The sharp glass spikes of the broken bottles come dangerously close to our faces. The man, wildly determined, holds the broken beer bottles tightly in both hands and swings them around wildly. He had knocked the bottoms off the bottles on the curb. He is bleeding heavily from his temple. He wipes the blood from his eyes with his sleeve.
The last thing I remember before it started was a bell ringing to signal the start of the tenth round between Tyson Fury and Oleksandr Usyk. Heavyweight champions Fury and Usyk fought for the undisputed heavyweight world championship on the cracked screen of a cell phone. There hadn’t been an undisputed world champion in the sport’s most traditional and prestigious weight class for 25 years. Pope Francis personally signed and blessed a belt made especially for the fight.
A somewhat strange character
And although it is a depraved, corrupt sport that sacrifices the health of its athletes in the long term and the short term for the purses of promoters and television executives, from time to time in fights like these, as a person who has invested too much time in the sport, a certain interest in the outcome cannot be completely suppressed. Perhaps the Pope feels the same way.
Anyway, the large flat screen TV in the Späti, where some friends and I sat down that evening, remained switched off despite the upcoming spectacle. The owner of the shop on Warschauer Strasse spoke of the licensing requirements he would have to fulfill in order to broadcast it. He shrugged his shoulders and asked us to watch the fight on one of our cell phones. After a bit of searching, we found a broadcast behind some dodgy click-on advertising; the cell phone was lying across the wooden table and leaning against a bottle.
Two friends from France were sitting on the bench in the Späti to my right. It was their first time in Berlin and so far the city had shown them its best side. They already had a full gallery of photos in front of the East Side Gallery, Checkpoint Charlie, etc.
In the early, uneventful rounds of the fight, a crowd suddenly forms in front of the Späti. It is already dark; part of our group comes back to the table and tells us that they have just the well-known German YouTuber Tanzverbot He had been arguing with a friend after she admitted that she didn’t know him. Before he left in disgust, he gave her a stack of stickers with his face on them – a somewhat strange character.
The owner of the Späti waited a little while for a relative to take over the counter for him and then went around the corner to another bar with everyone else, who was not allowed to dance. Our French friends also said goodbye, just in time.
Here they come. The boxers get up from their stools for the tenth round; Fury only just survived the previous one. A man rushes into the Späti, bumping into a few people as he sprints through the door. He is wearing a flat cap, has shoulder-length blond hair and a bushy moustache. His eyes are wide open and he looks around the shop frantically. “I’m being followed, he wants to kill me!” he screams. We are a little doubtful when he asks: “Where is the toilet?” Several fingers point to the door behind which the bathroom is. You can hear the loud bang of the toilet door, accompanied by the click of the lock as he locks himself in.
At night in Berlin-Friedrichshain: View of the Warschauer Straße S-Bahn stationJürgen Ritter/imago
About a minute later, a man steps out of the shadows of the sidewalk into the light of the neon sign. He stops in the entrance to the store. He is also breathing heavily. He is small and thin, has a ponytail, his hair is shaved short on the sides; his tight pants are noticeably low. He is bleeding from his head. In his hand he is holding an empty Sterni bottle.
He seems to have seen the other man enter the Späti. There is a mailbox on the street; he starts hitting it with his bottle until it breaks. “That might happen in movies, but who really does that?” I think. The man suddenly turns around and runs into the Späti. At the last moment, a friend kicks the bathroom door shut. With outstretched arms and open palms, we carefully push ourselves between him and the closed door in the best de-escalation manner. There is panic in the shop, many people rush out. The bottle is pointed in irregular movements at everyone in the Späti. Suddenly the owner runs up from the sidewalk and starts to insult the man with the bottle at a deafening volume. For a moment the man looks around uncertainly, stares at the owner of the Späti, and then retreats to the street with slow steps.
More eye contact than usual
Then his anger returns. He throws the broken bottle at the owner; it misses him and shatters on the wall of the house. He takes two new bottles from the beer bench, goes to the curb, crouches down and breaks the bottles open. He slowly moves back towards the Späti, the broken edges of the bottles stretched out in front of him. With several swings he stabs the edges of the bottles into the air between him and us. The Späti owner and his relative continue to shout at the man, a telescopic baton is taken out from behind the counter. Someone in our group calls the police. The man retreats again, starts throwing his bottles onto the street and walks away across the lanes and tram tracks.
The friend on the phone repeats the address out loud. He hears for minutes a “This is the Berlin police, we have someone who can speak to you in a minute”. Shortly after he gets through, blue lights are already visible. Three police cars rush up. We knock on the toilet door. The man with the moustache looks down at us over the edge of the toilet cubicle and nods contentedly when we tell him that his pursuer has now left and the police are here. Later, in front of the Späti, he tells us with irritating calm that he himself had hit the man who had followed him with a bottle; he calls it a “natural movement” and reenacts the blow with his right arm several times. The man had come too close to him in an argument in which laughing gas and mutual insults had played a role.
While the police have found his now even more heavily bleeding counterpart on a bench on the grassy median strip of the road and are busy establishing his identity, he quietly asks the group if anyone wants to smoke a joint with him. Finally, he shrugs his shoulders, his steps are brisk as he sets off towards the S-Bahn station.
Outside the Späti, the broken glass and shaking knees helped us to reassure ourselves that it had all really happened. And how do you go to bed after something like that? The “Have a safe journey home!” was definitely said more seriously and with a lot more eye contact than usual as we made our way home.
