Showdown in the Strawberry Field: How I fought for Berlin's last berries

In our patchwork family, it's a tradition that we go to the strawberry field together on our daughter's birthday. In Havelhöhe, because that's where she was born. It really was her 18th birthday, and the sun came out especially for that, illuminating everything in a magnificent light. Appropriately, I thought.

But when we reached the edge of the field, the young Mr. Erdbeercolonel said from his dwelling, which was a precise sculptural replica of a strawberry: "Sorry, no entry. There's nothing left for you to get here today, but we'll be back next week." We couldn't believe it. The Erdbeercolonel told us about the currently rampant strawberry shortage, which we hadn't even heard about. This field, he said, was the only one in all of Berlin open over Pentecost; people had been standing there all the way beyond Bühlsand in Brandenburg , and now everything was truly empty, low tide, nothing left.

Of course, that wasn't an option for us. So I told the story of the family tradition – right here, for 18 years. We had to! We were sure to find some more strawberries. We would pay well. We wanted to, we just had to try. And he let us in! I was the hero of the strawberry field, everyone agreed. And that made me proud, of course. But my daughter, who from now on was an adult here in the strawberry field without strawberries, made me even prouder. She is the hero of my life.

And then the fight began. With about ten other people, we searched an area the size of seventeen football fields for the last small red fruits . It soon became clear that you had to run to the edges, which meant running a very long way. And there you had to get ahead of the other people, to places where no one else was, that's where you could still find strawberries. You didn't run totally aggressively, of course, but you did try to run a little faster than the others. And I remembered standing in a field like that for the first time in my life, and it must have been the first time, because I simply couldn't believe it: that you could really eat everything here for free! Like a land of milk and honey, like communism.

You collected and searched for strawberries, straight from the stem, one in your mouth and one in the container. You could eat as many as you wanted. We found plenty of strawberries that day, the last strawberries in all of Berlin. It was a beautiful day.