I Saw Obama Speak In Berlin

I saw and listened to my fellow spectators on the way to the Siegessäule, to the people standing around me during the speech, and to people’s reactions afterwards. And of course, I heard Barack Obama’s speech. I didn’t see him though. It was very crowded, people stood close together, and I was standing very far away from the stage. A glimpse of him on a large video screen was all I got.

Some commentators in political forums wrote that they suspect the crowd was large because there were live performances by two bands before the speech. Do you really think people in Berlin come out in the hundreds of thousands (estimates range from 200,000 to 250,000 people) just to listen to relatively unknown bands playing cover versions?

I didn’t realize that they were live acts until the singer tried to rouse the crowd by screaming “Berlin!” through the microphone. All he got was a short stunned silence. Most people were not listening to the music but chatting with people around them. The sound quality of the music was also relatively bad. It was a different sound system than for the actual speech, which I was able to hear loud and clear.

It was interesting to see who came to listen to Barack Obama. They were mostly young people of the intellectual type. Students, young professionals in business garb directly from the office, and most surprisingly quite a large number of young families with their children. Also a relatively large percentage of tourists and visitors.

I had thought that the turn-out would be small, because a lot of Berliners have left the city to spend the summer holidays somewhere else, but tourists from all over Germany and Europe filled the gap.