Love Parade

This fucking baby wants me to throw it out the front bay doors of this plane. I can hear it in the screams, the complete dissatisfaction with existence as a whole, it's saying "Help me! Please... someone turn this whole thing off! I don't want sentience, just give me sweet oblivion! I want to hit the ground like an overripe watermelon! It'll be fun!"

It would be for me, at least. The plane's about to land, so I can't mask this tiny banshee with some soothing trip hop anymore. Must turn off all electronics, or risk the wrath of a stern and grandmotherly flight attendant. I wish I'd given myself more time in Germany, toe-dipping into an entire country was such a tease, especially when I realized I could actually get laid there if had a few days to work at it. And I need to get laid in a terrible way, I've caught myself making my usual instinctive utterances that I usually think in my head at the site of a nicely curved ass or plump pair of lips out loud.

At the point where it's happening because I'm incredibly sexually frustrated, it could be construed (slightly accurately) as rather creepy. I'm even creeped out by it. I don't want to be the creepy shameless grunting guy, so I need to sort this out.

Probably it will end up having to wait until I get home. Five days isn't a lot of time, and I need to be soaking up the last bits of Rome and studying for my final, instead of throwing my libido at the brick wall that is the seduction of Italian women.

I actually thought about writing this blog entry last night when I was dancing my ass off, and had the problem of where to place the punchline. As I posted in my last entry, Love Parade was this weekend. My mind is reeling at the monumental task of summarizing my adventure. And adventure it was, for this was not some idyllic light touch feel-good journey of touristy exoticas, this was a venture into the very face of madness, which bears a remarkable resemblance to Jim Carrey on a cocaine binge.

You'll have to forgive my overly verbose prose, dear fans di Italia, I'm ever-so-slightly delirious. Remember that hotel room I was going on about, the one I was going to put my bag in and use to hide from the craziness of the parade? Yeah, I got scammed. The accor hotel chain website linked me to a hotel profile in Dortmund, then changed the city my hotel was in on the confirmation page before I clicked to transact. My stupid for not reviewing it more closely beforehand, but I was excited. The hotel was in Hagan, 20 km from Dortmund in the opposite direction of the airport I would be returning to in Dusseldorf. So, they got my money, but I could honestly care less. I survived the weekend budget intact, and had an amazing and unforgettable time.

I arrived in Dusseldorf an hour and a half late, resulting from a mass exodus clusterfuck of the first wave of Roman residents leaving for the month of August. I took the airtram to the main terminal and caught a 2:00 train to Dortmund. I was literally bouncing in my seat in anticipation, but a small part of me was doubting there would even be anything there when I arrived. Stop by stop my worry grew, until I began trying to think of ways I could make the most of the trip otherwise.

Then we Essen. Hundreds of glammed up people drinking beer and howling soccer chants rushed the train. Happily I kept my seat, because everyone else was sardined in, and it only got worse as we went. Soon we were all laughing as the doors opened on teeming throngs who were confronted with an already firmly entrenched teeming throng on the train. There were arguments, standoffs, and bribes. Oh, how they would have taken a different tack, had they known what would happen next.

An hour into the ride the train began to slow awkwardly, halting to a crawl, then chugging forward again, the braking, until at last we came to a full stop in between platforms. Nobody thought much of it, this was Europe after all, public transit is as solid as a horiscope on a fortune cookie.

Time passed, it got hot. People stopped laughing and smiling. More time passed, and people started to get weak and lean on each other, sweaty and pale. Everyone started yelling and banging on the sides of the cars, and suddenly the doors opened and let in a rush of cool wind, eliciting orgasmic moans and sighs of relief. Outside it was gray and raining, and people hopped out of the car to get some air or smoke. Ten minutes later the conductor came on the intercom and said he could not go any further because the rails were blocked up ahead. I didn't find out until much later that night that the reason the rails were blocked was due to a suicidal teenager jumping in front of the train in ahead of us.

With my holistic senses cranked up to 11, I jumped onto the tracks and followed the crowd. We marched approximately 4 kilometers in the rain, jackets over our heads, stumbling on the rocks covering the tracks. The sky started shitting water on us with a spicy curry's late night vengeance, and we started running to a bridge over the tracks about a half mile away. Under the bridge a group was already gathering, singing more soccer chants.

After the rain let up the mass of people split their paths. Some walked on to the next train station down the tracks, others opted to climb the bridge and find a bus to Dortmund in the city, knowing no trains would be going to the next station anyway. I went into the city, and started the English poll ("Do you speak English?"). Combining broken English contributions from five different people, I was able to ascertain that was a way to bus to Dortmund from the main terminal in the city, so we all stood at a bus stop. After milling about for another hour, people began to get restless and creative, and several guys carried police blockades they found down one of the streets onto the road we were on and started dancing around them.

Wiser party hopefuls started walking away, and having already seen a lot of news reports that started out with drunk people doing similar stupid things, I followed. I hadn't even gone 200 yards when four police vans full of cops hauled ass down the street toward the mob. I walked faster.

Ahead a new group was forming at a tram, and here I finally met some people who spoke decent enough English. After finding out I was from Texas, they vowed to get me to Love Parade no matter what, and so we went by Tram to the main station, then by bus to Dortmund, then through four kilometers of hundreds of thousands of wet and disgruntled people, uphill and through the mud. Having to tote my bag everywhere didn't make it easier, since we had to push through crowds to make any real progress. I missed the parade, but wasn't too upset about it since everyone got rained on while it happened. The rain kept returning in sporadic torrents, and everyone would scramble from the streets like cockroaches, hiding massed against the building walls, then return when there was a pause.

We arrived at the main sound system at around 6:30, and the show was just starting. The area was a huge parking lot filled with a sea of people and vendors, with guys climbing and perching atop 50 foot portable construction halogen lights and waving German flags. We pushed our way to about the middle of the area, still nearly a football field away from the stage, and tried to clear ourselves some space while DJ Rush played. Moby went on next, followed by Richie Hawtin, Arman Van Burin, Paul Van Dyke, and a few popular German heavy hitters who's names I couldn't remember. They cycled the acts so each DJ only played for 20 minutes, playing their best peak mixes, then going on to the next.

Now for the punchline. Underworld.

Underworld closed out the night. To some this may not be as significant, but for me hearing the group who made the very first electronic music song I ever listened to (during my first psychadelic experience) was fairly epic, especially when they performed Born Slippy. The Germans who had adopted me were overwhelmed by my enthusiasm, since none of them were familiar with Underworld.

After Underworld was done, someone named Paul Pope did a "Sea of Lights" show with a ridiculously huge array of lights, spot lights stacked 8 high and 12 across, with fireworks, lasers, and color filters. It was a visual jamboree, and put me in mind of the burn at Flipside this year.

The city shut down the sound at midnight, and the crowd started to break apart back toward the train station. My hosts wanted to go home, so I resolved to follow them to the train station so I would know how to get there, then find myself an afterparty. With a piece of paper I etch-e-sketched myself a little map of the town, noting all of the afterparties I passed along the way. Parting with my new friends after exchanging email addresses, I had a huge dinner of sausages and beer, mellowed out for a bit and tended to the toe I ripped open that morning on a door.

Revived and refreshed, I hit the best looking afterparty (largest line, smallest venue, second story balcony overlooking one of the city squares), where happily I coat checked my bag. After trucking it around all day, I felt like I could jump over the moon, and proceeded to drink red bulls and dance my ass off, only stopping to switch rooms, for seven straight hours. The bar had three large rooms, with the Ministry of Sound playing in the one I spent the entire night in. My devotion on the dance floor was rewarded with comped drinks, CD samplers, and difficult conversations with cute girls.

At 7:30 they shut down that afterparty, and I left to find more trouble. As I walked out of the club, I heard a guy on the sidewalk say, "I'm from Australia," then someone he was talking to say, "Cool, I'm from London," so I walked up and said, "Awesome, I'm from America!" That was how I met Fletch (the Australian), who was probably the nearest person to Tucker Max I've ever met. Him and his traveling buddy Brendon invited me along with two girls they had just met, and together we went to an afterparty at a pool. It was great in theory, but when we got there we discovered it was 30 euro to get in. Fletch tried for a while to find a way to sneak in, but eventually we resolved to get wasted and go to a playground instead. Drinking beers, the girls gave us a tour of the city, and eventually we went back to their apartment where they let me clean up and change out of my mud covered clothes. By this point it was 1 in the afternoon, and I bid adieu to the party and headed to the station. Brendon went along, since he was tired as well, and we road back South together, talking with a German teenager about Hitler (he brought it up).

Germans are very sensitive about the way the world perceives them, at least the majority of those I spoke with. Many of them mentioned that Germany was not the way it used to be, and that Nazi sentiments were not popular there, except in some radical political parties who never actually got seated in offices. I never volunteered the subject to them, but they usually brought it up somehow when they realized I was American. I felt bad, especially since the country I was from had more to answer for currently than there's did.

After a long train ride I got to the airport and flew back to Rome. I brought my roomates back two six packs of German beer, since the poor bastards always buy 4 euro Heinekens in Rome. All in all, it was an awesome 30 hours in Germany, but I definitely want to return. If anything, it helped affirm for me the plans I've been laying in my head over the last week, I want to return to Italy next year and live somewhere more rural for much longer, through some program that can set me up with some little shit job to get by. Then I can work here, save money up, and travel to a lot of different countries, all while firming up my Italian even more.

Damn, that was a long post. Sorry. Shiny nickels to everyone who actually read all of that.

-Sean