Treading the Rainbow Lane

Yesterday morning, my youngest brothers and I ate breakfast (it was croissants and baguettes; I'm still skipping coffee because of my high blood pressure tendencies, but the others drank it). Our mother was absent as she is still walking along the Camino de Santiago, leading the adventurous life in eastern France, for a few days.

Then I set off on my bicycle to be part of the Christopher Street Day parade. In the end I sat at the roadside on Leipziger Straße, in front of the fraying glass façade of the Bulgarian embassy, which looks to my amateur eye to have been built in the 1970s, near the Bundestag building. The recent rains made the embassy's raised lawns lush and green, and under the Bulgarian and EU flags blood red roses were flowering alongside what I suspected to be yellow, dandelion-like hawkweed and white daisies.

I'd arrived an hour and a quarter early, although police vans were already standing at intervals along Potsdamer Straße. Barriers and fence segments had been put into position to block the streets later. Around Lützowstraße a counterprotest was expected to take place. But from what the RBB website mentioned, it sounds like a few of protestors were already stopped in transit by police for carrying weapons. (Recently Berlin has forbidden the carrying of most knives and other weaponry in public transit, since it seems that a lot of public arguments have ended in knife fights lately.)

The Ministry of Finance hung a rainbow-striped banner on the corner of its building. And, although I missed seeing it, later the evening news mentioned that the Bundesrat (Senate) had also hoisted a rainbow flag. It was a bit surprising because a few high-ranking German government officials lately have been very dismissive of gay solidarity; in fact, that is also why I went to the Christopher Street Day parade even if I'm not that involved in the struggle generally.

(To digress, I don't understand why Germany's political elite seem to want to feel superior to Trumpism at the same time as they are adopting techniques and policies from it. For example, the Minister of the Interior proudly proclaiming that he will ignore a Berlin court ruling about illegal push-backs of asylum applicants. Or European governments eagerly looking to deport migrants to third countries. Or the eager embrace of public litmus tests for nominations to Germany's judiciary. I don't think any of this will look clever or admirable in 20 years, and it's deeply contemptuous of the 'Menschenwürde' that's supposedly enshrined in Germany's constitution.)

In the meantime, the Museum for Communication had signs at its doors saying (in German) 'Free entry' and 'Toilets free of cost.' As the parade neared, staff walked out to stand at attention at the doors, and looked ready and pleased to see visitors.

Further up the Leipziger Straße, protestors were heading on foot, per bicycle and per e-scooter to join the head of the parade. But a few had the same idea I did, and settled in on the concrete edges of the Bulgaria embassy lawn to watch the parade pass later. Some spectators had dogs with them, others just had snacks and drinks. In the hotel opposite, canny partiers had rented rooms directly overlooking the course of the parade. Drinks and a large rainbow flag at hand, they periodically opened their balcony doors. I was touched when a man in a cowboy hat, shorts, and short-sleeved shirt painstakingly attached a garland of colourful artificial flowers to his balcony's railing.

I wrestled with myself whether it's accurate to say that police regalia and formalities are also a little camp. Regardless, I did appreciate the flair that the officers' black and fluorescent uniforms, and the bright twinkly blue lights of their motorcycles and other vehicles, lent to the streetscape.

Because I came so early, and felt tired after volunteering the day before (my feet still hurt), I didn't end up seeing much of the parade itself. I headed home after the organizers' purple party bus rolled past my perch. There were 79 more trucks after that, all of which I missed seeing... Briefly I was wondering whether to walk in the parade itself, when a large gap opened up between sections of the demo. But I was not sure whether it made sense for allies to walk in the parade, except if specifically invited. Besides my bicycle's pedals (not to mention its other hard edges and angles) were a hazard when I pushed it through more crowded areas of the parade and its spectators. Standing to watch the parade pass hopefully already added me to the attendee statistics.

The music I heard was generally techno music, then a few hits like "It's Raining Men" and "Rolling in the Deep."

On the way back home, I felt pleased that I'd gone. Next year, unless a happy revolution happens and LGBTQ+ orientation is left to the personal discretion of the individual instead of being treated as fodder for political persecution, I hope to go again — and this time see more. It made me happy to hear in the evening that this particular, 2025 Berlin parade attracted hundreds of thousands of partygoers and that it was 'the largest in years.'

Grey Cucumbers and Good Intentions

Today I had volunteered to help pack school supplies like pencil sharpeners and snacks into backpacks at a Berlin charitable organization, but even more volunteers showed up than expected and the organization needed people to sort the fruit and vegetable donations that rapidly rot in the summer heat. So instead I wandered off to the other side of the great hall in the Berliner Großmarkt, at the edge of a shipping canal, in the Wedding district.

*

First, after stepping out at the Beusselstraße S-Bahn station and climbing into the urban landscape, I had arrived at the great hall by walking down a narrow entrance, past a now-disused porter's gatehouse, alongside trucks with Netherlands license plates, through the charitable organization's vans and up a staircase and through one of the many berths with blinds acting as a door, before following the arrows to the volunteer assembly station.

There we were asked to write our name, address, telephone number, and email in a form. We were also asked to sign our names to a promise not to eat or take home any food that we'd sort. And we were directed to switch out our street shoes for proper safety shoes, which were made available with a change of clean socks in a nook with a kitchen and washrooms leading off it.

The highlights of the safety instructions were probably
1. that we were not allowed to sort anything if we were drunk, and
2. if we had an accident traveling to or from the charitable organization's location, we were covered by the organization's insurance.

Two cameramen from the local Berlin and Brandenburg TV station were in the hall, too, which made me antsy as a camera-shy private citizen but also greatly fascinated me as an amateur journalist.

But the men were there to film the school supply packing.

Since I wandered off to the food packing area, the 'fifteen seconds of fame' that the charitable organization's volunteer coordinators jokingly promised us were no longer likely for me.

*

So in sorting the fruit and vegetable donations, which are picked up by the organization's vans from grocery stores around Berlin, we worked with plastic crates (the German technical term is Europaletten, I think).

These crates held the produce that was sometimes not, sometimes partly, and sometimes all rotting, and all jumbled together. We chose one crate at a time, carried it over to a sorting table, then began throwing away what had gone bad and sorting into clean crates what was still good. A watermelon, tomatoes, strawberries, cucumbers, onions, avocados, bell peppers, spicy peppers, lemons, oranges, carrots with and without greens, potatoes, apricots, cauliflower, broccoli, red currants, blueberries, green onions, pak choy, plums, two daikon radishes, regular radishes, watercress, coriander leaf, and chives all ended up on my table.

It was by turns incredibly disgusting work — ash-grey cucumbers and a mushy brown broth of decomposed watercress were likely my least attractive finds — and at other times quite agreeable. Oldies were playing on the radio, until 3 or 4 hours in when the rest of the school supply packing party joined us and the music was turned off, presumably so they could hear the volunteer coordinator's instructions.

The safety shoes were comfortable, and it was only as I entered the U-Bahn in my regular street shoes after 7 p.m. that the soles of my feet began aching.

To be pragmatic, I'm not sure that my volunteering really helped, except to boost the morale of the people at the organization. I was only one person and didn't put much of a dent in the piles of produce; part of the produce I sorted might still go bad before anyone gets a chance to eat it; and a lot of food and other resources will still go to waste. (We had to be conservative in deciding what to keep, because it was possible that the fruits and vegetables wouldn't reach a consumer for another day or two.)

Not to mention that I went through 2 or 3 pairs of rubber gloves because (for example) I didn't want slimy decomposed radish leaf to travel to the pristine apricots I was sorting next.

Besides I took a bottle of water from the supply that we were allowed to take. So to be strict I'd need to deduct the negative environmental impact of bottled water from the positive environmental impact of saving produce that might be thrown out...

But tomorrow I'll return as promised, and we'll see if I feel more useful then.

***

Fortunately my other 'world-saving' enterprise of the past month has been more rewarding.

I've watered three trees near the apartment, a process that takes at least 2-3 hours at a time if done properly. I haul the water in a bucket, using the undrinkable water from a late-19th or early-20th-century street pump so that I don't waste the city drinking water.

But... Now I might not need to make the effort any more: it's been raining a lot. My aching tricep muscles and I are glad if Mother Nature is the one transporting the water, not me.