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Published: August 27th 2007
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On Saturday, I was one of 1.2 million people to attend the famous Love Parde! This parade used to be held in Berlin and originally stemmed from a peace demonstration in the late 80's. Now, it has turned itself into a day long massive dance party!
We woke up a little early on Saturday so we had time to meet at the train station and catch a train to Essen. Essen is a small town in the Ruhr area about an 1.5 hours away by train. When we boarded our train in Köln, there were barely any people. By the time we got through Dusseldorf, there was barely room to breathe. We were lucky to have seats, but for about the last 6 stops, no one could get on or off. There were lots of drunk people, in VERY interesting outfits blowing whistles and singing interesting tunes. They kept singing over and over the beginning to this White Stripes song. Not sure why we kept hearing that one all day, but i would have done anything not to hear that one again.
We arrived in Essen about 12 pm, and even then, the train station and streets were already
Train Station
In the morning, evening was much worse. full. We wandered through the shattered glass from beer bottles on the street and made it to the parade route. Just follow the crowds haha. After grabbing a brautwurst and a beer, we were set and headed off to see what was going on. I dont think I truely understood what I was getting myself into. At exactly 2 pm on the dot, the trucks started up and the music blared. These ´floats´ were in fact large semi truck beds with a space in the middle for people and then more speakers than I had ever seen in my life. All 29 of them moved slowly along the parade route for 5-6 hours surrounded by happy dancing people.
We quickly joined into the fun. There were even flamethrowers on one float! We attached ourselves to Float 7, the TUNNEL, because we really liked their music. Good mix of stuff, including some remixes of some old american songs haha. We joined into the big mass of people and danced until we couldn´t dance anymore. We took breaks to exchange our beer out and hit the port-o-pottys (still haven´t figured out what they call them here). Brooke and I took a
Pink Wig
I thought id try and fit in... short pause to head down the street to the McDonalds, I know, but at the time, it sounded like a fabulous idea. They had bouncers, and wouldnt let us take our beers in, so we stood in the McDrive and drank or drinks before we could get our Chicken McNuggets and something at the McCafe. This place is ridiculous. They love this Mc thing.
We arrived back just as our favorite float was returning from its trip around the route. We followed it all the way to Berliner Platz where they had a HUGE stage set up and there were hunderds of thousands of people. I think later that night they had a concert there. But we had just about had our fill, so we headed up to the train station to meet the other folks. Apparently we narrowly missed the barracading of the train station. We ended up inside with a ridiculous amount of people and had to just wait there for a while till they let another group up to the gates. We decided, luckily to just hop on the first train we saw going our direction. We were packed on, and the train ended up about
Group
Hanging out before the parade started 45 min late. There were masses of people trying to get on everywhere. We took it as far as Dusseldorf and hopped on the Regional S-Bahn to get back to Köln.
So, a long day, but a fabulous experience. Just a large mass of very happy people dancing their hearts out. There were people with some extremely interesting outfits, and some with barely anything on at all. But, it didnt matter, everyone just danced to their hearts content. An experience id reccomend to anyone.
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Rachel
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Love
I McLove you!