Photos1

15th July

Love Parade �03, Love Rules

<Hey all, below you can find a journal
entry covering Lou and my time in Berlin
for the love parade. Creating the photo pages has become very time consuming so I've had to give in and use an on-line photo album tool. The upside is that you can now flick through a slideshow of the photos rather than opening them individualy. The downside is that there is advertising.>

To see the latest photos click here

Imagine over half a million chilled out
party people crammed into the heart of
Berlin, following trucks decked out with DJ�s, intelligent lighting rigs, smoke machines, and speakers large enough to trigger a small continental earthquake and you�ll start getting an idea of what the Love Parade �03 was like.

Thursday, 11:45pm and the adventure has commenced. We�ve stepped onto one of the slick Deutsche Bahn overnight trains to propel us towards the pulsing heart of Germany, expanding by the hour as hundreds of thousand of backpackers and party goers arrived for the festivities. A few cups of the �5 a bottle Wodka (as the German�s pronounce it) and I�m soon snoozing, although I�m still envious of Lou�s ability to enter a semi-comotosed state almost as soon as she sits down.

6am and the sun is just popping up over the horizon sending a blanket of warmth over Berlin. Lou and I step out of the already bustling Zoological Gardens train stop and walk into Kurf�stendamm which marks the commercial heart of old West Berlin. Luckily we�ve anticipated our early morning tummy grumbles and equiped ouselves with some Selami, cheese, and phillidelphia. After popping by a bakery and picking up some bread rolls and coffee we�re sitting in the morning sun fuelling up while watching the city awake under the watch of the bombed out Kaiser-Wilhelm-Ged�chtniskirche (see photo to the right).

Mid morning and we�re into our 4 hour walking tour on the Third Reich, including a run into and a �Gutenmorgen� with the German Chancellor Gerhard Schr�der (no he wasn�t part of the Third Reich he just happened to be walking by). By the end of the walk we�re stuffed and thirsty so we head up to Unter den Linden, the main throroughfare in old East Berlin, for a cheap lunch in an Italian caf�.

I�m a big fan of what used to be East Berlin, the old ugly Communist buildings that look like they�re covered in a layer of volcanic dust and the over stated soviet war memorials and statues. Walking along one stretch of where the wall once ran you can see on the Eastern side deralict buildings and huge holes in the ground while on the Western side there are neat apartment buildings like you see here in Ausgburg. The contrast is amazing and it shows how much reconstruction is still yet to happen in the city.

After our italian lunch Lou and I headed to Der Imbiss, Berlin�s own Brunswick Street (or is Brunswick Street Melbourne�s own Der Imbiss?). I was looking for an ugly tie and I wasn�t to be disappointed. �3 got me a shocker (see photos) and, matched with my �8 sunglasses I purchased later that night, my preperations for the Love Parade were complete.

After some early dramas with our accomodation Lou and I managed to secure a roof over our head in a great spot. It wasn�t a hostel or a hotel but more like a big place you�d stay on school trips (as it turned out there were an army of South American school kiddies staying there but we stayed in a different section luckily). After a refresh and a change of clothes we headed back into Kurf�stendamm for an outdoor pre-love parade party where we caught up with one of my work mates and his friends. If it hadn�t been for the combination of electrical equipment and heavy rain I think the party would have gone on all night but even the most determined had to call it quits and head to the clubs after the skies opened.

Saturday morning and you could feel the energy in the air as Lou and I emerged from the S-Bahn and walked into Alexanderplatz. The size of the crowd from the night before had exploded and there were people everywhere dressed in every type of outfit you could imagine. Some guy and pulled out his spandex S&M outfit, fitted with 3 inch thick heels, much to the entertainment of everyone he walked by including Lou and I. As we walked along the river Spree, past the Reichstag, and up to the Brandenburg Gates the density of the crowd continued to increase. When we got to the first float, which was firing up the music even though the parade hadn�t started, some guy had already O.D�d on some drug that left him doing a weird road worshiping ceremony while mumbling to himself. That was actually the first and only visible signs of drugs that we saw on the day but be it natural adrenilan or artificial induced stupor the crowd was definitely going off.

Lou and I followed the first float for about half an hour and then decided to stay put and wait for the next few floats to come by. By this stage we were deep in the thick of people and everyone was vying for a good vantage point. Some people decided to risk life and limb by climbing to the top of the street lamps and traffic lights and evidently a few of them came off worse for wear. At one stage I photographed a guy swinging from underneath a traffic light and soon after he fell down what must have been the equivalent of 3 stories (these are traffic lights that fit over semi-trailors). Latest news report I caught was that the guy broke both legs.

As we followed the floats into the heart of the parade, the Victory column, we bumped into a group of crazy Australians who we hung out with for a while. From there we stood and watched the remainding floats pass by before turning our attention to the sound eminating from the Victory Column itself. By 10pm, after an afternoon of drinking and no dinner the day was over. The crowd had expended it�s energy and the partying was left for the hardened to head to the clubs.

Lou and I didn�t make it to the clubs that night but we redemmed ourselves by having an all nighter at one of Berlin�s best known clubs, �Tresor�, the next night. The club is set in the vault of an old bank building and is as hot and stuffy as all hell but the settings help you forget your discomfort.

If you�ve made it this far, well done, I�ve been rambling. I�m going to tie it up here purely because if I don�t now it will never make it to the web site.

Hope you enjoy the photos.

Ned.