Lübeck: 17 August 2024

If there is one thing I have noticed about every single Christopher Street Day celebration / demonstration that I have attended over the years, it is the joy and pleasure of those taking part. Everywhere you turn there is a smiling face, there is music and people dancing. The demonstration – under German law it has to be a political demonstration to be allowed to block up an entire city for an afternoon – is serious and much needed, but the participants are also there to have fun, to meet up and to talk with one another. Some travel many miles to be present, some are close to home, but all of them seem to be having far more fun and games than the dark-mooded fascists who try to disrupt and disturb. And perhaps this is why the knuckle-scraping mouth-breathers will never succeed.

Lübeck was well organised, and congratulations are due to those involved in front and behind the scenes to make this, as with so many other events across the nation, well worth attending, and marking down each year to revisit.