ngrundy's journal

It's late on a Wednesday night and we step into an empty train. In any other city we'd already be in bed, but tonight we've planned a big one at a new midweek club in Berlin. One companion complains that the cover charge is too high and begins to fret about whether the bouncers will let us all in. I insist that he stops stressing, but before I can finish a wave of noise swarms the carriage.

A throng of people jump aboard, wheeling in some sort of crazy apparatus covered in a tangle of wires and black boxes. Someone hits a button and the contraption begins thudding out Berlin techno, rattling the windows and sending vibrations up through my feet. The crowd erupts, bouncing about as the carriage wobbles precariously down the tracks.

“What's going on?” I ask a local while stumbling down the aisle. “It's the famous Ringbahn party,” he exclaims over the din. “This train endlessly circles Berlin, so after an hour we are right back at the same station. Then we either go home or do another loop for more partying. I bet you are not making a party like this in your city!” He's right, this doesn't happen where I'm from. Not due to an absence of a Ringbahn, however, but because it would quickly be broken up by the...

“Polizei!”

A man next to us pulls a badge out from beneath his shirt, shouting at me in German while shoving me out the door. Between elbows and screams I hurriedly snap a few photos as undercover cops push us into the patiently waiting fists of the Berlin riot police.

Awakening the next day nursing various welts and bruises, I rummage through a pile of clothes on the floor. Pulling my camera from beneath the mess, I scroll through happy faces of friends and strangers from the party. Then one image stands out. A girl peers up at two helmeted riot policemen as she faces off with them. Her brave, unmoving posture may have only lasted a split second, but the look in her eyes is now frozen in time forever.

That night was the last of Berlin's infamous Ringbahn parties. Sadly, the city is changing, however the photo of the girl always reminds me of that once in a lifetime event. On a Wednesday night, instead of worrying about cover charges and bouncers, strangers spontaneously came together to let loose in their own unique way. With them they took the memory of a now extinct tradition, preserving it forever and inspiring others to live a little.