I suppose in high-security, anti-chaos, pro-status-quo circles it’s common sense, but it came to me as a surprise.  In Germany (and presumably everywhere where there are corporations cutting down trees and activists who prefer clean air and environmental stability to corporate profit), there is a special police force that is trained to deal with the removal of activists from trees.

Imagine that.  “So what do you do?”  “Oh, well, I specialize in removing dirty hippies from treehouses.”  “Ummm, right.  And how’s that working out for you?”  Dirty work, any way you look at it.

While I was living in Dresden, activists squatted a several-hundred-year-old tree in one last attempt to stop the construction of a very ugly multi-lane bridge over a very beautiful, untouched stretch of river.  Under the name of Robin Wood—an environmental activist collective—a group of people squatted the tree itself, housing several activists on a makeshift platform and populating the grounds below.  The activist-tree-removal-special-police’s first attempt at removing the tree dwellers was unsuccessful due to the hundreds of protesters gathered below, but by and by public interest dwindled, and eventually the police were able to move their equipment close enough to remove the pesky tree huggers by force.  The tree is long since cut, and bridge construction has begun.

Capitalism: 9,876,458,700, Activists: 0.  Once again.  (Insert loud collective, cynical sigh of disillusioned discontent here.)

Last night the flyers came in: the Kelsterbach Forest has been squatted.  Kelsterbach—a small town on the Main west of Frankfurt— was, until recently, the finding place of Europe’s earliest anatomically modern humans through the discovery of a Cro-Magnum skull dubbed “the Lady from Kelsterbach.”  What you can’t find out on wikipedia, eh?!

Now, due to the VERY highly intelligent decisions of the Lady from Kelsterbach’s great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great (and so on) grandchildren, the forest is due to be clearcut to make way for an additional runway and terminal for the Frankfurt Airport.  Good job Fraport.  Old Mama Kelsterbach would be glad to know that you’re doing such a swimming job blindly prioritizing your over-blown monopoly game over the well-being of the environment which makes your lives possible.  Not to mention the quality of life for the people already living in the area.  Here here.  Crack the champagne.  We’re going to need more than a few bottles before we start feeling good about this one.

This isn’t the first time Fraport has had to deal with protests against proposed expansion.  In the 80s thousands, yes, thousands(!), of people occupied the Flörsheim Forest in an attempt to hinder the Startbahn West expansion project.  A small city sprung up in the forest and lasted for approximately two years before it was finally, permenantly cleared.  The protests—the largest of which is said to have included upwards of 10,000 protestors—culminated in the usual black blocks, police-activist clashes, rubber bullets, water canons and all the other demonstration banalities we’ve all come to know and love.  The squatted city was forcibly evicted, and construction of Startbahn West was completed in 1984.

When I first heard about the latest expansion project, I used it as a debate topic in my advanced English classes.   “It’s good for the economy,” one Postbank employee told our class.  Most of the other students nodded in agreement.  “And what about the pollution?” I prodded.  It’s easy to play devil’s advocate when you already disagree.  “And all of the people whose homes are going to shake with the roar of landing planes every ten minutes?”  They made intelligent arguments against expansion, but, except for one student who had been involved with the protests, each argument ended with a shrug of defeat and apathy.

Fraport says that the new runway is good for the entire region.  (Oh business people.  They never seem to tire of that line.)  Not only is the expansion good, they claim, it’s completely unavoidable.  Written in the stars even.  Bitteschön.

In their own words,  “…demand for takeoff and landing slots at Frankfurt is strong. For this reason alone, rapid expansion of our airport is essential. In addition, air traffic will continue to grow. If FRA is to maintain its present significance in world air transportation, there is no alternative to the planned capacity expansion.”  There’s demand!  If we don’t expand Munich will, and we’ll lose our reputation as Germany’s biggest, bestest, fastest airport!  We will create 100,000 new minimum wage jobs!  Well yipee-ki-yi-yeah, doesn’t that sound like just what we need.

As for the environmental harm expansion will inevitably cause, well, Fraport has a quippy little answer for that one too:

“The operation of a major airport is inevitably associated with environmental burdens. Our company’s goal is strongly to reduce such burdens. Our environmental management system has been validated against the world’s most stringent standard, EMAS (Eco-Management and Audit Scheme) and, beyond meeting the legal and official requirements, achieves far more in terms of environmental conservation. This commitment has meanwhile also been publicly recognized: The “Institute for Market – Environment – Society” in Hanover and the “Ethical Investment Research Service” in London both rate Fraport AG’s environmental management as exceptionally good. Such ratings are important, above all, to portfolio managers who decide on the acquisition of Fraport shares.

Protecting the environment while expanding means for us to minimize all burdens such as noise, loss of natural land and air pollution.”

They say it clearly enough themselves: “such ratings are important, above all, to portfolio managers who decide on the acquisition of Fraport shares.”  Implied: such ratings are not important to those whose backyards will be cut or poisoned by plane exhaust.  To those whose houses will rattle as planes approach overhead.  Mine already does.  I imagine it sounds something like it sounded just before your house got bombed in World War II.  I hate to break it to you Fraport, but when you are sitting in a shaking house, when you have to stop conversations to wait for the noise form a passing plane to die down, those environmental certificates you have don’t mean shit.  I’m pretty sure they don’t mean shit to the melting ice caps either, but I suppose you’d like to be able to sleep nights, huh?

The Kelsterbach tree squatters hope to be able to hold out against Fraport, the police, and the government long enough to force Fraport to back down.  A proxy for Mayor Ockel visited the site on the first day of occupation and announced that the occupation would be tolerated until June 1.  June 1 being a Sunday, eviction will probably begin in earnest tomorrow (June 2).

If you’d like to help, the Kelsterbachers are seeking donations of wood, polypropylene rope (10mm and 14mm), (vegan) groceries, tools, paper, and office materials.  If you read this in time, you can stop by today (June 1st) for coffee and cake and find out more yourself.  Donations can be transfered to the “Spendung and Aktion” account number 92881806 at the Volksbank Mittelhessen (BLZ 513 900 00), Subject: Waldbesetzung.

Forest telephone: 0175 833 59 58.  Email: waldbesetzung (AT) riseup (DOT) net.  Directions: The squatted trees are near the huts in the Kelsterbach forest.  Drive to Kelsterbach, follow the b43 (Rüsselsheimer Straße) and turn onto the K152 (Okrifteler Straße).  At the first parking lot (Mönchwaldsee) go through the forest.

This just in: The Agency would like to notify all citizens that on the night before moving yourself six hours across the country, you should at all costs avoid drinking a half a liter of vodka with your ex-boyfriend. You will feel sad, and hungover. Thank you for your time.

—

There are two lesser known ways to make a city look more beautiful. Most people would just redecorate. A new building here, a new paint job there. I leave.

Of course, as soon as you’ve decided to leave, the whole bothering with wanting to make the place more appealing becomes rather silly, but life is just one big monkey barrel full of paradoxes now isn’t it?

The day I decided to leave Dresden rays of sunshine descended from the heavens like choirs of angels, drab buildings did their make-up and put up their hair, and everyone I passed on the street started smiling at me shyly like we were about to become friends, or lovers. Potential started bubbling up between the cracks in the pavement and quickly hardened into missed opportunities.

Moving away is almost as good as first arriving. I highly recommend it, though the moving costs tend to add up after a few tries.

In the last weeks before a move, everything teams suddenly with heightened significance. This isn’t just a shower or breakfast. This is my LAST shower in this apartment, and my LAST breakfast in this kitchen. This is the last sentence in a chapter, and the first sentence in a new one. Banal daily events become Transitions, New Beginnings, and New Ends.

The day I decided to leave I went down to visit the Altstadt skyline to refill her glass of wine and see if she wouldn’t let me give her a little kiss. How many dates does it take to get a girl in bed these days? I smiled at her dumbly across the river, and she sipped her wine slowly smiling at me contemplatively with a look that said ‘I knew you’d leave me for that grimy little bitch but you can give me a little kiss all the same.’

My last weeks were a blur of new-crush butterflies and energy and excitement. I ran around trying to finish the Dresden section of my guidebook. I stayed up late typing chapters of the novel, racing my calendar to happily ever after. I drank too much coffee and wandered around Neustadt over and over again, sipping in all the details that I would inevitably miss.

On my last night Markus came over to say goodbye, and we went out for One Last Neustadt Beer. Which turned into Quite a Few Last Neustadt Beers and an almost-pub crawl to say goodbye to all the nooks and crannies I’d become smitten with over the past six months. This is where the two-ton hangover, the five paracetamol, and the gallon of coffee entered the scene. I had only slept for a few hours when my headache woke me up, and I twitched over to the train station to pick up the rental van (which turned out to be more like a big huge metal box), threw everything I own into the back, headed in the direction of the train station again, and clipped another van’s side mirror right fucking off.

The word “clipped” may be something of an understatement. “Crushed,” “obliterated,” or “completely annihilated” might be more appropriate terms. The angry owners of the damaged van did not grasp the irony of the situation—they were driving the exact van that I had hoped to rent, and the only reason I was on that street in the first place was because of an ill-fated wrong turn—and were standing in the middle of the street and watching me do one of the worst parking jobs of all time with mouths trout-wide open in shock and anger.

Then I slid out of the high driver’s seat, and they both laughed.

“A tiny girl like you in a big car like that? Well, that doesn’t match at all.”

“Tell me about it,” I replied, hoping their jovial good mood would inspire them to forget all about the smashed mirror, pay me, and drive off into the sunset laughing and waving. But as they weren’t even sitting in the car and their mirror was still lying in pieces in plain view, we filled out the accident report form from the rental company and made a few phone calls. I finally managed to battle the “I think I may, in fact, burst into tears at any moment” look off of my face when they fixed my own bent mirror for me so that the van would still be safe to drive on the autobahn.

“Don’t worry,” the fat one told me, “It happens. No big deal.”

Is this how car accidents usually go? I sure hope so, but somehow I think I got lucky.

I was a half an hour late to pick up my ride share passenger from the train station where she was waiting with her husband in the cold.

“I’m so sorry I’m late,” I told them. “I umm, had a little trouble with the mirror.”

I had been hoping for someone with a head full of interesting tales, old hitch hiking adventures or strange family histories, or maybe even ghosts, yeah a head full of creepy ghost stories and a knack for spooky voices. That would keep me awake.

“I lived in America for 20 years,” she told me after a few minutes of banal small talk. “I lived in Alabama and Kentucky. I miss it so much. Especially the weather. Oh give me an Alabama winter anytime.” She spoke English with a bizarre combination of deep-south twang and we-learned-Brittish-English-in-school twug. It had just started to snow. “What I miss the most though is being able to shop 24 hours a day. You ever miss that?”

“Well, it took a while to get used to the shops’ hours here, yeah, but I don’t mind it anymore,” I told her, making awkward slow turns and hesistant lane changes with the van.

“Oo-wee. Just being able to go over to Walmart after work to go grocery shopping. And the spicy sausages! You ever had a spicy sausage?”

“No, I haven’t actually,” I told her, “But then again, I don’t eat meat.” I also didn’t and don’t have any idea what spicy sausage she could possibly have been talking about. The only sausages I had ever seen in America had either been German or Italian. Unless you count hot dogs, and considering the fact that hot can mean both spicy or a high temperature, maybe that is what she was talking about.

She was quiet for a while, Walmart-hot-dog-stand franks smothered in ketchup and mustard sparkling in her eyes. “Well, the next time you get back to the states you’ve got to try you one of them spicy sausages.”

This time I answered in German. “Ja, klingt gut. Aber ich esse kein Fleisch.” (Sounds good, but I don’t eat meat.)

“Oh and you should probably heat them up in the microwave,” she went on, oblivious that I had done more than nod. “They’re even spicier when they’re hot. Or chicken wings,” (relentless bitch) “Nobody here makes chicken wings like in America. You should have some of those too.”

That was the end of our conversation and my cue to turn up the music. She quickly fell asleep, and I quietly rasped along to Tom Waits, the rhythm of the highway getting back into my fingers and toes.

Dimensional portals that have not been brought up to code are reported to have started opening and closing unexpectedly in Dresden, Germany. Several late-night train lines are connecting to stops listed only on maps in The History of Tlön and, if not regarded with extreme caution, may leave passengers hanging from the spire of the Church of Our Lady or in the frozen wastelands of the planet Radon.

Dimensionally unstable trains can be identified by their numbers—fractions instead of whole numbers—and their passengers—suspected to include disgruntled giants, phosphorescent old women, rabid giraffes, and mutant dough-faced twins.

A clear explanation for this phenomenon has not been forthcoming, though experts suspect a shift in the Hawthorne-Abendsen ratio. Discovered by Juliana Frink in 1962, the Hawthorne-Abendsen ratio is the force that maintains the delicate balance between objective and subjective reality.

A curfew has been put into effect, and the Ministry for the Maintenance of Normality is doing everything in it’s power to bring all malfunctioning dimensional portals up to code. Until that time, please board all trains with extreme caution. If you find yourself on what you expect might be a dimensionally unstable train, panic immediately, throw yourself to the ground, and pray for deliverance.

For those of you who speak German, but who have never been over to the wild east, feast your ears. This is a parody ad about a mechanic from the west who gets a job in the east and can’t understand fuck all. Maybe this is what that taxi driver said to me.

The first time I showed up in Dresden, I packed light. I hadn’t even bothered looking at a map. I figured there would be city maps at the S-Bahn stations, like in Frankfurt, and anyway there would certainly be a newsstand at the train station selling them.

My train pulled into Neustadt just past eleven pm. All of the stores in the station were closed. I ambled out of the building and toward a line of waiting taxis. Taxi drivers always know where everything is.

“Excuse me, could you tell me where Tiekstraße is,” I asked a wizened looking old man who was leaning on the roof of his little yellow cab.

He was more than friendly. He was enthusiastic and detailed and to this day I still wonder sometimes what the fuck he said. He spoke German like he was talking around a golf ball of chewing gum. Like it was Dutch, or Swedish, or some other langauge that sounds vaguely familiar but that I don’t understand. After asking him to repeat it twice, I felt embarrassed and wandered off in one of the directions he’d pointed in to try my luck somewhere else.

That was my first encounter with the accent common in Saxony. Guidebooks say that the Saxon accent is to German what Scottish is to English. “Kaufen,” normally pronounced like a well-enunciated “cow-fin,” gets twanged into something more like “co-fen.” “Eine,” which is usually pronounced “I-na,” becomes “Ay (like in say)-na.” Linguists describe this with a lot of unitelligable words like “centralized and non-rounded vowels.” In short this means do not come here in order to improve your German.

It took me approximately three months before I could understand the average Saxon. I still have to ask some friends to repeat themselves, and I will never understand what it is the construction worker at the vokü is trying to say to me.

When I first arrived, a friend of Markus’ tried to teach me her favorite phrase.

“Schgloobsglaaschdglei,” she said.

“What?” Was that even German?

“Schgloobsglaaschdglei,” she repeated, laughing. “You understand?”

I shook my head, probably with a look of horror stretched across my face.

“Ich glaube es klatscht gleich.” Indeed. It took the whole night and two bottles of wine before I was capable of saying it the way she did, the usual rights of passage of a foreigner in a new region.

It should be noted, as a point of interest, that many Saxons, and Lonely Planet, claim that the German language actually originated here, and that the Saxon dialect is actually the forefather of the German we all know and love today. There was even a Dutchman round about 1717 who went so far as to call Saxish “the most comprehensible, charming, and delightful to the ear of all German dialects.” Well I say.

I found myself more in accordance with friends in the West who referred to the Saxon dialect as “the most embarrassing German dialect there is.”

Fast forward five months, six days. Someone asks me a question.

“Keene Ahnung (no idea),” I replied without thinking. The sound of the words echoed in my ears. “Keene?” Oh dear sweet jesus did I just say “keene”? Maybe nobody will notice. Don’t notice, don’t notice, don’t notice, I prayed.

“Did you just say ‘keene?!?!’” Markus almost yelled. I was never going to live this down.

“No, of course not. Hey, look at that bike!” A pretty bike would usually be enough to distract Markus from an incoming missile. I suppose I had spent a little too much time jabbing him about his accent.

“YOU SAID KEENE!” Well, I guess I did.

The day that you say “keene” instead of “keine” completely by accident is the day when you should seriously consider leaving Saxony. As luck would have it, I already had. Get ready Frankfurt, I’ll be back in two weeks.

The Striezelmarkt

German Christmas markets: The best thing to happen to heart specialists’ incomes since the county fair.

(For any Germans traveling to America, I highly recommend that you visit a county fair so that you can continue to fine tune your loathing for Americans and their culture. What’s that? You mean there’ll be a hog tie, deep-fried Oreoes, AND a competition where two grown men in plaid shirts and overalls attempt to wrestle each other off a floating log? Oh boy! Ma, put the gun rack in the pick up truck, we’re going to the fair.)

And at the Striezelmarkt, Germany’s oldest Christmas market, you’ll find enough deep-fried, sugar-coated, cheese-covered confections to give a funnel cake a heart attack.

There are bratwurst of every size, shape, color, and denomination. There are barrels of candied almonds, rows of chocolate-covered pears, and alp-en heaps of gummy bears. There are snowballs—a sugary confection made of strips of dough woven into a fist-sized ball, plastered together with your choice of filling, and baked until cookie-crisp. There are crepes. And langoes—a deep-fried flat bread served with your choice of cheese, extra cheese, or eminent heart attack. And of course waffles. (I’m sorry, was that whipped cream, Nutella, or diabetic shock?)

Local legend has it that the calories don’t count if you wash them down with a glass of Gluhwein (mulled wine).

You’ll also find Miss Stollen. In the first week of December, the chefs from The Night Kitchen get together and bake a 3,500 kilo stollen. They then parade the cake up to the castle, cut it with a five foot knife, and force the newly crowned Miss Stollen to eat the entire thing as quickly as possible.

Last reported, Miss Stollen was recovering from triple bypass surgery in St. Mary’s Hospital.

Weihnachtstadt Dresden

This little strip of Christmas market extends into the city’s shopping district and was the result of a top-secret meeting between Gluhwein vendors and several chain stores. The meeting went something like this:

Gluhwein vendor: You know, customers will spend more in your stores if they are drunk. And the rest of the people, well once they’re drunk, they might consider coming into your store in the first place.

Corporate manager duder: Where do I sign?

Weihnachtsmarkt am Frauenkirche

If you have strong elbows and no conscience about pushing gray-haired yuppies out of your way, you’ll love the Frauenkirche Weihnachtsmarkt! (That exclamation point is not sarcastic. I hunt yuppies for sport.)

After browsing through stalls with the same bric-a-brac you saw at the last three Christmas markets you visited, you can duck into the Frauenkirche. For those of you with deteriorating long-term memories, the Frauenkirche is the bombed out church from the pictures in the World War II chapter of your high school history textbook. It has since been restored, and entry is free. So take a seat, oogle some historically significant architecture, and pray that you’re feet will someday thaw.

Advents-Spektakel

Once upon a time there was a medeival Christmas market in the courtyard of the Dresden castle. People have claimed that it was both charming and electricity-free. However, early on the morning of our arrival, the market burned down in a tragic and mysterious fire, the cause of which remains unknown until today. Authorities are offering a reward for information on the whereabouts of a small plastic gorilla, last seen dunking bananas into a glass of Gluhwein on Prager Straße. The subject is considered highly dangerous.

Neustadt Weihnachtsmarkt

The Neustadt Christmas market slumps up Neustadt’s main street with booths offering yet more hand-crafted sausages, hot-spiced ornaments, deep-fried wine, and, ah fuck it, you know damn well by now what’s in those booths.

Walk through the market, making sure not to make eye contact with any of the vendors or you might find yourself buying another little moose ornament, up into the Neustadt, and into the first pub you come across. There you can start drinking off all the Christmas cheer that rubbed off on your during the day.

Königstein Medeival Market

Though located about an hour southwest of Dresden, this Christmas Market is an adequate replacement for the charred remains of the Advents-Spektakel. Though both the Königstein Market and the Weihnachtsmarkt am Frauenkirche offer a similar variety of aggressive, slow-moving tourists, Königstein also offers a dizzyingly long drop, convenient for disposing of the tourists you’ve bludgeoned to death with old sausages.

After disposing of the corpses you can beat your chest and scream “No one has ever taken the Rittermark/Königstein!” with confidence because, indeed, no one ever has. Then freshen yourself up with a hot plastic cup of Gluhwein and an authentic virgin waif.

Unfortunately, getting to the market and then actually getting in will set you back at least 20 euros. The train ride from Dresden with a family ticket that allows up to 5 people costs 14 euros and an hour and a half. The Festung Express round trip bus ticket is 4 euros and is accompanied by ominous urban-bus-driver legends discouraging you from attempting the way through the woods and buying one-way. The Festung entrance fee is 5 euros for adults and 3 euros for students, children, and retirees. Then of course there’s elevator use at 1.50 euro per person, the obligatory glass of Gluhwein at the summit at 2.50 per plastic cup, and a fried something or other for 3.50. But the chance to cop a feel on the busty stable girl behind the crepe stand? That’s priceless.

Marauder’s tip: If you can stomach the food, Christmas markets are a table-diving bazaar. Show up around closing time and ask vendors if they have any leftovers they were going to throw away. Most of them never want to see another sausage or crepe ever again, and will gladly give you the day’s leftovers. Sausages abound, vegetarian choices are mildly limited, and vegan choices are practically nonexistent.

We didn’t like each other before we’d even met.

It was nothing unusual. This was, after all Germany, and we were, in fact, in a restaurant. The hungry passerby and the German waiter are natural enemies.

“Can I get you started with some drinks?” the waiter wanted to know. He’d eagerly watched us from the bar, waiting for us to take off our coats before pouncing with the menus. I had high hopes. Maybe here, in a tiny, old-school German restaurant that proudly proclaimed “Futtern wie bei Muttern!” (Chow down like you do at Mom’s) on the sign, we would find a unicorn, a revolution, a miracle: the German waiter who had not only heard the words customer service, but who had actually looked them up in the dictionary.

“I’d like a coffee, and we’d also like two waters, not sparkling.”

“Ah, we only have sparkling water,” he replied. He said it resolutely, firmly. Oh you silly child! No one ever taught you about how everyone in Germany drinks sparkling water? Silly tourists, tap water is for National Socialists.

(This aversion to tap water had, in fact, once been mentioned to me in a small high school German classroom over an out-dated book filled with pictures of badly dressed people named Heike, Sven, and Lars who liked to go hiking and introduce themselves to each other over and over and over again. Upon arriving in Germany, however, I learned that sparkling water was not the sole monarch, and that while many people preferred it, still water and tap water were not, in fact, extinct. Or poisonous.)

I looked at him, and then at the faucet hanging smugly over the bar sink. “Well, we’ll have tap water then.”

Up until this point, he had managed to maintain the front of polite etiquette he’d put on that morning with his little white chef’s hat. But this was the last straw. The sausage that broke the waiter’s back.

“I can’t sell you tap water!”

“Why not?” (And by ‘Why not,’ I of course meant, “Oh! So you can give it to us for free!” If only I could manage to be so pert on cue.)

“I can’t legally sell you tap water. There are German grocery laws!”

He started waving his arms around, as if to point out all of the invisible food inspectors who would shut down his restaurant if he sold us two glasses of tap water. I glanced around. We were the only three people in the restaurant. Maybe he thought we were the inspectors.

“Listen, I live one block away. Am I supposed to go home, fill up my glass there, and bring it back?”

He threw his hands in the air. His eyes said “Who do you think you are!!?” His fingers said “This is GERMANY!” And his shoulders cried, “THERE ARE LAWS.” Then he disappeared into the kitchen. We never got our water.

Ladies and gentleman, I’d like to present to you German customer service. Or perhaps, quite simply, the stubborn insistence on following the prescribed rules that is as common here as dandelions in midsummer. I might even go so far as to say that certain historical events could not have happened if people…oh never mind. Point is, it doesn’t just apply in restaurants.

For example, telephone “customer service” agents have repeatedly told the residents of my WG that they would, in fact, send a technician to set up the internet service we’d ordered from them. That was two months ago. Approximately one month ago, another customer service representative told my house mate, in the first sign of intelligent life we’d seen from the company since signing up, that he would do everything he could to figure out why it was taking so long. He then proceeded to say that he would email his findings to my house mate later that day.

I guess he’d forgotten that they were talking about how we didn’t have any internet service in the first place.

And I had been under the impression that internet providers were interested in collecting as many paying customers as possible. But after considerable thought, I’ve decided that I’d misjudged their business strategy.

I sometimes try to imagine what sort of training German customer service representatives receive. Do they skip the training all together? Or are they just too underpaid to give a shit? The latter I can understand. What I cannot understand is how any of these restaurants and companies are still in business. People complain, but nobody complains as loud as the expats. And the “there is no fucking customer service here fuck this country” is a complaint I’ve heard from almost every expat I’ve met here.

It’s not that these situations wouldn’t and don’t piss your average German off as much as your average Amie expat, but it seems that, in the end, most people just sigh and resign themselves to the policies of whatever company they’re currently at the mercy of. At the end of the day it’s not the customer who is always right, but the rule or policy being enforced. And to be fair, anyone who’s worked in any service industry anywhere knows that it’s full of asshole customers who treat you like shit and expect you to wipe their asses in return. Clerks at the mercy of policies, customers at the mercy of clerks who had no say in the policies that they’re enforcing. Bitters anyone? Perhaps the disrepute of German customer service is not due to misguided training programs or incompetence, but a subtlety planned workers’ revolt. Dear Capitalism, I want a divorce.

“Oh my god do you think they’re closing?”

We were standing in front of our favorite Konsum, pretending to be on a late-night stroll while waiting for the S-Bahn to haul away the twenty people standing across the street. We both looked at the boarded up windows and missing sign with furrowed brows.

“No look!” Markus said. “The shopping carts are still there. They’re probably just renovating.”

I sighed. “I fucking hope so.” That dumpster is the yogurt and expensive cheese dumpster, and my personal favorite. And if the Konsum here closes, there won’t be any more Friday night bike rides ending with bags full of Brie and mozzarella-tomato kabobs and chocolate covered bananas and crème pudding.

I slid under the fence and started filling my bag. “Do you like Jell-o?” I asked. Markus was leaning casually against the other side of the fence, keeping watch. People always see us; there’s a S-bahn station across the street and a popular brewery next store. But besides the well-dressed couples whose steps quicken when they see a pair of legs hanging out of a trash can, no one ever seems to care.

“Na I hate Jell-o. Are there any more of those fruit juices though? They were really good with vodka.”

A tandem bicycle is the ultimate dumpstering vehicle. Or it would be, if we had a working trailer. Even without it we can fill two backpacks, strap a box to the luggage rack, and then bike home, with the person in back balancing another box in their arms.

At our other regular stops, a Konsum and a Netto across the river, we fill our bags with vegetables that I can use for the vokü—eight cauliflower, bell peppers, tomatoes, lettuce, zucchini, and broccoli. I balance a box of oranges in my arms, and we pedal home.

It is usually our last stop, but the adrenaline had us back out on the street after unpacking the booty. Before leaving, I looked at the ceiling and dictated a short letter. “Dear Dumpster gods. I need some more vegetables for cooking tomorrow, and stuff for the salad. Thanks.”

It’s almost joke. Almost. It’s more like a budding diy folk religion. I’ve never asked the dumpster gods for something and not found it in the next days or weeks. Starts to make you feel like the universe is watching out for you. Starts to make you forget about being afraid: afraid there won’t be enough food or a roof over your head, and remember about living, passionately and unapologetically. And all because of a bunch of trash.

This time we rode to an Edeka whose containers are always full of pinapple rinds and that smell like fruit and garlic. Every container we opened got better and better. First some of the usual suspects: a few yellow bell peppers, apples, and enough broccoli to fill out my soup at the vokü the next day. In the next container we found mushrooms and a bag full of hot chilis that we strung and hang in the kitchen. And then—buried treasure!—an entire garbage bag filled with bread. We took the entire thing out and drug it around the corner. It was too heavy to just be bread, and at the bottom of the bag we find ten packages of asparagus, and ten more of children’s salad. “Vegetables for cooking tomorrow and stuff for the salad.”

Dear Dumpster Gods, You are fucking fantastic. Love, Nikki.

The Chemiefabrik (Chemical Factory) is where Dresden punk shows run off to when the noise complaints from AZ Conni’s neighbors start to become a problem. Every Thursday they have Jugendtanz (Youth Dance) there as well. But don’t bother with that. The music is terrible, and on the days when it’s a little less terrible, it’s still not worth the entrance fee. Even if you can sometimes buy your way in with dumpstered honey.

I don’t know if the Chemiefabrik was ever really a chemical factory. There are other industrial buildings in the area, and one story is as likely as the next. There are no bathrooms, just a few places to crouch between trees and graffiti covered walls around back. Sometimes there’s a big bonfire outside, and the inside is covered with posters of bands who’ve played there.

There is a long bar where a Sterni costs EUR 1.30. Highway fucking robbery if you consider that a Sterni costs exactly 34 cents at the grocery store. It’s easy to rob poor planners, and by the time you get there and remember that you should have bought your own Sternis at the grocery store, all of the grocery stores are closed. All the same, it’s still cheaper than you’d pay at a regular bar.

On Wednesday I got off my lazy, broke ass, and shelled out 5 euros to see Contempt. A friend had organized the show, and well, it’s not like I have to wake up early mornings.

Dallas Denver opened—a local band. They don’t look like anything special or play like anything special, but they’re not unpleasant either, mostly because of the row of high school-age groupies who were standing up front with homemade, red glitter Dallas Denver shirts and an “I heart Conrad” sign sprayed in blue on an old piece of cardboard. The crowd bobed a little, a nod of appreciation for the attempt but not much more, and the teenie fans insisted on an encore. It was adorable actually.

The usual punk crowd was there. The girls with rows of peircings, Mohawks, and layers of ripped stockings. The boys in leather jackets, covered in spikes and pins and dirt. The rocknroll cats in tight tapered black pants, ripped black Converse or striped Vans slip ons. Black t-shirts screen printed in white. Patched pants. You’re probably familiar with the cast, set, and costumes already anyway.

Contempt came on around the second or third beer. And they have it—that charisma and energy that’s hard to describe and impossible to fake, but that has the crowd dancing by the first song. The drummer sat back in the shadows. One faded green Mohawk down the center of his head, wearing a black Contempt T-shirt screen printed in white. The guitarist—that’s right, another black T-shirt screen printed in white. The bassist was one of the punk rock chicks. Three layers of Mohawk, a chain connecting one of the peircings in her ears with one of the peircings in her nose. She’s filling in for someone named Trog, the singer told us from behind long brown dreadlocks.

There was a miniature pit and the rest of the crowd remained in the shadows, one hand holding a beer and the other in a pocket, back heels tapping to the beat.

It’s not earthshattering, but it’s a reason to thrash out two weeks of pent up aggression, and I went home sweaty and exhausted. The sound the speakers leave in my ears to fall asleep to sounds like a flock of restless seagulls.

As you ride north on Königsbrücker the city begins to unravel, buildings slowly becoming sparser, spreading themselves out between abandoned lots until the trees are growing on the buildings themselves and you find yourself in a tiny city, mostly abandoned: the industrial district. To get inside you can climb over fences from the front, or up a hill and through apocalyptic-looking piles of rubble from the Heide behind. Some of the buildings remain in use, while the rest form a labyrinth of architectural corpses, innards gutted and removed, a horror-film-soundtrack dripdroping to the offbeat meow of a lost alley cat, the last echo of a black-shuttered death rattle.

There’s enough empty real estate here to house an army of squatters. An army of squatters! I think to myself. If we all showed up on the same day, they could never arrest us all! I imagined hoards of people pouring in on freight trains and bikes, in caravans of red and blue wagons. The smell of dumpstered vegetables roasting over pallet bonfires. Patched pants. Tough wiry dogs with their tough wiry owners. Squatters swinging Tarzan-style between windows of the 15-story (former) army barracks…

Many of the buildings show signs of having been squatted already: an arrow topped “N” scrawled on a roof, curling yellowed theater advertisements, a blackboard to-do list—”1. locks 2. phone numbers 3. plan 4. suicide” read the headings—blue-tinged cut-outs of naked women pinned in neat rows along the wall, empty spray paint cans, damp shoes waiting to be claimed by every rag-tag Cinderella in the valley.

Further north along Königsbrücker, past blocks of human filing cabinets and chinzy motels you’ll find Klotzsche.

Klotzsche has never been mentioned in a travel guide or featured in one of those “Travel’s Best Kept Secrets” articles. No one will ever recommend that you go there, and unless you happen to fly from the Dresden airport, you probably never will.

A name like a slap in the face—Klotzsche!—a word you’d expect to find exploding over Adam West’s head in an old episode of Batman—and a town like a limp-wristed slap. One of its few redeeming qualities are the supermarkets, or rather, the dumpsters behind them. Unless you don’t have a car. In which case, you might actually be burning more calories getting there than you gain in remaindered cucumbers and bell peppers. Dresden is in a valley, and that means that everything outside of it is uphill.

And therein lies Klotzsche’s other redeeming quality: on a bike the entire ride home is down.