Next Saturday, in a week, it is time for the annual Pride Carnival. I call it carnival, because that is basically what it nowadays mostly looks like. Last year it was a LOT of advertising of common large companies like google and similar - loaded with lots of what i senses were mainly "fillers" (in other words, lots of hetero people), just to fill those seats in the passing by trucks and cars.

To make it all look bigger ? I noticed that many of the people seemed to have acted like "filling the seats" - just had logotype T-shirts on (often all the same on each vehicle) - and there was nothing creative about it. It felt a bit like cheating to make the whole carnival train much larger/longer than it otherwise would been.

Quantity rather then quality.

It was fun in 2025

But I admit, it was fun to watch the more creative ones passing by, taking many, many photos of them, with the Canon EOS R6 together with the Canon EF 200/2 L IS lens. I only forgot one thing; to configure my camera into taking many / fast shots. I must have forgotten it - because i hadn't used it for a while - often using either the Olympus OM-1 or the Fujifilm GFX 50s II camera for most of my photography last year.

The atmosphere during the Pride train was ... well it reminded me of a giant Family party. Both those in the train as well the many bystanders, where people from all levels of society, countries, sex and orientation (or whatever). So, it didn't feel like something... different or super weird.

Plus there was nothing naughty really to see.

It also reminded me a lot of Brazil Carnival. There were in fact many Latin American groups showing off - which wasn't or didn't really feel specifically gay or anything. It seemed to have been more about the joy of showing off in wonderful and colorful traditions. The joy of dancing in the streets, like they love to do in Latin America.

So, i wouldn't say it is all super gay and everything. More like... it was EVERYTHING without sticking out in a weird or unpleasant way.

Says me, who has become far more critical during the latter years. So, yeah - I did enjoy it a lot.