Five facts about Germany’s ‘Love Parade’
The following are five facts about Germany’s “Love Parade” festival, where at least 19 people were killed on Saturday after a stampede.
The Love Parade has been called the world’s largest techno dance party. It started in West Berlin in 1989 just four months before the Berlin Wall collapsed as a demonstration for peace, tolerance and understanding through love and music.
The event is now held against a backdrop of electronic dance music such as House, Trance and Techno, flamboyant outfits and energetic dance moves.
It was held almost annually in Berlin between 1989 and 2006, attracting more than one million participants. It moved to the western German Ruhr region in 2007.
During the 1990s it was heralded as one of Berlin’s biggest attractions after the Berlin Wall fell.
More than one million music lovers from around the world regularly crowded into Berlin for a four-mile-long gyrating party fuelled by dance, drink and drugs.
Internationally, similar Love Parades have taken place in Zurich, San Francisco, Mexico City, Acapulco, Vienna, Cape Town, Tel Aviv, Sydney, Santiago, Rio de Janeiro, Oslo and Budapest.
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