My First Pride Experience | Copenhagen Pride 2018
I went to Pride. That's a thing that happened. A real freaking thing. It was wonderful. It was rainbows and glitter everywhere but more so it was a huge celebration and acceptance of our differences. People got dressed up, if they wanted to, and there was just a radiant atmosphere over Copenhagen.
164 organisation participants in the parade and probably thousands and thousands of individual people participating by either walking the parade or cheering from the sidelines. It was glorious and everyone was so happy. We were blessed with 22 degrees and a mix of sun and clouds and it was just the perfect weather for such a happy celebratory day. The parade started at 1 PM and it didn't quite finish until around 5:30 PM, which was a bloody long time and of course we stuck through to the end, jumping in and out at different points and enjoying it very much so.
As of writing this, I have literally just come home from the parade after a quick stop to at McDonald's to get some food. My feet are aching. I still have glitter smeared on my cheeks and my chest and I have a rainbow drawn around my wrist. I'm still also in my pride outfit. I'm absolutely knackered but I wanted to sit down and write this immediately.
I have been seeing rainbow flags all over the city for the past week, as Pride Week has been in full swing. I don't know why I never paid much attention to it before. It has almost completely gone over my head, which is a bit ironic. But now as I'm living in Copenhagen and actually spending time here in August, instead of just being out at the stables or in my family house, I have felt more and more connected to my country's capital.
It helped when I started to study here but now it has been knocked up another notch. I was proud of my city today. I'm proud that we can do this. I'm proud of the businesses getting involved with support, even if we should be careful not to commercialise it completely. I'm proud of the organisations doing good work for LGBTQ+ people and offering them a place they might be able to find the belonging that they cannot find elsewhere. We saw support from our political parties, from our military, police and firemen, from our unions, from our universities and so much more. It's a glorious thing that we can get together like this. It's a magical atmosphere to be walking down the parade, with people smiling and waving pride flags in support.
164 organisation participants in the parade and probably thousands and thousands of individual people participating by either walking the parade or cheering from the sidelines. It was glorious and everyone was so happy. We were blessed with 22 degrees and a mix of sun and clouds and it was just the perfect weather for such a happy celebratory day. The parade started at 1 PM and it didn't quite finish until around 5:30 PM, which was a bloody long time and of course we stuck through to the end, jumping in and out at different points and enjoying it very much so.
As of writing this, I have literally just come home from the parade after a quick stop to at McDonald's to get some food. My feet are aching. I still have glitter smeared on my cheeks and my chest and I have a rainbow drawn around my wrist. I'm still also in my pride outfit. I'm absolutely knackered but I wanted to sit down and write this immediately.
I have been seeing rainbow flags all over the city for the past week, as Pride Week has been in full swing. I don't know why I never paid much attention to it before. It has almost completely gone over my head, which is a bit ironic. But now as I'm living in Copenhagen and actually spending time here in August, instead of just being out at the stables or in my family house, I have felt more and more connected to my country's capital.
It helped when I started to study here but now it has been knocked up another notch. I was proud of my city today. I'm proud that we can do this. I'm proud of the businesses getting involved with support, even if we should be careful not to commercialise it completely. I'm proud of the organisations doing good work for LGBTQ+ people and offering them a place they might be able to find the belonging that they cannot find elsewhere. We saw support from our political parties, from our military, police and firemen, from our unions, from our universities and so much more. It's a glorious thing that we can get together like this. It's a magical atmosphere to be walking down the parade, with people smiling and waving pride flags in support.
My heart got very soft when I spotted the asexuals. It seemed obvious to me that they belonged in the LGBTQ+ community but I know that a lot of people, even gay people, think that they shouldn't be here. Representation matters for everyone and to see the ace flag waved around proudly just made me smile a whole lot. I actually didn't know we had a club in Denmark but that's such a cool thing.
We had two bathroom breaks during the long parade, both times with insane amounts of queues for obvious reasons but during pride every moment is an opportunity to bond with someone. We got talking with a girl with leopard prints on half her face and she had a little rainbow marker that she happily applied to every one from our five person group. It was utterly adorable. It's fading too quickly from my liking.
I was a bit nervous about going to pride, partly because I would be hanging out with people I didn't know but also because this is important to me in a way it hasn't been before. I made a post on tumblr asking for nice pride stories and every reply was just full of love and positivity. It served to calm me right down. I have also been listening to a song a lot for the past couple of days. It's appropriately called rainbow, by lovely bisexual dodie. I wanted to add a little bit of the lyrics below because they hit me even harder today, as I was walking around and everyone was celebrating the rainbow people.
But to say that i’m a rainbow
To tell me that i’m bright
When i’m so used to feeling wrong
Well, it makes me feel all right
I'm very happy that one of my best friends invited me along with a few of her work mates. Even if two of the three had to duck out a little early, it was an absolutely pleasure to walk the pride parade with them. The brunch beforehand allowed me to get a bit comfortable with them and start to get to know them and I already knew so many stories from my best friend and I knew they would be cool people. They were very much so and I'm happy they wanted to embrace a stranger who wanted to tag along. I also got decked out in glitter thanks to them but it was just the perfect thing to walk down the road with our matching cheek glitter.
I think it's safe to say that Pride is something that I need to put in my calendar from now on. And apparently, Copenhagen is hosting Word Pride in 2021, which is also an insanely cool thing for our small county. I know I'm extremely lucky to be living in a place like Copenhagen and a country like Denmark. The signs saying that LGBTQ+ people are criminals in every third country in the world went straight into my heart. To think we can walk and celebrate while others must hide and fear for their lives.
It's not okay. But thankfully, so many people are doing good work to accomplish acceptance. We will get there. We have to get there. It's just a part of people. It's how they're born. There's nothing wrong with it, even if we might be told that.
I'm very thankful that I got to walk around with my flowey rainbow skirt dancing in the wind and receive nothing but smiles and kindness from the people around us.
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