How to Have a Pillow Fight in German

Pillow fight auf Deutsch is Kissenschlacht. If you're me, though, and trying to explain how you spent Saturday afternoon, you inevitably end up saying Kussenschlacht, which means something entirely different. (I can only say that the logic behind that is kissen=kissing and kussen=cushion auf Denglish. Moving on.)

Bright and early on Saturday morning, my brother called to tell me that he'd learned something "relevant to [my] interests": namely, that there would be a flash mob pillow fight at the Brandenburg Gate that afternoon. Being dignified and refined only half the time (if that), I called a few friends, grabbed an expendable pillow, and ran out the door.

The closer I got to Mitte, the more people I saw with pillows. By the time I hit the Friedrichstrasse bahnhof, plenty of people were walking around with enormous cushions and diabolical grins.

This is what I saw when I got to the Brandeburger Tor:

Not too many, I thought, but a respectable number. I was forty minutes early, so I guessed more people would show. The police certainly thought so, for they'd heard about the thing and were out in force:



At five minutes to three, some of my friends arrived:

And then, at 3:00 on the nose, this happened:

It very quickly morphed into this:

It was in fact snowing that day, but you couldn't tell for all the feathers flying through the air. People ripped their pillows open so that there were feathers everywhere: ankle-deep on the ground, blowing like a hurricane through the air, in your hair, in your mouth, in your shoes...everywhere. It was brilliant.

When it was all over, about 3:30, my friends and I left. Our hands were frozen solid, Britta had lost her pillow (someone snatched it right out of her hands) and we were so befeathered we looked like Papageno's hipster off-spring.


And that, my friends, is how you have a pillow fight in German. :)