Firemen and Hot Weather Berlin Style
Sunday saw temperatures rising to 37º (close to 100 Fahrenheit). Those of us who hadn’t escaped to the lakes had no other option but to seek refuge in the shade, lay on our backs and gasp like an asthmatic pug. Even my deodorant, it seems, had left for cooler climes. We were walking back from Frühstück, hopping from shade to shade like a couple of sweaty ninjas, when we noticed a sudden shower of water at the end of the road. We initially assumed that some overheated and desperate citizens had burst a fire hydrant. As we drew closer, we were instead met with images of the local firefighters hosing down a grateful and ever growing crowd of people. It was one of those quintessentially Berlin scenes in which Germanic order meets the capital’s predisposition for pandemonium. An impromptu choreography soon developed in which children and adults would run in front of the firemen and stand there semi-defiantly, the firemen cooperatively spraying them with water till they ran away squeaking with delight. A cyclist would occasionally drive by, cheerfully accepting their dousing, eliciting applause from the crowd for being such a good sport. The loudest cheer came when the firemen briefly and rather playfully targeted a passing police car giving a brief yet contained glimpse into Berlin’s anarchic soul.
Eventually the inevitable happened, an over-enthusiastic little girl tripped over in sheer excitement and the whole thing was immediately stopped as the firemen came to her rescue, producing a collective “aaaaaaaaaah”, and securing their romantic prospects fort the foreseeable future. We stood uncertain of what would happen next. In London they would have called the whole thing off but this was Berlin. Well they carried on, but only after assessing that it was a small bump. The girl, blessed by the blissful amnesia that characterises children, soon rejoined the action. Besides a group of giggling women in lightly coloured summer dresses had just turned up. As my boyfriend, “I can’t imagine what the firemen are getting out of it.”
