I Survived the Love Parade on Twenty-Four Deutsche Marks
It seemed that Love Parade would never come - God knows I missed it last summer I was in Berlin, but now I decide to take the plunge and take on the crowds. I'm standing in front of the mirror trying on my PJ Harvey records and being messy with my make-up. The door bell rings. Hey Carmen! "Electra! Are you wanting to come with me to the Love Parade? They're gonna pick us up in ten minutes." Of course I want to go to the Love Parade! Why do you think I'm dressed like a turkey on Christmas Day! We race out of the apartment and go to the meeting point on the corner of my street. For some reason there's loads of coppish people hanging around there too (Der!!). We try to think pure thoughts and just watch from one of the quieter corners well-dressed people being politely paranoid. In the car the music's really loud and everyone's really high and full of energy. We shout and carry on and navigate masses of road blocks. We jog along coolly, checking out our new compatriots that are absolutely EVERYWHERE! We cruise down to the bridge and get caught up in a never-ending sea of people. Where's the music? Okay, so we stand around for twenty minutes, then Dr Motte grabs the decks. I have a ball. We all dance together and smoke loads of grass. Suddenly it hits someone - Hey guys, it's about forty degrees and I think I'm getting thirsty. So, me and Carmen decide to take up the slack. We gonna get beer. It's horrible. It takes ages. Fucking ages. It's hot. Now they want four marks for a can of coke. That really hurts. And eight marks for a beer. A stinking beer. We sit down, smoke more joints, drink someone else's beer (thanks Jacko). Carmen reckons we should go back and give them their drinks. I'm fucking skeptical but enjoy watching Carmen in her false reality. We squimple and squirt and squeeze around in the crowd, and then we realise that the parade is coming through here somewhere and, oh look, there's some massive truck there, number 48, and that's where the dudes were, oh and Fuck Carmen, this just isn't funny anymore.
So we walk around some more, she's realising that we will actually never delifer the drinks, and now we want to go on the bridge, but it's just fucking horrible, and now we get caught in a mouse trap made specially by people for people at the end of a blockaded bridge. "Bummer Dude!" I'm getting out of this meat mincer. continue ->
