Holidays

I am on holidays!

Tomorrow morning I am leaving to London to celebrate Christmas with Darren, Jasna, Andreas, and Sabi.

Then I am going to Romania to celebrate the start of 2006 with Cristian!


Yipee! And I have forbidden myself to go online in this period.

Winter in Italy

This weekend I was in Italy on the European School Students' convention, which was organised by OBESSU. Now I'm not saying that I am getting old, but seeing 15 year old students working so dedicated in order to create more student democracy and standards to which they want to apply: it made me very happy!

Less hapy I was with the remote location that was chosen to organise the convention: Campobasso in Southern Italy. It took me 16 hours to get there... It was very cold in Italy and yesterday when I had to travel back to Rome people told me that there was a chance that there would be no trains because of all the snow that fell... Fortunately the train did go, and I had the opportunity to see the collosseum in the evening, and to enjoy a dinner in a bad Italian restaurant on my own.

Prejudices

Of course I don't like prejudices. Italian people:

• Scream or talk too loud;
• wear huge sunglasses in the winter;
• don't walk on the left or the right side of the road, but on both sides so that you constantly bumb into them;
• can not organise;
• talk all the time if there is a guest speaker, unless the guest speaker comes from their own country.

But of course I only met 200 Italians this weekend, and wouldn't dare to generalise. :-) I know at least two exceptions, Fabio & Giuseppe.

Me and my couch

Tonight the Trut celebrates its 20th anniversary. It's a non-profit gay and lesbian bar which normally is only open on Sunday evenings. Every week a mixed crowd of lesbian and gays gathers in a row to enter the Trut (litterally meaning 'The Bitch'), as there is a full = full policy. This is the only place I know where there is no preference given to anyone, and that's what I like.

I didn't manage to get a ticket for the party tonight, as I was still in Poland when the tickets were sold. Now I am spending an evening on the couch. Sorting out papers, writing some e-mails and enjoying not being outside as it's reallly cold. Thinking about the beautiful period that is coming up.

Yesterday I was in Groningen - where I saw Kees again first time after three months! That's what I probably hate most of my life: through all the context I'm so little in Netherlands that I see my friends living abroad more than my friends here..

Hello sweeties!

The work with the new board has started. The poor people are still online, which means that they are already getting used to the IGLYO board spirit. Change of people of course means a change of spirit as well, which I believe is very healthy of each organisation. Suddenly I am the grand daddy in the board, it feels strange as I've always be the youngest anywhere I was working.

But it does not matter. We have a great team, not only in the board, but also outside the board.

I decided to prolong my Christmas Holidays a little bit... After London I'm now going to celebrate New Years' eve in Romania. It seems like things are going well, I am happy and feeling great.

Tears, Smiles and Butterflies

IGLYO elected its new board last week. Tears flooded as great people are leaving the board. Smiles on my face because I'm going to work with my dream team. The coming two years I'll be working with Max, Bev, Darren and Fabio. Gratefull for all that I've learned and the best friendships I got with Jasna, Ruth and Jelena, I'm now trying to prepare for the new board. I'm still dealing with post-IGLYO blues, not really able to concentrate but do my best.

Company

Last week the IGLYO Gender Conference took place in Krakow, Poland. Thursday morning these nice fellow kept us company outside of the hostel. Bypassers received leaflets containing homophobic texts - the same texts that Hitler used during the II World War to express his feelings about Jews.

It all looked a bit said, actually some people even mentioned that the posters looked quite funny. Looking the guys in their eyes made me realise they were more afraid than I was.

When I was in Krakow in April a Gay Pride was forbidded. The gays that gathered in the city centre walked through the city silently. Whilst we were sitting on a terrace, drinking coffee, an egg was thrown to us.

In comparison to the recent events in Poznan (where 62 activists were brutally arrested by the police!) it's all not much. But realising that people take the energy to bring eggs to the city, or to make signs and print leaflets, I must say it feels disguishting.

Rain & Alitalia

I was supposed to fly to Krakow tomorrow, but Alitalia decided to go on strike and this means that suddenly I have to fly this afternoon. As if I wasn't already stressed enough this completely made me relax somehow.

Have a bit of a hangover of last night, only got into my bed early morning. Now I packed my stuff and have to leave in five minutes. It is raining very hard here and I first have to go to the centre to pick up rainbow key chains, before I go to Schiphol.

Tonight Gin and Tonic with my sweeties!

Melting Pot

Yesterday evening we closed the study visit of 15 people from Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Serbia to Amsterdam. I organised a meet & greet together with the biweekly couscous meal: a meal organised by Chafik, a wonderful muslim guy from Amsterdam. During this meal people have the oppertunity to talk about the Islam, or to talk about nothing at all, whilst being in a safe environment. Many visitors are closeted. Since we wanted to give our guests a good taste of Dutch food as well we had hutspot & couscous. The meal was also visited by international students from an University in Amsterdam: so there was a great mix of people.

A group of Muslim boys was having the dinner in a seperate cafe of the COC building, but soon they came to other cafe and took over the music. The boys played Arabic music and danced beautiful. Soon a lot of people were dancing together, eating couscous and hutspot: it was a very special moment for me.

Until one of the COC volunteers plugged of the music: "This is not a disco evening and the music has to go off." Such a cold bath after such a nice start of the evening. However, we went to the cafe of the boys and continued dancing and talking. The idea was born to organise a disco after each couscous meal. I hope that this evening is the birth of a long future of melting pots!

Fund raising and meetings

This weekend I was in Brussels for the COMEM of the European Youth Forum. Two days of meeting with 120 delegates is not the most exciting thing I have ever done, but it was good to see some people again and to get to know few other people. IGLYO's video on Pride in Activism cheered the meeting up a little bit, with the 2004 hit 'Dragostea din tei', coming from the wonderful Moldova. Brussels is a nice city which I especially enjoyed Sunday afternoon whilst having coffees and lunch with Jasna, Bettina and Maxim.

For the rest I am fund raising, fund raising. We are finishing a huge application to the European Commission, which is a lot of work. It's not my favourite waste of time, though the good thing is that it makes you think of your organisation in another way than you're doing in the every day routine. When I'm not fund raising for IGLYO at the moment I'm assessing funding applications of other organisations to the COC... happy when the first of December has come as by then we'll be finished with everything.

Pre change society

Yesterday afternoon I came back from a training on the Balkan. Together with Joke Swiebel and Maxim Anmeghichean I organised a two day event in Belgrade on Advocacy and Lobbying. It was quite a succes, despite the difficult situation in which many activists on the Balkans find themselves daily! Corrupt governments wanting to access the EU solely for economic reasons, the challenge is to persuade them to improve human rights at the same time... Not an easy task for activists and I have much respect for those people working hard on it!

Belgrade has beautiful views, I discovered on Monday. After the exhausing weekend Joke, Max and I took some time to enjoy ourselves in the city. We had coffee with the wonderful people from Deve, we had a nice walk and a beautiful dinner. After the dinner Max and I walked to a magnificent city part with a tremendous view over the Danube....

Tomorrow I'm going to the Council of Members of the European Youth Forum in Brussels... Two days of meetings. It is the first time that I will attend the CoMem, and I haven't red the statutes yet... Preparation will take some time so I'm happy that I can do that in the train on my way to Brussels...

pfft

I'm back home for a little bit. Have visited Paris for the past 6 days. It was an inspiring but extremely exhausting visit. It was nice seeing gathered 200 LGBT activists working together again, but at the same time many things I did not like.

Such as activists not actively participating in activities, but exploring Paris.
Such as people striving for equality as the cover of an organisation, not minding qualities and competences or even inner equality.
Such as people trying to ruin existing structures without offering constructive alternatives.

It are facets of my work which I have never, and will never, understand. Happy I am to realise that there were more positive aspects of the conference!!!



Now I'm tired, and no time to rest. Am preparing for going to Belgrade on Thursday for a regional training which I'm organising.

Nous allons

In a couple of hours I am leaving for Paris, where the annual ILGA-Europe conference will be hold. Maybe it is through the rain and the autumn, but I can not say that I'm looking very much forword to going. Even though I am looking forward to see a lot of my friends again... think it's just the conference politics which I dislike... Conferences liket his feel so unlike truth activism, I realise it's an important annual gathering but just have the feeling that on these conference too much energy is spend on useless politics... Well, I'll take another deep breathe and get myself into the train.

Amersfoort

Today I was in Amersfoort, the city where I was born. In the train on my way to Amersfoort people were complaining as usual because there were some delays with the train. If I count the times I heard the sentence: "I never travel with the train but if I do so it is delayed, will never do it again!" Don't know whether it's Dutch... and I wonder whether people realise that they're not only spoiling their own mood with so much complaining, but also the people that are sitting around them.

Visited my sweet grand mother and then I walked from my grand mother's house to my parents' house.
We went out for dinner with my sister tonight, which was very nice as I don't see them often lately.

Amersfoort is a beautiful city and I can sometimes really enjoy the silence...

Ladybirds' winter sleep

Spending a couple days at home I suddenly discover things I would never see in the normal rhytm of live... I just discovered lots, lots and lots of ladybirds hanging on my ceiling, preparing for a nice wintersleep.... Don't know whether this is normal, but in different corners of my appartment there are sitting hundreds of them!!! Decided that I am going to use the vacuum cleaner to take the little darlings away...
Also I had a short winter sleep last night.. it was great! Now I need to start working on mine and IGLYO's administration :(

Autumn

Slowly the autumn is starting in Amsterdam. Even though we had quite some sunshine during the past week I noticed the first green leaves turning into yellow and brown, and falling of the threes in front of my flat. I have started to plan the last months of the year, in which I will not be home a lot. All the weeks seem to be so packed already, that you can not imagine how much I try to enjoy being at home for this weekend... I slept until noon and spend early afternoon on cleaning up... Now I will go to pick up some papers from the office, which I don't mind doing since it's perfect weather for a bike ride. Yesterday I realised how nice it is to have the oppertunity to travel by bike in this beautiful city... which I don't do enough and there's still so many pieces of the city I don't know.

No blog

Today I was kindly reminded of my lack of blogging lately, so here we go again. I was travelling to Croatia and Slovenia. Visited a Transgessing Gender conference (the first academic thing in my life to attend), and visit organisations in Slovenia.

Zagreb was an interesting visit. It is funny to see how academics are discussing and promoting their own theories. I have never in my life heard that many words I had never heard of before.... Even though the subjects where very, very interesting (such as: deconstructing gender, biologics of gender), I did fall asleep during a couple of presentations. Think that academics deserve to get presentation skills at their University as well! Overall I am very happy that I attented the conference, which was important for the region.

Ljubljana was short, too short. It was full with Scottisch men in Skirts... Almost unreal how many there were... It also meant that there was no single hotel room available, happily Jasna and here family were hospital as always and hosted me. I met shortly with all of the organisations and then I already had to go. Poor Jasna smacked with her face on the ground before she dropped me off at the bus station.... Now she has a ugly scratch on her face and a lot of pain...

Good Morning Netherlands

It is terrible early in the morning and I'm awake. First of all because I need to finish my readings for the course I'm currently following. Secondly because in an hour I'm off to a training for my work. This will be about 'Organisational Development and Institutional Learning', doesn't that sound exciting!

The past week has flown by, it seems to me. IGLYO is going crazy inside; so many things have to happen at the moment... and then of course nothing works the way it is supposed to work. Our website is out the air, which is frustrating as we can not do anything against it!! Black magic is working against us. But soon we'll be back with a much nicer website, that's the good news.

Friday I am going to a 'Transgessing Gender' conference http://www.tgenderzagreb.com/ in Zagreb, to which I'm really looking forward. It's an area in my work which I don't know much about yet, but which must offer many fascinating theories and even moreover: dedicated activists. After Zagreb I will go to Ljubljana for two days and then back home to finish all the IGLYO work.

P.s. Tori Amos also sings about Teen Spirit, much better than Kurt.

Smells like Team Spirit

I always thought that Nirvana song ‘Smells like team spirit’… Yes I did. Well and it was actually Bettina who informed me that Kurt’s text was rather ‘Smells like teen spirit’. I find it a bit weird, but hey it’s his text.

Well one thing is for sure: the past days have smelled like team spirit! I returned back home from a successful meeting with Ministers of Youth yesterday morning. Youth violence response policies have been adopted by the Council of Europe member states, which I perceive as an important recognition! Not that it was necessary to attend this posh meeting for, taking place in an expensive hotel in Budapest, no rather IGLYOs attendance was successful in terms of raising awareness and being visible. Having so much European youth together feels like team spirit!

Saturday the conference was closed with a street festival on Human Rights. I participated as book in a ‘Living Library’, a beautiful idea which takes some prejudices people have away. The idea is that stereotyped people become books which can be rented. The library takes for instance place during Popfestivals. People who want to know more about an ex-prisoner rent a ex-prisoner for a hour and get to know him. Of course I was the gay book, and I was rented by Terry Davis, Secretary General of the Council of Europe, and by two German gay tourists, unfortunately no Hungarian with prejudices rented me as I would have liked to learn a bit from that.

Earlier Saturday morning we had the closing session in the Hungarian Parliament. After the official part I did a short self-guided tour through the building with two Norwegian friends. I can tell you: the building is huge and has got many empty halls, rooms and stairways… We ended up in one of the highest towers which was quite exciting…it smelt like teen spirit.

Saturday evening I went out with my good friend Judit, which was very nice seeing her again. I’m so jealous on the amazing library she has… At four o’clock in the night I got back to the hotel, where a taxi would pick me up one hour later to bring me to the airport. Somehow, maybe being a bit drunk and suffering from a general lack of sleep, I only woke up at the moment my flight was already leaving… Or actually I was woken up by an hysterical receptionist who became very angry at me that I did not wake up… So I arrived to Amsterdam a bit later than expected…

Yesterday evening I had another nice evening in the theatre I used to work for a while (mime theatre). There was a nice play called ‘Homo’s in Venlo’, about the life of three young gay guys. The script was actually based upon the lives of the actors, which gave a very touching edge to the play. My friend Tania and I liked it, Tania even liked it so much that she wants to bring it to COC Amsterdam.

This morning I had to wake up too early to get to Brussels. IGLYO and ILGA-Europe are going to cooperate on a publication on Social Exclusion, which looks very promising and on which I am very proud! Then sweet Maxim took me for a delicious lunch where we in one hour discussed so many different aspects of life and work, which I enjoyed. After having another meeting with Luis Pinto from EPTO including a nice dinner, I’m now in the train back to Amsterdam. Satisfied after hard working, tired and looking forward to all the nice projects that are coming up, and especially to continue the team spirit that we have been working with lately!

1-10 from 73

"1-10 from 73 for "Björn van Roozendaal", the result of Googling my name. It seems to have become a new indicator for success. Who can not found with Google does not exist. It surprises me that when I talk about name googling so many people actually still don't use it. I use it when I get a new colleague so see what he/she is like, I do it when I have to meet somebody whom I don't know, I do it when I read an interesting article and I want to know more about the author. I do it when I talked to a press agency and want to know where my quotes have been published.

This morning I watched a documentary about Google. Due to the great amount of (personal) data which they collect Google is more and more subject of criticism. I might be naive, but somehow I do like the vision of Google: to make as much information as possible available for as many people as possible. Google seems to have become the victim of all criticism regarding the information era we now live in. Information is eassily accessible, and it is rather easy to find out things about somebody's life from whatever place in the world you are.

McDonalds was the reason for people becoming fat, Google is the reason for insecuring our personal privacy. I think these comments are too eassily made.

Of course Google should not make appointments with the Chinese government on what information should be censored. And of course it should be clear on what information is passed on to US secret services. But for me its a bit too easy to blame Google for this. We should look to governments and ask ourselves and them why they need such information.

Still I think it is good that these discussions take place. It is important for people to be aware about what happens with information they leave somewhere on the internet, and its good to discuss ethics when it concerns storing personal information. But it's too simple to only appoint one scape goat.

Wooden Shoes, Wooden Heads

Asylum policies in the Netherlands. Never I understood much about it, and coincidentally I did some research on it a few months ago. It became apparent to me that even though the policy is clear, the system does not function. The Immigration and Naturalization Office makes decissions on the status of Asylum seekers (should you stay or should you go), on the basis of non-transparent and unaccessible research. Often 'Country Reports' issued by Dutch embassies are used as a basis for decissions. Putting six country reports next to each other made it clear to me that there is no guideline on how these reports should be presented, let stand what should be in it! Can you believe this....

A couple of years ago a popular politician introduced
the idea of 'civilisation courses' for immigrants to the Netherlands. The idea became a hype and Rita Verdonk, our current Minister of Strangers (this is the literate translation of her Minister post) now even defines an immigrant as: 'Somebody who did not succesfully passed the civilisation exam'. Welcome to the Netherlands. I see it as one of the defenses against the 'scaring approach of the Jihad', one of the most wrongly understood words in the West. The Netherlands is slowly loosing its identity and reflects its sadness about that on those who come new. For me it's close to pure Islamophobia, or even better: foreignophobia.

Of course the idea behind the civislisation course, which is more a culturalisation course, is not bad at all. It aims to provide foreigners with knowledge on the Dutch culture, language, values and principles. I would like to follow the course as well, because I'm extremely interested to learn about the for me unknown Dutch Standards as well. Standards.

Standards. I'm currently in the preparation of a training on EU perspectives for Balkan states for gay activists in that region. A team member from Belgrade this week rightly mentioned: "What are EU standards actually?," when I proposed to have a training component on EU standards. He made me realise that we are often talking about non-existing standards.

I think that it's actually one of the biggest challenges in the globalization: meeting standards. I would logically say that this is always a mutual process. But in the Netherlands we like delegating so we give this huge responsibility to our foreign guests!

Let us first decide what our new identity is. All people should talk about principles and values, not only our 'guests'. And then I propose that when we decided what our national identity looks like, we all go to school again.

This week my favourite Dutch party expressed its doubts about the functioning of the Immigration and Naturalization office. Finally! It made me decide to finally become a member of the party.

Nights singing white satin

‘Nights singing white satin’. Did you ever wonder what that means? I didn’t, until tonight. I visited the local queer club in Delft: Outsite. While walking back to the station I suddenly wondered: what does it actually mean? So when I took the train from Delft to Amsterdam I switched on my laptop, started iTunes, to find out that the actual title of the song is ‘Nights in white satin’. Mais naturellement.

Since I was very young I have loved listening to music. That feeling of affection was probably given to me by my sister, who has a much better developed music taste than I have. She visits small pop concerts in Dublin of music stars nobody has ever heard about, but who she found on the internet. I adore her for that, as most of my music selection belongs to the so called popular category, not so exciting… Or maybe it was fed by my father, who often blew up the speakers while listening to the Doors’ ‘Light my fire’. I rather played my mothers’ sensitive music. Simon and Garfunkel or Herman van Veen.

‘What’s your favourite music?’, is the question I fear the most whenever being in a getting-each-other-to-know conversation. Honestly I never know what to say. Why? Because my taste of music has developed into a thousand different directions during the past years. I started listening Queen when Freddy Mercury died. I thought I could sing along very well, my mother thought differently. Even though she has never been pushing me into career moves, I can say she encouraged me not to start a singing career. And it still hurts.

Then I started developing my taste further. Most of the music I like is connected to something that happened in my life. It’s not about the vocal qualities or the high musical performance. It’s about the situation or person that touched me and which I connected to a particular song. ‘An Der Schönen Blauen Donau’, because my grand father was buried with it. Donna Summer’s ‘Last Dance’ because one night ended so great dancing on that song. ‘Unbreak my heart’, because I came out when Toni hit the charts. ‘Paint it Black’, because my parents finally allowed me to stay up to see Tour of Duty. ‘Damn those eyes’, because damn those eyes.

After I realised that my vocal qualities do not even meet the standards of Idols I also slowly started to discover that the song texts I sung where not really corresponding with how they were written. But how can I help it, as child I did not like the Dutch songs, so I was forced to sing along in a language I did not speak! And so I sang ‘I want to break free from a life as-za easy but I really neeeeeed, oooohhh ai want to break free’. Nobody ever told me!

A few weeks ago, when I was going out with people in Montenegro, I heard myself singing along a Serbian song … and I don’t even speak it! Imagine what I was singing…

Learning

Yesterday I got accepted for a course on Human Rights Protection and Promotion in Europe! Was searching for some new learning experience for a while. Even though my work is all about learning I sometimes have the feeling that I can not see how I'm 'growing' in my work... Therefore I decided to apply for this course - and eventually got accepted! Which makes me very happy. Time management is something that I will learn now as well: the course takes place starting next week till the beginning of December. Exactly overlapping the period that I'm both travelling a lot for COC, as well have to do many activities for IGLYO... But I'm happy with it, even though it'll be 24/7 working, travelling, reading, studying, etc. the upcoming period :)

Jelena left this morning at 4.30, Jasna at 8.20 and Ruth left yesterday afternoon. We finished so much work! The draft version of Ruth's minutes consisted of 25 pages... Nicest thing is that we finally solved some long outstanding debts, made decissions on IGLYO's future stucture and activities and planned the procedure of handover and other details.

Oh, and I shouldn't forget: my sister heard she graduated as bachelor of social pedagogic services last week! I'm so happy for her!

Meetings 24/7

Tonight IGLYO board came home from a 4 day board meeting in Beekbergen, East Netherlands. We are all taking home a to do list which contains enough work to be busy for another year, though reality leaving us with nothing more than 3 months... So many activities coming up and so many great plans... Though still in the reality that the transition of an organisation based on ad-hoc activities into an organisation based on continuity and structure takes a while...

Now we're all tired... finished discussions at my place, meeting with a funder tomorrow morning and having follow-up activities starting tomorrow afternoon already.

And now I'm off to bed!

Everything changes

My manager Margo just informed us she will be leaving us shortly. I kind of predicted she would leave, as she always states that you should only be in an organisation for 3 or 4 years, but it still comes as a surprise. It is never nice when people from whom you learned so much and with whom you cooperated so nicely leave. On the other side it will bring changes and thus challenges in the organisation.


Tomorrow the whole IGLYO board will arrive in Netherlands. We'll be having board meeting with a million items to discuss. We're having it in Beekbergen, a bungalowpark in the woods in the Eastern part of the Netherlands. I'm really looking forward to it!

Plumber

It was too early this morning, or too late last evening. The weather in Amsterdam is great so I spent half the day on my bicycle yesterday. Had coffee with friends and went to a goodbye party of friends moving over. For the evening I and a few friends had planned to go dancing. We went to a new party, which was apparently so new that it was only visited by 12 people. Nevertheless we had fun. Afterwards I went dancing a bit and went to bed too late.
This morning I had to wake up for the plumber - you never know what time they really come - who is making a water meter in my bathroom. So here I sit on my couch, not having had time to take a shower yet... he is already working on it for two hours and I want him to go because my best friend Kees is coming over together with Sam from Australia, whom I didn't see for many years.

Photo's

Finished! Was working on IGLYO tonight a bit. Decided not to go out but to stay in and have an easy going evening at home.Then I realised I didn't do anything with all my photo's for ages... so I picked them up from my box in the basement... and sorted all of them out and put them in albums. 25 packages of photo's! The only thing I still need to do now is finalising my photo book of Italy, from the journey me and Kees made 3 years ago...

Amsterdam

So,

I came back from holidays last Monday. Spent wonderful days in UK, was in London, Brighton, Bath, Wales, Liverpool and Manchester. It was very nice seeing my friends Darren, Judit, Beverly, Jasna, Sabi and Klaire again! Darren found himself and his housemate Joe a very nice appartment on the first day I was in London. He immediately invited me over so I spent the first days in Elephant & Castle instead of in the Picadilly backpackers Inn, which was very pleasant. The first weekend was packed with shopping, drinking, dancing, talking and relaxing. On Sunday I met Judit, my friend from Hungary, who was having holidays with her family in England as well.

After that I was confronted with the Western bureaucracy. I hired a car at EasyCar to tour a bit through England, of course without reading the terms and conditioins... Whilst picking up the car I discovered I had to pay an additional 50 pounds of Young drivers fee, as well EasyCar did not sent me a bookings voucher, whatever that may be. Including the deposit I had to pay 650 pounds! Already when I arrived in Bath the second day my bank card refused working as consequense of this.. so I had to call my parents :)

My next lucky accident was that I pushed the on/off button of my phone so hard that it ended up being in the phone....with the result that my phone wasn't working anymore and I'd lost all my phone numbers.

The rest of my holidays was much more peaceful. Driving through Wales was very nice (though they drive so hard that you barely have time to enjoy the views), but it rained so I decided to only spend one day in Wales and move on to Liverpool immediately. It will be the European Cultural Capital 2008, and that is more then visible. I really liked the athmospere in that city.

Manchester was my last destination. Stayed at Beverly's place and met her girl friend. Jasna and Sabi were also staying there, they arrived the same day with Klaire who had driven them there from Edingbrough. It was gay pride... so lot's of alcohol were consumed. So much that we decided to stay at home on Saturday evening, suffering serious tiredness. It was nice seeing Canal Street and the Manchester Pride. It was less nice to take note of the treaths that the Brittish National Front had given prior to the pride. They're intention was to disturb the Pride, but the severe attendance of the Police prevented this from happening.

Now it is weekend again, I've worked four days in the office and finished loads of small tasks I had to do. This week I'll be working on IGLYO, Wednesday the board will arrive in Netherlands and we'll be having board meeting. Prior to that I've to finish some preparations, and start preparing myself for the Conference with Ministers which I'll be attending later this month in Budapest.

Home for a day

Yesterday I came back from Montenegro, where I organised a three day lasting trainings event for the local LGBT community. Well, one could not speak about a 'community' yet, as the activism in the federal republic is still pretty much based on individuals.

Nevertheless, I've fallen in love with the whole former Republic of Yugoslavia. It's my designated work area since 1 1/2 years, and I wouldn't have wanted to miss a single month of that. The picture left from here is take one and a half a month ago in Macedonia, it's the lake of Ohrid. The Balkan contains such beautiful parts of nature, often unknown to may Western European tourists!

Tomorrow I'm going to UK for a nice holiday. My adventure starts tomorrow in London, where I'll gladly meet up with my dear friend Darren. He recently moved from Malta to London, and is now trying to find his way there! Then I'm ging to Wales, which I never saw before. Will spend there four or five days, depending on when the Gay Pride in Manchester actually starts. Will visit that pride (which might be mine last this year), and meet up with Beverlay, Sabine and Jasna!