July 2023 Newsletter
Welcome to the summer edition of our regular newsletter. We hope that all you queers have been enjoying the summer. In this newsletter, we want to highlight events we organized/planned this year for two of the largest LGBTQ gatherings in Munich in 2023 (CSD and Gay Sunday) and bring you some updates from the organizing team.
News from the organizing team
Our community exists because of your active participation. Many of the existing organizers are now in need of some time to focus on different activities, and we have to reduce the number and frequency of our events.
We are seeking new organizers to help us! There are many things you can help with (organize our events, curate this newsletter, help managing our social media feeds). Whatever you can do will go a long way to keeping our community together. Please get in touch at queermuenchen@protonmail.com
Highlights from past/upcoming events
CSD Augsburg/Munich/Nurnberg
This year, as a group, we went to Augsburg CSD, Munich CSD and we will go to Nurnberg CSD on the 5th of August. According to csdmuenchen.de, nearly 520000 people attended this year´s pride parade in Munich. They estimate that around 60000 people marched in the parade and 460000 people watched and cheered from the sidelines. Nearly a hundred of us went to CSD Munich as a group, where many of us marched officially under the banner of our community International Queer Meetup Munich and many of us watched and cheered from the sidelines. As is by now our tradition, the night before CSD Munch, there was a pub crawl where we drank our way through Munich.
Thekedienst at Lez
On July 21st we helped with the bar at Lez, during our usual Stammtisch. It was a great occasion to support the association that hosts regularly several of our events. Places like Lez and Sub can only exist thanks to the generosity of the volunteers that take care of managing the bar, and we thought it was time we gave something back. There will be more evenings allocated to us, so stay tuned for the next date, and come help with us. No special training is required, and it’s a lot of fun (and a few free drinks).
Seminar on discrimination and violence
Violence and discrimination against queer people are still an issue, even in Germany. We teamed up with a local association that supports the victims, to organize a seminar with open discussion on Queer-phobic violence and discrimination. Were you a victim in the past? If it happened to you today, here in Munich, would you know what to do? Come join us on August the 2nd at sub.
Oktoberfest!
Munich is already preparing for the world´s largest folk festival that takes place at the Theresienwiese every year. And so are we ! The famous Gay Sunday takes place in the Hacker-Pschorr tent on the first Sunday of Octoberfest (this year on the 17th of September). We, as a group, plan to go there of course. We have two events: we managed to reserve a couple of tables for our group (20 people). In addition, we have a second event, where some of us will go there quite early and get a table or two (without reservation). According to Wikipedia, Gay Sunday is the second largest LGBTQ event in Munich (after CSD ofcourse) with nearly 8000 queers in the tent !
That´s all for now. Stay sunny, stay queer!
Hiranmay, on behalf of the organizing team