Living in a more or less stable country means there aren’t many unexpected or unusual events to watch out for, and because the media hypes up most of the stuff out of proportion, I stopped reading the local news a while ago.
I guess today was one of those days when it would be worth checking them before leaving the house.
On my way to the dry cleaner I found myself in the midst of a protest. I literally walked around the corner and stepped right in front of a mounted police unit.
Things looked pretty peaceful compared to what I was used to from Lebanon, so I kept walking ahead as I was really close to the dry cleaning shop. Not a good idea - I ended up in front of the police shooting tear gas at people to disperse them.
Thousands of protesters marched the streets asking the government to step off because of limiting the basic rights by imposing the vaccinated/recovered/tested rule. I do agree that some of the measures are illogical and in a way it’s good to see that people don’t just sit at home and take orders (so hopefully this winter we won’t be restricted to movement within our own municipality like last year).
The protesters were walking all over the road and blocking the traffic, but other than that there was nothing crazy going on. The amount of tear gas in the air was ridiculous for the scale of the event in my opinion.
There’s an EU Summit taking place in the city tomorrow, with delegates from all over the Europe, so I guess the rioters took advantage of additional media coverage beyond the borders of our country.
This was a bit further away from the city centre. As you can see from the photo the few protesters didn’t do much harm, but I was glad it wasn’t me in that car. It did feel a bit unpleasant though, with helicopters hovering over the city, police vans and civil defence sirens wailing, some of the roads barricaded with metal fence by the police. I heard they used the water cannons too.
This was the third rally this month. And we’re only 5th. I guess the dry cleaner will have to wait for another day.
