Day 37: LGBTQ Protest! (Venice)

Mom and I had first seen the posters in the streets. They all said “What The Fuck?” on them. We, of course, found this hilarious, so we decided to translate it to see what they meant. When we did we found an entire backstory! It turns out that every year, a certain group of Christians protest against LGBTQ, the right to choosing abortion, and other opinions. So the year everyone who didn’t agree was fed up with having to see it every year. (Side note: the Christian fundamentalist march is called the 1000 crosses march) So they told us to meet up at an S-bahn station and we were going to march against them.

Photographing bottle caps (left) and viewing the surrounding areas (right)

They told us to meet at 11am. But what we didn’t know was that we were going to end up waiting almost an hour before starting the march. People went into the street and there were cops, sorry, polizei, everywhere! It was definitely a giant organised event. I think there were almost 1000 people there! We marched for a while, making our way up to the red car at the front that was playing music and giving announcements. It turns out, it is too dangerous to drive it in a group to people, so they had people pushing it instead.

The many polizei.

At the square.

At some point, we stopped in a giant square. There was a wedding going on at one of the buildings! We were not moving, so mom and I bought a coke because we had been out for 3 hours so far! All of a sudden people started moving again. We noticed a lot of people stayed behind though, so now the crowd maybe had 500 people now?

We kept marching until all of a sudden people started running. Mom and I almost panicked, but we both knew not to run into something we had no idea about. It turns out that the polizei would not let us cross a certain border. A couple of people, maybe 10-20 made it through the polizei line. The rest of us turned to the left and kept going.

At the square.

I noticed at one point, when we going past Checkpoint Charlie, a lot of tourists were staring at us, because you don't see a giant parade of people go by every day. I was kind of excited and felt kind of weird because most of the time people don't openly stare at you (since it's impolite). But it didn't feel impolite when they stared, as that would be what I'd do, too.

I also felt weird because I couldn't understand what they were always saying. But I am glad I was there.

We kept going until we hit a dead end. there was no other way to go. Mom and I could not tell if it was over or not, so we decided to get a snack inside a store nearby. When we came out everyone was leaving and no red van was in sight. The polizei were still at the end of the road, but the polizei at the side exits were packing into their vans and leaving. So mom and i went into the nearest S-bahn station, and rode home. the end to a very weird 5 and a half hour excursion…..

The big crowd at the beginning.