I got to play “host” today to a bloke visiting from Australia. He’s a friend of a friend who I met twelve months ago in Canberra, and who is going to spend the next four months living in Oslo. And being “host”, we’ve had a running joke about how I’m actually Swedish and that it was great to welcome him to “the country of my forebears”. “It’s so great to be able to show you my city. And please, if I do not speak English so well, please you will tell me”, I’ve joked.
We covered a lot of miles, and I even went to one tourist attraction I haven’t been to before. I always thought it was a lame idea, a lift tower in the middle of the city, but it’s actually quite good. Stockholm is a low-rise city, so the lift at Slussen which takes you a couple of hundred metres in the air offers you a great view of Stockholm. Unfortunately, the weather was pretty shitty.
We persevered though on the tour and covered a lot of miles before finding a spot to watch the Stockholm Pride Parade.
It’s a big parade. I don’t know many exactly, but I’d say more people actually participate in it, than in Sydney’s Mardi Gras.
As well as all of the usual suspects, such as dykes on bikes, gay police, teachers, students, doctors, etc, there was a large number of the groups taking part had that had a broader progressive political agenda. There’s also a lot less of the body fascism that’s come to characterise the Sydney event. And, thank goodness, no marching boys or girls. It was a good event. I liked it very much.
Anyway, I’ll let the pictures do the talking today.
Leave a Reply