Helsinki Pride

Well after I got the official job offer, its also time to celebrate being a homo. Helsinki Pride is this weekend and it will be my first pride event in a big city.

This year there was over 10,000 homo's in attendance, which is quite a lot. I think in Cedar Rapids there were maybe 4 gays total for pride. The strange thing is the woman to man ratio was about 7/1.












It was a good time. We marched in the parade. It was quite nice as I have never marched before and there were tons of people watching and smiling and cheering.











and unfortunatly we were "hate crimed"... ok it was not that bad.. at least not to us.. but some guys threw smoke grenades and sprayed people (and childern) with mace... the smoke grenade went off right behind us during the parade. But yes it was interesting b/c I've never experienced any negativity about being gay..






It was nice to have the city support the event. They had special gay trams that only gay people could ride. If you were strait, we would let you ride, but you had to go to the back of the tram.









All in all it was a nice time. Spent the rest of the day in the park listning to music and drinking and eating and drinking and drinking..and.. eating.




Looking forward to next years pride and hopefully will be living in Helsinki so won't have to worry about the travel :o)