All the Blood Was Fake

The best way to spend a Berlin summer afternoon, it turns out, is to cover yourself in fake blood, fall down in front of the Reichstag, and shamble after screaming tourists while someone twenty meters away choreographs Thriller.

Sara, Till, and I joined a zombie flashmob that wound from Potsdamer Platz through central Berlin—past the Reichstag, eventually to the Brandenburg Gate—alongside maybe a hundred other enthusiasts in various stages of prosthetic decay. The date was August 29th, Michael Jackson’s birthday, two months after his death, which gave the Thriller choreography an edge of genuine feeling that caught me off guard. We fell to the pavement on cue. We hissed at bus tour passengers. At one point we crashed an entirely unrelated flashmob unfolding nearby, which I maintain was an act of artistic integrity.

Then the group took the U-Bahn in full costume to a Subway, and we ordered sandwiches at the counter while trailing fake wounds and torn clothing. I had blood caked from my temple to my chin and was genuinely deliberating between turkey and meatball. This is Berlin. Nobody at the counter flinched.

A small girl, maybe five years old, watched Sara with eyes at maximum aperture—the specific look of a child who has encountered something her understanding doesn’t yet cover. She asked Sara, very carefully, what exactly was happening here. I don’t know what Sara said. Whatever it was, I don’t think it helped.

I went home with one fewer white T-shirt. Completely worth it.