Every July Berliners and people from all over the world used to celebrate love in their famous and colorful Love Parade. Tens of thousands would congregrate and "hang out" just west of the Brandenburg Gate. Eventually it got to be so huge that it became the victim of its own success.
After a couple of years of no Love Parade Berliners realized that in July this city needs some kind show that demonstrates love. This year they started a new type of Love Parade: No longer dominated by gay and individual love, The March of Love is more political and includes organizations and non-profit groups who support empathy and understanding for political asylum seekers, Roma gypsies, refugees from war-torn Syria, legal and illegal immigrants, in short all the people in need. Instead of one gigantic assembly west of the Brandenburg Gate there is now a 10km walk in the Eastern part of the city. This past Saturday afternoon Bill and I were happy to watch the "March of Love" directly from our balcony. Thundering techno-beat, floats with banners that we, unfortunately, could not read and tens of thousand walkers attracted more participants on the way. For an hour we saw them marching by and we would have joined had I not been in the middle of cooking... The news talked of 20-35,000 participants.
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