Sins of my home town

(Disclaimer - Max speaks for himself. Don't come after me with the pitchforks)

A friend of mine, reminiscent of his first time buying weed in Mainz, recalled that transaction took place at the “ugliest spot of the city”: The Boniface Towers. Imagine a Slovak architect trying to capture the cold indifference and powerful ugliness of (CENSORED) (the resemblance is uncanny), and you’ll get a good idea of it. Built as a monument to the superiority of social democratic urban planning, it was supposed to be booked out in days, with doctors, offices and company headquarters inside. Justly, it was not. Instead, it’s nearly empty nowadays, and it lingers like the sword of Damocles, over everyone naïve enough to think he might have a nice view of the city. And that’s the heart of the problem, really.

No one in the city can decide what the worst feature of Mainz is. Ask ten people, and, considering the verbosity of the locals, you’ll get 12 answers. Thinking back to my last carnival experience, I remember having never seen so many girls piss in the streets, which is the only nice thing I can remember about it. The rest was probably blotted out by a comatose level of drinking. My buddies would probably tell you about the crowdedness, when the city was PACKED with people, as well as the annoying amount of boozers asking for fags and stirring up violently boring conversations. Add to that a train system, that simply stops after 12 o’clock for four straight hours and overpriced everything, and you’ll quickly get the hang of “Fastnacht”. But not everyone is annoyed by the “Fifth Season” most, a lot take more offense with other aspects of daily life.

The conflict with the neighbouring city of Wiesbaden would strike many as all the more ridiculous. In it, Mainz is fighting with the other municipality over who rightfully owns the towns on the opposing riverbank, as strip of land so shitty and worthless that you would probably sue whomever sold it to you. But this laughable Chinese quality copy of the middle-eastern conflict has gone so far, that Mainz won’t admit children from these former parts of the city to attend school there. Wiesbaden, however, felt it necessary to build an aggressively lit bus stop atop the only bridge leading to the other side, thereby robbing anyone living in Mainz of their sleep. With cold-war-like stubbornness, these opposing parties will never find common ground, let alone anything resembling a peaceful neighbourhood.

Yet again others would direct the viewers gaze to the only building not lit on the boardwalk, the town hall of Mainz. It’s part of a big modern complex, attached to it are the “Rheingoldhalle”, a congress centre, and the local Hilton Hotel. The plans spoke of “fusing” the administration and the populace, an objective that’s been utterly missed. It more closely resembles a part of the Berlin Wall, or what Albert Speer may have called a modern vision of a robber baron’s castle. The latter definition is probably closer to reality. This concrete casket sits enthroned at a very prominent part of the city, and – this is the fun bit – is in such dire condition, that it can only be used partly. It’s crumbling away in the inside, with asbestos and other fun ingredients to a crack addict’s dinner being rumoured as the reason behind the partial shutdown. German law begs to differ, though, since the guy who designed this ugly bullshit was important enough for it to be enshrined in monument protection. This renders any attempt to renovate or even tear down the building useless, since German authorities are like mountains: They don’t move an inch.

It doesn’t even matter to me what people hate most about Mainz, all of the aforementioned features appalled me so much, that I felt it necessary to move. Anytime I go back to visit, I understand once again why a lot of people get intoxicated in the area. I enjoy Vienna better: Here, the locals are horrible and hateful, but the baroque backdrop to any drunk fight makes it worthwhile.

Max Schmidt

maxschmidt91@gmx.de

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