blessed moment came when I was sitting on a chair, eyeing at a half-full beer forgotten on a table, and someone tapped my shoulder. I turned around and saw nobody. Then noticed that someone was crouching behind my chair. It was Annika, a girl I had met a year before, looking at me expectantly: "You want to go on a mission?". I said "yeah, let's go" and jumped off my seat. She was a bit surprised: "You don't want to know what it is about?" - "Nope, I'm bored. So what are we doing?"
The plan was, along with her boyfriend and to go to the dark little road that was linking the camp-site to the civilized world. There we would hide in the bushes and wait for a group of people on their way back to the camp. And at an agreed-on signal jump upon them making as much noise as possible in order to give them a good scare. Pretty stupid idea. We had a lot of fun.
Well actually, the most interesting parts were when we had to wait between two groups. We would sit on the tarmac and talk, drinking ice tea. As they are rather interesting people, it was a very nice time. On the other hand, we did not manage to make anyone crap their pants.
I spent most of the evening with them. Annika in particular is a very peculiar person. She positively hates people. Anyone. She spent the whole evening tending to the fire. Zealously moving the embers around as the wood was collapsing. I saw a guy trying to have a conversational exchange with her. In the least original fashion, he asked her where she was from. She responded shortly, while scrambling the fire: "Germany". The guy answered that he thought Germans were really cool. She paused her activity, as if deciding of the best way to assassinate him and then replied, still not looking at him, still with her permanent distant smile. She replied that she hated germans, that she thought that germans were the worst race that ever walked the Earth, that she was really appalled to find out that someone would say such thing, because obviously, it was simply impossible to like germans. The guy retreated. She focussed back on the fire.
I wanted to stay up until sunrise. But as the crowd disintegrated, there wasn't much to do left. I hopped from group to group, trying to find someone interesting and not too drunk to talk to. Annika and Damien seemed to need some time alone. I settled for a campfire circle centred around a very talkative and annoyingly bitchy french girl. I just listened to the unending stream of gibberish that kept pouring out her mouth, sometime placing a remark that launched her into a new salvo. In the background of that somehow pathetic scene, one lonesome juggler was... well juggling.
My life story includes a lot of university and travel, so I have seen my lot of jugglers. And this one was the best, by far, that I ever saw. He really made my morning. Up to the point when someone brought a huge ghetto blaster and put on some really cool computer-music. The sun was not far, I decided I should dance until it reared its head. And I did so. When the upper tip of the sun broke above the horizon, I gave a big shout: "It's there!" and kept dancing ; until it was out all the way. Then I found Lea, that had spend most of the night debating with Ulf-the-debater, and told her I was going off. She joined me and thus, won the debate, I suppose.
The next day, I woke up at 10am. I just woke up, I don't know why. Since Friday, I had slept 7 hours. In 3 nights. But hell! This was not a place you come to sleep at. There's plenty of time to sleep later. So I woke up.
Outside the tent an horrible sight awaited me. Half the camp had disappeared (I hadn't noticed when I went to bed). Half of the other half was being pulled down. There were lots of busy people packing their bags, looking for lost items, gathering their trash. It was very sad. But I was in such a good mood that I couldn't be too affected. I turned to my own little bum shelter and proceeded to fold it all into my backpack.
One painful breakfast later, I joined the cleaning teams. We had one day to restore the site to its original state. And it was one nice day of running about, carrying stuff, cleaning, and getting down and dirty. All of that within the same soft atmosphere that seemed to wrap the whole event. There were many of us helping out and it was all done rather quickly.
Then I grabbed my stuff and got ready to leave the site. I don't like saying good bye. I just waived my hand to some of the kids that I found on my way. One of them was a pretty well-known party animal called Flohfish. He said he would leave with me. I waited. And off we went.
Massimo, a friend of ours gave us a ride in his hippie looking Volkswagen van (called Sophia) to the underground station. I took the train with Flohfish, that was bare foot, draped in his sleeping bag and just as contemplative as me.
We walked into the train like we were taking possession of it. It felt to me like everyone in the car had acknowledged our presence as owners of the world and had turned back to their respective activity. I was radiating pure human energy. And as far as I can tell, Floh was feeling the same. He left the train a bit before me. We barely said goodbye. Like if being physically removed didn't mean much. I rode alone to Bilbo's place, my self filling all the interstices of space. Pretty freaky, isn't it?
At Bilbo's, I helped her Swedish guest to prepare a swedish speciality, put her son into bed and left again for the afterparty. In a bar in Berlin. There were around 50 people there. I tryed to share myself between all those kids. The kiss-fest girl was there, we had a good talk. I also met with one of my partners-in-brainstorm in the volunteer team of BeWelcome. I had a huge conversation with him and Damien-the-punk about how vegganism, if generalised, was (or not) condemning all domestic species to extinction. Then I brought the topic of "domination" in the heterosexual attractionships and I think he will hate me forever now. I left with a group of 10 to the after-after-party.
I woke up the next day in a garden-house.
Around all german metropolis, there is a stretch of contiguous little gardens. People from the continuous-concrete-city can then get in their car and go to their "garden" where they can plant tomatoes and get in touch with mother-earth. One of them belonged to one of us, and he was going to hold a 5 days party there to celebrate the junction between the Berlin Beach Camp and the Mont Royal camp, another hospex event.
I spent the whole day with them, lazing in the sun, drinking warm beer, cooking, eating, chatting. And left around 5pm to hitchhike home.
These progressive reduced interactions (from 1000 to 50 to 10 to 0) helped smoothen the social transition back to a normal life. I got home in the most peaceful mood in the world.