From: Mike N. 

On Thu, 11 Aug 2005 14:41:07 -0400, Mike N.  wrote:

>And a followup link to the Zurich street parade -

   It was definitely a different experience - about one million people
converged on the parade route.   The point of the parade is to celebrate
peace, love, understanding, but mostly Techno Music.  The big semi-trailers
were mostly to transport the sound systems and blast the crowd as much as
possible.   Luckily, I had my earplugs so I could enjoy the experience.
This was partying at the core - including glass bottles which you'd not
normally find in USA.

  People were generally well behaved but I get the willies when the crowd
presses in.   The only incident I had was when a very drunk Nicaraguan came
over and started to talk to some of the women in my group.  One of the
women stole the vodka out of his backpack (don't ask me why) and passed it
around.   He started talking to me since I was the only one who knew some
Spanish.    It was sort of funny because he would start talking in German
and finish sentences in Spanish.   But I started to get bad vibes when he
talked about people getting stabbed and killed in street fights back home
and in LA.   So we took off just about the time he started breaking
bottles.

   I expected the floats to have people dressed in costumes, but they
consisted mostly of ordinary Joe's in varying degrees of party outfits,
boogying away.  The real costumes were in the crowd and on the group of
people following the floats and in the array of trailing soap bubbles.  I
missed the best shots - very coarse fishnet bras, body paint clothes, etc,
but I got some shots that captured the atmosphere.   Posted in Binaries!

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