Bush Go Home Demo Vienna review

I wanted to post some software development news again but unfortunately this event came in between. Dani, AK, some anonymity preferring companions and I went there, so here's my short summary:
The Bush-Go-Home-Demo was a pretty huge event. There were between 15.000 and 20.000 people demonstrating which is an exceptional high number of people for Austrian demos. Being a part of that big crowd of people sharing the same feelings and going through the streets felt pretty nice. It was interesting - we saw nearly every type of demsontrator there: American students, punks, communists, programmers ;), pensionists but in most cases simply average people who just wanted to show their dislike towards the politics of that guy. Some of us had special t-shirts printed, unfortunately mine was some sizes to small, but at least I was able to breath.. :)
The whole place was crowded and people even climbed telephone boxes. The demo was very peaceful, and the fully armored policemen (robocop anyone?) looked a bit displaced in front of every McDonalds and Starbucks. At the Hofburg (that's just like the White House - where our president works) it was a bit confusing and frigthening. Confusing because a part of the demonstrators thought the demo ended here and stopped walking and frightening because hundreds of policemen were standing there with white helmets (see left image below) which made some of the demonstrators kind of aggressive. People were screaming "this is a peaceful demo, lets go on!!" and we tried to get away from there as fast as possible. But nothing happened luckily. Lots of people were upset about the effords and costs caused by the visit of Mr. Bush here in Vienna. Streets were blocked, the inner city was locked up, the streets were full of policemen and police cars. They spend about one mio Euro to protect the U.S. president from his potential killers. So, now look at the right picture below: Just behind that door the Austrian president is sitting and working, while we and 20.000 other demonstrants are walking past his office, protected only by those 10 or 20 policemen dressed in blue. Funny if you compare this. :) After all, it was a nice event. And it was hot, so hot that lots of people even went to McDonalds to have a coke. ;)
Ok, so now you are free again to comment on how stupid I am to go protesting against something I do not like and stuff like that. But at least it looks like there are plenty of people who are thinking similarly.