GOJE?

One more thing about the Street Parade (by the way, here is an article in German--if you click on "Zurich tanzt den Techno" some pictures should pop up): it was the ultimate test of the "Gay or just European?" game. (Hey, when you're at something like this on your own and you don't speak the local language, you have to come up with ways to entertain yourself, especially given the dearth of nudity.) I mean, you'd see guys wearing outfits that screamed "GAY!" (not that there's anything wrong with that...), but they were walking arm-in-arm with their girlfriend. I suppose that's a key element of the event--you can dress however you want and to hell with what anyone else thinks. It was kind of funny to see couples who were dressed up--in some cases, you could tell the guy was really into it, and in other cases you could just see on the guy's face that his girlfriend had made him wear the outfit and that he'd rather chew his arm off than be walking around town in tight shorts, armbands, and bodypaint, but he was resigned to his fate.

Incidentally, I was standing under the trees in the left-center of this picture at the bottom of the bridge before I left, and judging from the size of the crowd, I'm glad I left before the actual parade arrived: