Alas, Yorick Visits Popapalooza

I remember last year during APEC, seeing the signs for "World Youth Day" in Sydney and being glad I wouldn't be here for it.

I was wrong. The Pope is in Sydney, and so am I. Bad timing again, but Something Came Up and I had to be here.

World Youth Day, if you don't know, is a once-every-3-years festival where young Catholics from all over the place gather for masses, conference, flag-waving, and lots of singing. At least, that's how it looks to me.

The Pope arrived in Sydney Thursday and toured the harbor and city by boat and Popemobile, with hundreds of thousands waving. Me, I didn't get to Sydney till after that was over. But today, as I went around town doing my work, and as I walked around this evening seeing what was going on, the pilgrims as they're called were in full force.

The pilgrims paraded down George Street, waving flags, heading to various locations where they were staging the Stations of the Cross. Big crowds all over. Masses here, there and everywhere. Lots of singing, although I personally did not hear "Kumbayah."

Tonight was interesting, walking in central Sydney and seeing the combination of casually (and warmly) dressed, sober, nice, clean-cut, friendly, young (high school & college age) pilgrims and the staggering drunk sharp-dressed self-satisfied young hot shots that work in Sydney's financial district, out for their Friday night piss-up* at trendy bars that have gimmicks like giving you a parka and letting you drink an overpriced vodka in a 23F/-5C chilled room; I am not making that up it's called Minus Five. The two groups in some instances didn't mix all that well - I heard one encounter where some pilgrims apparently asked a drunken Italian-suit-wearing spiky-haired young Aussie business dude something about Jesus, and the guy yelled "I've got your news about Jesus. He doesn't exist!"

Luckily for him, a law preventing people from "annoying" the pilgrims was recently nullified on a technicality.

But on another corner, a young Aussie (not a pilgrim, he wasn't dressed in flags) yelled "Aussie, Aussie, Aussie" and right on cue, the group of Malaysian kids yelled back "Oi, oi, oi!" Quick learners, those Malaysians.

I saw lots of dudes in robes - various priests, bishops, and cardinals, out hiking with their flock. And lots of flags - every little group seemed to be waving the Stars and Stripes or the Union Jack or the Tricoleur or whatever they call the flags of Korea and Mexico and Argentina and Croatia and Italy and Brazil (disappointingly very very dressed unlike their World Cup fans - a Sydney "winter" must feel cold to somebody from Rio) and Papua New Guinea and Texas and Malaysia and South Africa and Germany and Canada and Quebec and from lots of other places. The places whose flags I don't know. Oh, and lots of Irish, very helpfully dressed head to toe in green so you could identify them. And even the Irish were sober - at least at 3:00 in the afternoon when I encountered them. Lots of guitars too - singing is a big part of this Catholic-a-thon. And of course, lots and lots of Aussies with their flags. And apparently 33 Burmese, who only got their visas late, based on the Australians' suspicion that they would stay illegally and work - the way at least one Russian pilgrim did, according to what one Sidneysider I heard tell another at a coffee stand, allegedly landing a job as a security guard within 48 hours of landing in Sydney.

On Saturday is the big thing, when 500,000 people are supposed to cram into Randwick racetrack to hear the Pope say mass. I'll keep away - crowds that big are a pain, no matter how nicely behaved.

*Night of heavy boozing