Every year in the West of Germany, the streets become a traditional battleground for those who are willing to go the extra mile to express their love. It happens on the last day of April, but only really begins on the first day of May, hence why it is known as the may tree. The concept is rather simple (if I could only just explain it), a bunch of men meet at a square in the city and fight over a number of trees which will be considerably less than the amount of men. The men don’t actually fist fight, but it’s more of a tug and tussle to get the tree first and run away. Those who emerge victorious (with a tree, as opposed to most of the people who won’t have a tree) will have a token to present to their loved one the next day by leaving it outside of their house and decorating it with colored ribbons. This symbolizes that they are strong enough and dedicated enough to marry that woman, but in order to marry the woman (as the tradition goes) you will need to give her three trees. Every fourth year, the tradition will be passed on to the women, who will perform the same task of stealing the trees and leaving them outside the house of their potential husband.
The tradition goes way back to a time where a man would have to physically fight for a woman’s approval and show that he was tough enough to protect her from harm. Another change in the tradition is that instead of finding random May trees (actually has to be a certain tree, Birch to be precise), the government now provide the trees in a certain plaza near the city centre. The area will be taped off, and a countdown will begin, as soon as the number one is reached, it’s every man for himself.
So… my experience went like this. I was more than up for it and being given free beer made me even more determined, but when it came down to the grind, I flopped. The first problem was that I struggled with the countdown, I heard the German words, but the English numbers were being interpreted to me with just enough of a delay to confuse the fuck out of me. Then, the other side had stormed before the number three was read out and so we were already a second behind and to make it worse, pretty much everyone in front of me fell over. I ended up lying down on a bunch of men who were scrambling towards the trees, while I was more interested in surviving than anything else. I managed to grab a tree and instead of the good old fashion tug of war or even the diplomatic scissor,paper, rock, the guy just said, “No, you can’t have it.” He looked seriously upset that I had grabbed his tree, but I thought to myself that maybe I wasn’t doing something right and I let go. In short, I didn’t get a May tree.
This picture of me with a May tree was actually the result of just asking politely if I could take a picture with the tree. Yes, I did fail, but I really enjoyed it and with my girlfriend being about 100 miles away at the time, I don’t know what I would have done with it anyway. Make sure that if you’re in Germany at the end of April, you look out for this traditional event. It’s a lot of fun and they usually provide food, beers and music too.
Lee
We are transient 