As you can already guess from the title, I chose a topic that might be a bit controversial for my first real blog post. 🥲

First of all, some background

You might be wondering what CSD is if you don’t live in the DACH (in German) region. CSD, namely Christopher Street Day, is an annual parade in celebration of LGBTQ+. It is usually known as an European event but it mostly happens in DACH region. You can see all of its instances on this page (in German).

CSD Freiburg 2022

Freiburg instance of CSD, CSD Freiburg, had its 2022 parade today, starting at 2:00 PM. Image below shows its route, starting from the green box and ending at the purple/pink one.

Route of CSD Freiburg 2022

For those of you who don’t know Freiburg that well (probably most of you), the route goes through all the busiest roads of Freiburg. Freiburgs city centre is that quadrilateral piece of land within the pink large roads.

My experience

If you look at the top of the right kind-of vertical blue line, you can see a legend called Europaplatz. Today, from about 1:00 PM, I was working at a Starbucks located in Europaplatz.

Interestingly, probably because the parade was so long (and it really was), it took almost one hour for them to close by Europaplatz. With the crowds closing by, we started to hear the initial marching bands sound. At first, it was not that annoying, because the sound only blasted when the front door of the store got opened sporadically. But then, as they got closer, even the door and glasses weren’t able to insulate us from the amazingly loud and mixed sound.

It wasn’t the people making that sound: it was trucks. I was only able to try to continue working in Starbucks for an hour, but within that hour, I’ve seen at least two trucks which were fitted with sound equipment and were carrying bands in them. Like two or three people, blasting everywhere with their live music. There were other trucks, carrying people and again sound equipment, also playing recorded music.

As the parade came and went through Europaplatz, participants of it came to Starbucks to get a drink, or use the bathroom, or to just rest for a couple minutes. As more people started to come in, doors of the store were wide open because there were nowhere to route the line at the cash register. With doors being open, the sound of all that music was inevitably echoing inside the store; which effectively made it unbearable after a while.

I understood that I wasn’t going to be able to focus or work anymore in that environment, so I packed my stuff and got out of the Starbucks. When I hit the street first, I realized the actual level of (I’m sorry but) unnecessary mixup of sounds echoing through Kaiser-Joseph-Straße.

Until I got to my home, which is five minutes to Europaplatz, I kept hearing that cacophony full volume (I kept hearing inside the house too but not at a disturbing level). I think it’d probably be classified as being dangerous of causing hearing loss within a considerable radius of those trucks.

My criticism

If you haven’t yet stopped reading because you think I’m a homophobe/grumpy old man, please hear out my criticism. This is coming entirely out of the LGBTQ+ ecosystem.

Freiburg is a city famous with its demonstrations. They were a lot more common before COVID-19, but with the recent relaxation they took on full swing again. So, almost every weekend (mostly on Saturdays), there is always a demonstration which unquestionably has to pass through Kaiser-Joseph-Straße. Most if not all of these demonstrations has some kind of a marching band and a couple of people with loudhailers. Of course, they create a lot of sound too. But not like today. My problem with CSD Freiburg 2022 is the amazing loudness of the sound.

Of course, with the freedom of assembly in Germany, every crowd has the right to demonstrate. But producing this loud sound should not be allowed for a demonstration that is not taking place at a suitably large (and if possible remote) static location. Otherwise, as with what happened today, it becomes a whole nuissance.

If, at this point, you think that I’m standing against your right to dance on the street with your crowd, you’re wrong.

By all means, everyone should be able to legally do whatever they want, as long as they’re not infringing upon somebody elses freedoms. Today was exactly that. All those thousands of people infringed upon the non-participants right to some level of quietness. Right to assemble does not bring in the whole freedom of creating as much noise as you want for as long as you want.

If there was just a single truck, or people with portable sound systems which are inherently limited to produce a lower level of noise, it would’ve been all fine. Walk, dance, celebrate, protest, do it for me too. But do it with respect to others who are also living in this community, much like to the respect you want and had deserved for so long.

Conclusion

If you’ve reached this point, thank you very much. I’m someone who deeply believes in freedom of speech, and I want to thank you for reading what I had to say. If you have any comments or criticism, I would love to hear them out. Otherwise, happy Christopher Street Day!