The drinking started 8am on Friday and continued almost non-stop till Monday afternoon (Reaching some kind of crescendo at about 3am Monday in a cloud of cigar smoke and a blur of tequila). In between we flew to Leipzig in East Germany, gave three presentations, performed a few experimental "actions" for the Leipzig CCTV operators and lost one of our agents in a car accident. It was the usual Space Hijacker field trip.
Our gang had been invited to Leipzig by Leipziger Kamera to help them "celebrate" 10 years of CCTV in Leipzig. It was the first time anyone has ever made posters announcing that the Hijackers were coming to town, and we did our best to live up to our reputation.
Since the general theme of the trip was surveillance, and our hosts did not actually know us, we thought we would play a little game or spies. Undecided (the agent we lost in the car accident) and I arranged separate transport from the airport and our own special accommodation. Dressed in black, we left the "Hijackers" to get picked up and taken to their base - while we watched and took photos from a distance. When we arrived at the talks that night, well, people got a little nervous.
It's a very interesting mindset, that of an "agent of power". We made no attempt to hide, we made no attempt to communicate, we were simply there to let those we were watching know that we were watching. It is a very blatant show of power - the original terrorism. We took photos of the audience, responded to questions with empty answers, did some probing, but generally just observed. After the talks were done, we were waiting for them in the bar. There was no escape.
But we gave up. It was a little too boring, this life in the corner. It was also East Germany and people here have very real memories of secret police enforcing the will of the state. Enough people had also guessed the game, and to be honest, we wanted to do a bit of drinking. We joined the drinking until the early morning.
Next came paper bags. Lots of them over people's heads. A great game. Get yourself one brown paper bag, cut some holes for eyes, and then maybe draw on a smile. ( I also recommend some holes that you can put your ears through so that the bag will grip your head.) Now, you can walk the streets without being recognised by the CCTV. We took a big gang on a tour of the CCTV cameras around Leipzig's city centre, and ended with a staged brawl and love fest in the square - a failed attempt to attract the attention of the moving police camera. Having proven than the cameras were not any use to anyone getting mugged of beaten up, we headed to the station bar to discuss.
That evening we presented a third talk at the Leipzig Gallery of Contemporary Art and showed Agent Cupcake's film of Day 1 to complete the "work" section of our activity. We headed back to base, did a bit of work on our "Hijacker German Phrasebook" and began preparations for Saturday Night's entertainment.
It was at the party that night, as Cupcake plugged in his magic music machine and our gang of Agents began jumping around like lunatics, that it dawned on me that we really were a travelling freakshow. Loud, rude and drunk we had stormed into town with a bunch of crazy people and proceeded to just keep on drinking. We left the original party at about 5am, and after a drink at another great 70s bar made a move to find a new target. Stepping out onto the road Agent Undecided was involved in a hit and run accident.
The car never even slowed down. Undecided was thrown to the ground, white as a sheet but luckily so blind drunk that he could feel no pain. We took him to hospital a little later, but he never returned.
My phone rang at about 7pm, while all the surviving hijackers were drowning their sorrows with more beer. A new agent was joining us, Agent Unbreakable had materialised in an East German Hospital and was requesting a pickup. Our sorrow at Undecided's loss was quickly forgotten, we hailed a cab, booked a restaurant and got ready to celebrate.
After dinner at a fucking amazing punk vegan eaterie we made the fatal move of going for a drink at Agent X, the bar next door. The bar owner actually asked us to enter when we had initially hesitated (it was a bit quiet and we were a gang of 12 rowdy drunkards), cleared a whole table for us in the corner, and proceeded to lay on the beer.
The bar was decorated with madness: a statue of Pan in the corner, a wardrobe with a deer antler handle was the entrance to the toilets, and all manner of detritus covered the walls. The evening descended into chaos, probably as a direct result of the intervention of Agent Bez who revived the tequila tradition from the previous night. The cigars burned our throats, the beer kept flowing and we tried out more rude German phrases. Eventually they brought us a bill.
We headed back to base, found more beer and continued. Sometime in the night I was tied up, I stripped down to my underwear and who knows what else. Sleep eventually lasted about an hour before we headed off to the airport.
I still hurt.
