Vienna is Ready to Shine for EuroPride

Rainbow flags and banners will fill Vienna's Ringstrasse as more than 200,000 people are expected to parade through the Imperial City's main boulevard to its Town Hall for EuroPride in June.

"Once a year this boulevard is ours," said Andreas Brunner, a 56-year-old gay man who is one of the co-founders of the Rainbow Parade. "Face it. Here we are in our diversity from the Dykes on Bikes to half-naked dancing boys on trucks to lesbian groups drumming. That's our colorful Pride."

The Ringstrasse is the city's famed boulevard that replaced the fortress that once circled Vienna.

Nearly 20 years after Vienna first hosted EuroPride, the city is ready to welcome all of Europe and American friends to celebrate under the banner "Together & Proud" from June 1-16.

Celebrating queer Europe
"I'm getting excited," said Katharina Kacerovsky, CEO of Stonewall GmbH, the organization that oversees the annual Rainbow Parade and Pride Village at Town Hall. "I love to connect people and bring completely different cultures ... together for fusion."

That's exactly what Kacerovsky and her team are doing, working with about a dozen different Pride organizers to truly make the event a celebration of Europe's LGBT community.

There will be more than 40 events during the first half of Pride Month, offering something for everyone. The festivities range from family days at the Sch�nbrunn Zoo and parks to a conference to parties to a mass wedding at the 5-star Hotel Le Meridien (http://bit.ly/2KSlUGj).

It will all lead up to the EuroPride parade June 15 and two celebrations at the Pride Village and Pride Park.

In December 2017, the Austrian Constitutional Court legalized same-sex marriage. Same-sex marriages began on January 1 this year. However, it's been a bittersweet victory. Austria's conservative government limited marriages for binational couples to only those who come from countries where same-sex marriage is legal, Viennese activists said during a recent trip to Vienna.

The mass wedding will be both a celebration and a demonstration.

There will be a "focus on the fact that not everyone is allowed to marry. We still did not reach the goal with our government," said Kacerovsky, a 38-year-old lesbian who was an international DJ for two decades when she took the helm of the organization.

"EuroPride, with its multifaceted program, is the perfect occasion to celebrate and explore a city that has emerged from being a hidden gem to becoming a hot spot for the LGBT community," said Norbert Kettner, 51, a gay man who is the director of the Vienna Tourist Board.

For the first time, the city's tourism agency will have a truck in the EuroPride parade, Tom Bachinger, a gay man who handles travel trade relations for the U.S. market for the Vienna Tourism Board, told the Bay Area Reporter.

Viennese LGBTQs are getting excited about the events.

"Vienna is one of the most LGBT-friendly cities in the world," said Ian Goudie, a gay man who formerly led Stonewall GmbH and now works with Richard Zanella, one of the city's top gay bar and nightclub owners. "Vienna is an absolutely beautiful city. It's going to be an amazing event."

In 2001, Vienna first hosted the European-wide LGBT Pride celebration only five years after the Austrian capital hosted its first Pride parade.

An estimated 25,000 Pridegoers attended that first Pride event in 1996, said Brunner, who was inspired by Stonewall 25 celebrations in New York two years earlier. The 1969 Stonewall riots in New York City, which sparked the modern gay rights movement, will celebrate its 50th anniversary in June.

"Visibility was the main issue for us," said Brunner, who is co-manager of QWIEN (http://www.qwien.at), Vienna's LGBT archives, and runs LGBT Vienna history tours. "It still is."

EuroPride is "something that we should really celebrate," said Peter Holzinger, a 44-year-old gay man who owns Samstag Shop, a fashion boutique (http://samstag-shop.com).

However, Holzinger said it was important to remind younger LGBTs "that someone had to fight for this right to live such a carefree and great life today."

To commemorate the events of EuroPride and Stonewall 50 this year he has gathered 13 of the shop's artists to design limited edition EuroPride and Stonewall 50 T-shirts.

He was inspired by T-shirts on display at the GLBT Historical Society Museum in San Francisco's Castro district during a trip last year, he told me during one of the shop's many exhibitions celebrating the launch of new designs by international queer artist and designer Jakob Lena Knebl.

Knebl's works will also be exhibited at Vienna's MUMOK June 10-16 during EuroPride.

The goal of the T-shirts, which will be unveiled during a special event June 6, is to honor the unity of the LGBT community in the "fight for the recognition of our rights and our culture," Holzinger said in a statement sent to the B.A.R.

EuroPridegoers will be able to purchase their own T-shirts at the shop, online, and at various locations during the festivities.