Loveparade

I left Austria in the morning of the 23rd and headed to Dusseldorf to meet Andy. Nothing interesting really happened on the way there. Met him at the train station and then we headed to our hotel (yes hotel!! We figured we could splurge one night considering we had nowhere to sleep the next night). We didn’t really do much that day except try and find a Subway (food) – we finally found one, it ended up being so far away!! Then on the way back to our hostel found one that was really close haha oops. On the way to Subway, outside our hostel, this guy stopped us and said ‘oh thank god I found some Aussies! Are you going to The Loveparade??’ Turns out that he had no one to travel with and didn’t want to go to the love parade on his own and asked if he could tag along. Then that night we just caught up, shared photo’s and drank some beer.

24th July 2010.

The next morning we met Gareth (the Aussie dude), got some fruit and a Eurotrash top and headed to the Loveparade. There were SO many people. We got off the train and followed the crowd. There were people everywhere, and everyone walked together to where the parade was actually going to be (an abandoned train station). Duisburg was expecting 800,000 people to go but 2.4 million turned up. We went through the tunnel where the disaster happened and everything was ok at that stage.

When we got in to the place where it actually was, it was amazing!! I have never ever seen so many people!! Naive Tassie girl haha. There was a stage at each end and about 400m in between the stages; the whole place was packed. The parade was just floats with people dancing on them that tried to get through all the people, probably the most boring bit of the whole thing actually. We just danced and talked to people all day. Oh and Andy ripped his pants REALLY badly and this really nice German sewed it up for him (all we asked for was a pin! Haha).

While the disaster happened we were at the little stage, so pretty close to where it happened, but we had no idea. We noticed that all the Dj’s didn’t look that in to what they were doing (they were told to just play on, to prevent more panic) and that a lot of people had left (heaps!!!) but we didn’t really think much of it. The whole thing finished at 11 (it was meant to go pretty much all night) and that’s when we found out about what had happened. 19 people died, 340 injured, 40 very badly. What the experts think happened is that - before the tunnel there was a security type check, so they only let about five people through at a time. Even when we were going through, earlier, people were really pushing at this part; this was to prevent too many people in the tunnel at the same time. All that was stopping them was a little metal fence and a security guard though. The police realised that there was too many people in the arena and said that no more were allowed in, people panicked and tried to run past the past the security to get in before they closed it). Maybe the metal fence fell down and they all ran, the people that fell didn’t make it.

We had all our bags in Gareth’s room so once the parade was over we went back to the hostel to get them and went on the internet in the 24 hour bar there for a while. Andy and I had nowhere to sleep. Then at about five we headed to the train station and caught a train to Prague. Which is where we were last night (the 25th). We walked around during the day but were pretty tried (still hadn’t slept yet) so we had an early night. Today we wandered around and went to the church there– it’s such a beautiful city! So many tourist though, I know I’m one of them but still.

Now off to Bratislava. The train was delayed by 20 minutes so Andy and I missed our adjoining train! We got off at a tiny station and tried to work out what to do – thankfully out loud!! Because a man said that the same thing had happened to him and he would work out what to do. The man came running back (he risked missing his train to get us! – so nice!) and then we jumped on this tiny old train and ended up in a place called Kury (we had NO idea where we were, we were just relying on this man) and now we’re on another train on our way to Bratislava! (fingers crossed!)