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Edited on Fri Jul-25-08 04:11 PM by 48percenter
Okay, I'll give you a personal report, before the masses.
MissHoneyChurch and I ended up chasing Obama all day. LOL. We had breakfast with her brother, who was nice enough to let us stay in his very cool apt. in the Schöneberg quarter of Berlin. (I am in love with Berlin BTW) We grabbed our cameras and took the S-bahn to Potsdamer Platz. From there we walked down to the Brandenburgtor towards the Jewish Memorial (I need to read up on that, it was really amazing). As we walked past the new American Embassy we noticed a flock of news cameras at the back entrance of Hotel Adlon. We heard that Obama was coming there for lunch. Sure enough, 20 minutes later, he showed up in his white SUV. He waved to the crowd, men were screaming his name (I think they were from Africa, they broke into song) After that we walked back around the American Embassy to get a water, it was about 12:30pm, and the sun was hot. We noticed people lining up on the front side of the Hotel Adlon (today I hear there was a bomb threat when he went for lunch and they cleared out the restaurant, glad I didn't know that at the time!) We got behind the tape line with alot of other people who were supposedly waiting for Obama to come see the Brandenburg Gate. We waited for an hour and a half, security was heavy. Around 2:15 we got tired of waiting and asked a police officer if he was coming out and she said he's already left. ARGH! :grr: so we left to go get folding chairs for the event. By the time we got back over to the wide boulevard facing the Victory Column, everything was taped, gated and blocked off. There were bomb sniffing dogs and Polizei everywhere (German Shephards of course LOL) They detoured us all the way around the park to the other side of the Sigelsäule to the security set up. We made it in through security by 4:30, of course I had to throw out the deo in my purse that I had JUST bought. Things were tight, they went through every pocket. But they wouldn't let us take our chairs. :mad: So we had to leave them at the security gate, the guy said he couldn't promise that they would be there when we got out. Yeah +500K people, and they WERE there at 8:30 upon exit.
We chose our spot, but later it became clear that we kind of blew it. The stupid teleprompter on the right blocked half of his face. :nuke: Then the sun started setting, earlier it had been high clouds. By 6:45, we knew we were screwed, photo wise, but there was no where else to go. People were jammed into every nook and cranny. If we had opted to go left, up front we would have been the ones who got to shake his hand at the end. We basically sat on our asses on the street for about 2 hours waiting, then people kept butting ahead of us, so we stood for the last hour before Barack took the stage at 7:20pm-ish. He spoke for about 35 minutes, and the crowd was very respectful and well behaved. It was a real mix of people from all over the world. People responded most to climate change, aid to Dafur, and stronger, a less antagonistic transatlantic relationship.
We were so exhausted from all the walking, we opted for a bio-taxi to take us out of the park. A bicycle-taxi. LOL. We came home, dumped our stuff, ate a nice dinner at an Italian restaurant and then hit the internet cafe to see what people were saying. There you have it. Sounds kind of dry, but it was really a thrill to be there and feel the electricity of the crowd.
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