No, this is not an outtake from Gladiator or the mosh pit at a Motörhead concert. It's the midnight opening of Media Markt (Germany's answer to Best Buy) at the new, ginormous, dark pink-coloured Alexa shopping mall at Berlin's Alexanderplatz, centre square of the erstwhile GDR. Five-thousand rampaging computer nerds clamoured and scuffled for pre-advertised bargains (Schnäppchen) like 500-euro laptops and 50-euro hard drives. Anti-capitalists protested the "consumer propaganda" outside shouting slogans alongside revelling pro-shopping partiers, who were popping bottles of Sekt, while riot police attempted to keep the crowd under control. A few injured shoppers were sent off the hospital before the store was closed by police order at 2 a.m (before re-opening at 7).

Did somebody say something about declining retail sales?

Meanwhile, the first McDonald's opened in the leftist-friendly and protest-friendlier Berlin neighbourhood of north Kreuzberg -- across the street from an elementary school -- to a much smaller McResistance than expected. Perhaps the small turn-out had to do with the 24/7 security forces on hand. Resistance spokesman Philipp Raschdorf said, "If we had done a big action today, we only would have attracted more attention for McDonald's".