Oral hygiene in the pedestrian zone (photo: Sarx)

My sister and I were pretty excited when on 9th May at about 3:20 pm, we walked up to the “Plus” store in Burscheid to wait for our comrades in the mission “Teethbrushing”. While she was still pretentiously hoping for 20 to 30 participants, I had already braced myself for meager five people. Thus I wasn’t disappointed when we finally left towards the marketplace in a small circle of 12 persons.

Actually we had planned a real flashmob during the Burscheid spring festival on the marketplace, where we wanted to appear out of nowhere and brush our teeth for three minutes. We had discussed, voted and planned everything for two months in a StudiVZ^[1] group. Sadly, many people deemed the predominantly voted action “teethbrushing” too boring and thus rather stayed at home… Well, no comment.
However, that was the reason why out of more than 200 group members, only the twelve of us stood there in the end. So we had to redispose a little, because in such a small group, we would have been too inconspicuous and unspectacular. We decided spontaneously to whip out the toothbrush on the marketplace as planned, but then worm our way through the narrow pedestrian zone that was filled with market stands on both sides – that way, we would surely be seen.

The plan worked out: We raised numerous clueless looks and puzzled comments while Burscheid’s well-known reporter Barbara Sarx pattered backwards before us to take a few photos. At the end of the pedestrian zone, corner Montanusstraße, we broke up as planned – as if nothing ever happened.

After that, a few of us were quickly interviewed by the “Westdeutsche Zeitung” and “Radio Berg”. The newspaper article can be found online here. The radio broadcast was aired on Monday, 11th May, in the show “Drive Time” at 5:45 pm – host was Daniel Hambüchen. The editorial team was so kind as to send me a recording.

And finally, my sister has also documented our first couple of steps on video – it’s only a few seconds though.