Today has been an ... odd day.
It started quite mundanely. A friend had convinced me to avoid the awfully commercial, awfully pop-music oriented open-air music festival that, as every, turns the downtown area of my town (about a mile from where I live) into a demilitarized zone, and go to a peace-festival with alternative music and whatnot instead. A forty-five minute journey by train, which is even a free-ride for me (on account of my disability). On the way there, my phone acted up, so I applied the panacea of all things IT, the ultimate fixxer, a power-cycle. Without remembering first, of course, that I had to get a new micro-sim-card to fit my new phone a few months back and, thus far, had only ever used the PIN once. So didn't know it. Untethered from the world of digital communication, I embarked on my journey to that festival.
It was nice. A bit rural, many tie-dies, quite a few topless men in men-skirts performing certainly fascinating acts with sticks (get your mind out of the gutter, you ...).
It was uncannily relaxed. Peaceful. No worries, no stress. Everybody was just having a nice summer day, enjoying the weather and (surprisingly sparse) music, nothing to get upset about. Kids played ball with balloons, old people wandered through the crowd unmolested.
I didn't notice what was entirely off, of course. Even amidst all that nice, chillaxed atmosphere, something was off. Very off. My friend pointed it out to me, only then did I notice it. And was astounded, flabbergasted, shocked and even surprised.
There were no cops.
Where I'm from, as soon as three people or more gather with advance notice, cops will be present. That's the way it goes. Hereabouts, in the urban part of the land, you assembler a group of people and tell someone in advance, cops will be there. Especially if you assemble a thousand or more people in some small-ish area, and then provide them with music and fair-trade coffee and t-shirts. Definitely then.
There wasn't one. Not a single cop-car, not even a single cop, at least not in uniform. Not one.
After two hours, two hours after we had arrived, an hour after festivities had officially begun, one finally turned up. One cop. Not a squad, not even a good-cop, bad-cop duo, just the one. Dressed in the nice, white uniform they got for special occasions in the summer. Before walking the beat across the grounds of the festival, he obviously had to stop off and make introductions and whatnot first. He spent about 20 minutes at the biggest beverage stall getting, well, a beer.
For someone from an area where the police automatically presume that anyone who got out of bed this morning is about to violently rape a fire-hydrant, any fire-hydrant, and laugh while they're doing it, this was a rather ... unusual experience, really. Even though, with all the rural flair, 100k people doesn't make a town particularly small, this was entirely outside any of the urban-centric experiences of public events I've had. Not to mention any experience I've had with the cops. We got drunk on organic beer (the alternative was swill, no safe-the-whatnot pretense), got a little ripped off on the token-system they used at the beverage stalls, talked about getting ripped-off for a good cause, and stumbled to the train station to get home by about 8:30 pm.
Which was where things got properly ... well ... this friend who dragged me to that festival?
I basically carried a torch for that woman for over a decade. No, I'm not exaggerating.
Bigshankhank wrote: is there a German word for friend zone?
Well ... if there is, I'm not sure whether I'm still in it.
I'm too drunk to figure out whether to be jubilant about that, or whether to be petrified about potentially ruining a great friendship.
There's good reason I got home only at midnight, rather than about 8:30. No, I didn't get "lucky". Probably could have, but didn't (and don't) want her to wake up regretting things.
