I watched the contest at a bar with a couple of friends. When we finally left after the nearly-endless rounds of voting that conclude the show, we walked out of the bar and found...a trash can on fire.
Not just smoking a bit like they sometimes do when people are careless with their cigarette butts, but truly on fire, with flames shooting out of it. We looked at each other, torn between feeling we ought to do something and feeling we had no idea what to do.
As a sort of compromise, I popped back into the bar to ask the bartender's advice - he must be an expert on flaming garbage cans, right? It's not like this never happens in Berlin - I've walked past the melted remnants before.
The bartender shrugged and handed me a glass of water, which Helen boldly threw on the flames. It made no difference, of course.
We waffled. We could actually leave the thing to burn itself out - Berlin's municipal trash cans are small, orange, plastic things set off the ground on metal poles; since they're not in contact with anything else flammable, it's unlikely they could ever start a larger fire. We could call the fire department, but - really? Call them to say, Hi, sorry, could you drive over here and put out a trash can?
Luckily the dilemma was taken out of our hands when a police car cruised by, saw the flames and stopped. An officer stepped out, a one-liter bottle of drinking water in her hand, and contemplated the flaming, smoking garbage can. You could practically see her sighing to herself. Then she rooted around in the back of the car, located a fire extinguisher, and went to put out the fire.
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