I am a little late, I am trying to flash my little yellow „press“-sign – subtile and yet insisting. It’s laminated and has my name on it, apparently that is all it takes to make me walk directly in front of other people, classy much. The Arpana Aischa Berndt welcomes the crowd, but we are all somehow disturbed by a way too happy couple doing acro-yoga like 10 feet behind us. The dilemma is real: They are the incarnation of a festival, but we are about to get serious here.

We all decide to let them be happy. By we, I mean me and the audience, animal-print, belt bags, bird-tattoos. Glitter, body hair–and denim–combinations that would make Britney and Timberlake proud. The first author to do her reading ist Lea Sauer, she reads from her text „REWEFICATION“. I like the title, it is sassy and yet poetic. The text is about an „I“ and her (his?) mother, the street of the childhood and how Rewe XL is smashing the memory of a simpler time.

I have to pee, but I am too hungover to trust myself with the potential day-2-stench of the festival-toilet-world. I decide to stop drinking water instead, but it doesn’t really make the urge go away, and that in combination with the burning sun is maybe slacking my judgement a bit, but I don’t really buy the whole Rewe is the devil slash Coca Cola is the root of all evil take. My mind starts wandering a bit, I am thinking about the non-vegan mayo that my French fries are gonna take a swim in later, and I am looking around to see if there are any men that I can take a swim with afterwards. Does that make me better? Not at all, but that’s my point exactly.

Nadiah Riebensahm is angry and funny at the same time. I don’t say, that one is not enough, but I have a soft spot for the combination. „White hipsters are making profit from the type of food, that people used as a reason to bully me in school“ (the author’s free translation).

I understand why they saved Ronya Othmann for the grand finale. Like a poetic mic-drop she starts reading with confident and attitude and around me I can se people getting back in the mood. Her text is an elegant movement between life as we know it in Germany and a destiny that could have been if her character’s family had not made it out of Aleppo.

I called this post „The never-ending search for poetry“ which is a general festival-vibe for me. We come here and put on the animal-print in the search for some kind of ask-more-of-life true. At least I do. Listening to Ronya Othmann speaking about the fake solidarity of the privilliged white people around her, I remember why literature IS the pot of truth-gold at the end of my festival-rainbow: It is hitting me like the ray of sun (to quote another queen) I consider myself a jointly and severely girl, but I can’t even make it trough this reading without checking instagram.

But she is not even that judgmental, Ronya, eventhough she has every right to be. As she put into words herself: we still fall in love and the red currants are growing.

Days at festival: 2
Wake-up calls: 1