Der Erste Mai

May 1st is International Workers' Day AKA Labor Day in Europe. I'm not really sure about the historical context behind the holiday, but I do know that the day has developed quite the reputation in Berlin. Instead of taking advantage of the day off and going on a spontaneous trip over the long weekend, I was highly recommended to stay in town and enjoy the festivities in the streets of Kreuzberg.

After a late start to the day, my friend and I were dropped off at an U-Bahn station by my host siblings. Coincidentally, we met up with our fellow Californians who were headed to the party with a huge group of Germans. Since there were 20+ of us, we ended up having to walk much of the way because there was no way all of us were getting on already completely stuffed trains.

It was absolutely insane how many people there were. I had a hard time contacting anyone I was planning on meeting because texts took many minutes to send and calls were simply not going through from too much activity on the network. We were warned by the Germans who had been before to try and stick together as much as possible, or we would completely lose one another.

Our first stop was, oddly enough, Hannibal at Görlitzer Bahnhof. We stayed there for a while and I contemplated not drinking at all, but it was way too bright outside and I was not too keen on dancing. My friend offered me some of this:

"It tastes like Dr. Pepper but with alcohol!"

And the party began.

After illegally obtaining a very, very large bottle of jäger, we headed to our second stop. We stayed long enough to get confetti-ed, watch a guy climb up a light pole, and finish the bottle of jäger. At this point, we all realized that we needed to take a bathroom break in Görlitzer Park, the unofficial bathroom for the day, but a friend and I lost touch with everyone else in the group at some point. We ended up sitting in the (very crowded) park for a bit and meeting up with another friend after some painfully slow back-and-forth texting.

I was going to go home at this point, but then I was able to get in contact with another one of my friends with whom I had earlier planned to meet. It took a while, but I found this group and we went to a hip hop stage (where I randomly ran into a couple of the friends I had lost in the first group I was with) until we needed to buy more beer. We proceeded down Oranienstraße and there were live acts and flamenco music and Indian music and it was just such a wonderful time. At some point we stopped for greasy Chinese food, and the guys I was with kept saying, "I want to hear you order in Chinese!" which didn't end up working out.

The day became night and everything in between is quite hazy in my memory. I wasn't drunk, just blissfully buzzed, enjoying the music, dancing, and soaking in the atmosphere.

It was a day/night quite unlike anything I've ever experienced before. I got in a couple of personal milestones of the embarrassing nature, too. Thank you for a great time and getting me out of my funk, Berlin.