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2010: Jahr des Einhorns

This story begins back in August on top of a giant geodesic dome at dawn. Audrey, Slim, and I had climbed to the top of the dome with a bottle of 12-year single malt and we were watching day break over Black Rock City.  Audrey and Slim had recently played and I had recently volunteered in Journey: Oakland, and we were talking about it.

I offhandedly said that I'd like to take the game to Berlin, a city I had always romanticized but never visited.  Interestingly, Audrey and Slim were each thinking about attending the upcoming Chaos Communication Congress at the end of Dezember, which is held in Berlin... Would we be so bold as to plan a massive street game in an unfamiliar land, where we had no friends to help us, across a language barrier, on New Years Eve in a city that starts lighting fireworks on the 29th?

Several months later I had totally forgotten about this desire of mine when Slim demanded a meeting of the three of us to begin planning.  WARNING: Expressing passing or whimsical desires out loud can lead to realization of said desires, and may result in wild success, recklessness, or both.

So at the planning meeting, we resolved TWO orders of business.  1- that we should buy plane fare.  2- that we would attempt a unifying theme for Journey to the End of the Year: Berlin based on this fine piece of art in my bathroom:



and that theme would be

Unicorns vs. Robots




Slim began generating enthusiasm for the event, Audrey set up a mailing list, and I began interviewing native Berliners for interesting checkpoint suggestions.  So when Slim and I arrived on 15 Dezember (Audrey would join us on the 25th), we had a few potential volunteers, a Google group, about 2 dozen potential checkpoints scattered across the wide metropolis of Berlin, and 16 days to make a game from this.

We printed postcards to take to cafes and clubs:

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design by Alex Petrowsky

Slim managed to get us featured in the Berliner Morgenpost and on berlin.unlike

Blue got us featured on Nerdcore

and there wasn't a single hacker at 26c3 that didn't hear about it...

I reconnoitered each potential checkpoint personally and made my decisions thusly:

was the spot interesting or magical?
was it accessible at night (for free) and for a mass of players?
if both answers were yes, they stayed on the list until it was finally pure logistics which determined which spots would become checkpoints.

View Der Kurs: JourneyBerlin in Google Maps.

Finally, on New Years Eve, players assembled at the Fernsehturm to receive ribbons, manifests, and direction from their fearless organizers:

Photo by Richard Pyrker

and then they went in search of...

Photo by Richard Pyrker


...the Chackpints:


1: Holocaust Memorial

  photo by Audrey Penven

A city block of massive stone monoliths. Checkpoint agents were MOBILE and located themselves deep within the labyrinth. Part of the challenge/magic of this checkpoint was in FINDING the mobile agents.

Agents of Checkpoint 1, photo by Audrey Penven



2: Kunsthaus Tacheles



One of our few indoor checkpoints, Kunsthaus Tacheles was opened by squatting artists in East Berlin in 1990. Tacheles is a huge building, the exterior of which was damaged from shelling in World War II and much of the damage was never repaired. Graffiti covers everything.  Our unsanctioned checkpoint went unquestioned in
this anarchic space.
www.tacheles.de

Slim with Feuerwerk, photo by Audrey Penven

Agents signing manifests, photo by Richard Pyrker



3: Volkspark am Weinberg



Mitte district's only park features a small pond, winding paths, a pay-what-you-wish restaurant and... trampoline!  The brutal agents at Checkpoint 3 put players through a Hackerspace Cosmonaut Training program:



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Agent signing manifest, photo by Richard Pyrker



4: Cafe Chagall



This charming bar was our only other indoor checkpoint.  The agents located themselves near the front door to minimize disruption, but we still got kicked out (we had not anticipated such volume of players!).  Luckily, we were able to continue the game on the sidewalk outside; the owner just wanted room for his patrons to drink.  Here players found 2 zombie unicorns and had to play hangman with a mysterious figure to try to solve the mystery of who killed the unicorns.  The robots, duh.

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Photo by Audrey Penven

Photo by Richard Pyrker




5: Wasserturm Prenzlauer Berg



Several elegant brick structures on top of a low hill.  Pristine houses surround the elevated green space on all sides. This place is hauntingly beautiful.  Agents here forced players to choose sides- Robots or Unicorns- and then photographed them as proof.  See the whole set here.

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Runners at Checkpoint 5, photo by Richard Pyrker

Silvester Feuerwerk at Checkpoint 5, photo by Richard Pyrker



6: C-base

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Photo by Audrey Penven

This shipwrecked spacecraft- Berlin's hackerspace- was the End of the Night, where we distributed these trophies to the top runner, top chasers, and some of our fine volunteers:

Photo by Rubin Starset

and there was quite a celebration at C-Base, where I met the mysterious Ben Yamiin, who played that night!

Before I ever left for Berlin, I had decided that only a 3-digit number of players would make a successful game. Sometime after arriving but before the game, I was praying for 49 players, 49 being the largest number that I thought possible but still unlikely. Original estimates put the number of participants at about 220, but later it was relayed that we ran out of manifests and players were using blank pieces of paper.  We had printed 250 manifests; over 250 people chased each other round Berlin that snowy eve. Much better than 49.

view that night's Twitter feed.

view an amazing flickr set by player Richard Pyrker.

Thank You C-Base, Chaos Computer Club, Fin, Jeedi, Rubin, Alex Petrowsky, Kristin Gish for our manifest design, our fine volunteer staff, and Berlin.