a lot of stuff in a short space.

sorry for covering a lot of material in a short space, but lappy is busted so I'm using a common computer with a french keyboard. It's so difficult to do. I'm releasing some pictures to you as a supplement for words: http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/veganbikepunk/Photos

So the past few days were not as terrifying, since we had a place to stay the whole time. We checked out some radical cafès, went to a punk/electronica festival, I got a tooth pulled, and we went to a planning meeting for the g8.

Where to start... the radical cafès were nice, one even reminded me of the Red and Black a little, but it didn't quite cut it... i sincerely miss dragon noodles.

I got my tooth pulled, which was a pretty strange experience... I just walked in to a nearby dentist complaining of pain and he just immediately sat me down, numbed my mouth and scraped all the nerves out of my aching tooth, then scheduled me for the next day to have it removed. When I got it removed he handed me a bill and asked if I wanted to pay cash or have my insurance deal with it. I said insurance and that was the end of that. I had my insurance card but he never asked to see it. He never even got my name until the end of the exchange. Rad yet surprising to see a medical professional whose first concern is health. So, my jaw still hurts and I'm terrified of getting dry socket, but at least that damn tooth is gone.

At one point the people in our squat let us know of a radical festival that would be going on, and we decided we would tag along. It was in a big park, and when we first got there, we figured we had accidentally gotten ourselves into a hippie-jam-fest. One tent was playing this super-hippie electronica, and another was just playing hippie jam band music. Further down, though, we found the punk stage. We watched some band (Walls of Jericho, I think) play for a while, then they finished and another band started setting up and then playing, and they were this weird ska-polka mix... not really my thing, but oh well. In any event, during their first song it started raining, and by their second song the wind was nearly knocking people over and there was hail bigger than bb's. Everyone huddled under stages and used tarps to cover the equipment and to cover the stages, meanwhile people were being pelted in the head with these huge hail crystals. It was the worst weather i've ever seen and the tarps above us were filling up and dumping water on me. When it started to die down we ran to the car and drove back home, just in time to take the subway to the g8 planning meeting, which was interesting but contained no information of relevance here.

So then yesterday we caught the train up to Rostock, and arrived at the convergence center, zhich is RAD AS SHIT. I got the tour then spent a few hours in the kitchen cooking, then attended a workshop on sexism and sexist violence, which was actually more of a recruitment ploy to get people to sign up to hang out at their safe space area and do shifts on the phone in case of sexist violence or anything like that, which I can't really do for two reasons...

1) I'm going to be split between two camps and

2) In the work I've done regarding sexist violence I've come to the conclusion that a man (or boi)'s place in these scenarios is almost never up front. The patriarchal reality is that the vast majority of the time the perp is male and the affected person is either female, child, or trans. And although not always, but usually, a woman who has been sexually assaulted wants nothing less in the immediate followup than to deal with a man.

I made it clear that I will be around and if anything is needed of me, I would be beyond willing to help.

So while I'm here I'm gonna do some grammar checking for the english portion of germany imc, and hopefully soon we will be on our way to camp rostock.