Total trash

A small column of men from the parks authority started cleaning up the rubbish at 6 am on morning of Tuesday, April 14, after hordes of barbeque enthusiasts turned what is sometimes called Berlin's "green lung" into something resembling a cancerous organ.

Even some trees were reported damaged.

Park officials told the B.Z. newspaper it would cost around 16,000 euros ($21,200) to restore the park to a semblance of normalcy.

People making a mess in Berlin's public spaces is nothing new, as anyone who has ever witnessed the annual May 1 demonstration-cum-street-riot in the city's Kreuzberg district can attest.

But officials thought they had the situation under control in the Tiergarten, after barbeques were restricted to special areas and grilled-meat fanatics were instructed to take their waste with them.

The weather, however, seems to have thrown a monkey wrench into the works.

Clearly yearning for release after a winter in which the sun shone for an estimated fifteen minutes per month, and having emptied convenience store shelves of anything that looked remotely edible and/or flammable, hooligans armed with aprons and tongs went on a rampage.

And no one, it seems, was in much of a mind for tidying up.

Instead, the park employees were left to clean up the remains - despite the fact that park officials say budget cuts have left them short-handed.

So what are the poor park gardeners to do? Their director Hans-Gottfried Walter has the only logical answer.

"Every weekend I'm going to pray for rain," Walter told the B.Z.