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.

“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.

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.