Verschiedenheit, Recht, Freiheit

Saturday afternoon I dragged my tired ass out of bed at 1:30 after less than 6 hours of sleep :) I was not going to miss the gay pride parade... Curiously enough it is called "Christopher Street Day" here. Just in case you never took Gay History in school, that's a street in the Village in NYC, around where the Stonewall riots took place in 1969.

Normally the CSD is in June, which is when Stonewall occurred, but it was delayed this year due to the World Cup.

I picked Potsdamer Platz as a central viewing location. If you've never been to Berlin, this used to be a no-man's-land where you would be shot on sight, and now it's like the CNN center. Anyway, the parade featured lots of cool trucks, great costumes, interesting mix of people. I ran into some people I met a couple of weeks ago: Cesar, who is Peruvian-German, and his Australian boyfriend Robert, and several friends of theirs. We watched the parade for a while, then joined it; stopped and had a beer along the way; met up with a couple of other people; then walked to the closing rally at the Siegessäule.

Unfortunately my camera has a terrible battery life, and it ran out after a dozen or so pics. But not to worry ... I then spent 20 minutes in the mall underneath Potsdamer Platz looking for a disposable camera, which I eventually procured. (In Amerikkka there would've been 30 vendors hawking them within 10 feet...) So more drag-queen photos coming soon...