Some decades ago, I nearly stormed Hamburg's town hall -- by accident.

The local assembly was in session while there was a large protest gathering by university students including my friends and me. We were kept away from the square in front of the town hall by police in riot gear.

We were quite happily shouting slogans at a line of officers, when they got the order to pull back. The police were as confused as us: Why pull back and let hundreds of protesters flow into the square?

I was right in front of the police line and exchanged a WTF glance with one of the officers. We then all started running towards the steps of the townhall. That is protestors and police officers mixed up.

I was young and reasonably fit & might have outrun police in riot gear. However, a new question arose:
What the hell are we supposed to do if we actually get into the town hall?!

There was another exchange of glances, this time with my friends. No-one had a clue but without words or gestures a new understanding was reached to pretend that we could not run faster than the police.

Moments later the police officers and protestors reached the steps of the town hall and quickly reformed into a police line facing hundreds of people.
Everybody seemed relieved that we had re-estabished a script for the encounter.

We then started shouting "Ingo, komm raus!" to get the state minister for universities to come out and hear our demands.
As far as I remember he did show himself on the town hall steps and said something no-one could hear.
After that people got bored and left.

Which reminds me of the time I nearly got someone killed at a street protest.

It was my second semester at the University of Hamburg & I had been involved in organising a student strike (boycott of classes) & occupation of the Philosophenturm building. There was a stalemate between university leadership & us.

My friends and I decided to try and take the protest to the streets in order to energise the protestors & to make our strike more visible in the city. A plenary was called which was well attended.

There were a few speakers but I remember giving a particularly rousing speech which culminated in a call to bring rush hour traffic to a halt RIGHT NOW so that the state government could not ignore us any more.

Personally, I was on a high, as it was a very powerful emotional experience to be able to enthuse a crowd to take physical action in the moment.

Maybe two hundred students walked off campus and onto the very busy junction at Dammtor station. I was amongst them with my friends.
Motorised traffic ground to a halt. Horns were sounded. There was angry shouting between protestors and motorists.

And I started to feel nervous.

What had I done? Where was this going to lead?

At this moment a car accelerated and hit a student maybe twenty metres from where I was standing.

There was a nauseating thud and the young man was thrown to the ground. Other people rushed to surround the car & some to aid the person who had been hit.

Several things happened and did not happen as a consequence:
The young man was not seriously hurt. He got away with some bruises.
Another young man (me) was terrified.
Subsequently I kept a much lower profile and for some time focussed on writing.

[Apologies for typos. I just let the memories flow and neglected spell checking. I know that protester is the correct spelling.]

This reminds me of the time we interrupted a performance at the Hamburgische Staatsoper.

It was during the Gulf War and - with a different set of friends - we came up with the idea to protest the war where it seemed to matter least, at the opera.

One of the friends was an artist and a perfectionist. He agreed to create a banner to span the entire width of the stage emblazoned with a sentence repeated in the news every night:

"Über die Anzahl der Opfer wurden keine Angaben gemacht.“ – No information was given with regards to the number of victims.

We met at the café of the Metropolis cinema next-door dressed in our finest evening wear and waited for the interval – at which time we started mingling with the opera audience taking a breather.

We then ambled into the auditorium and towards the stage. When the ushers reminded us to take our seats, we made excuses waiting for the right moment to climb up the stage (and not to fall into the orchestra pit).