Soldiers with fears

It felt like I left home this morning, but in fact I've been travelling a week now.

My journey started in Podgorica, where we organised a first meeting with a new group of gays - unfortunately no lesbians yet. Everybody was very excited and eager to start organising themselves. After that I gave a lecture for the local Human Rights school. People told that we (a colleague from Serbia joined me) were the first gays that they ever saw in real life. It was an interesting experience, people were very curious and eager to learn. A representative of a women NGO's expressed that the masculine and patriarchal society will need a lot of time to overcome homophobia. She spoke about the Montenegrin soldiers. We can only hope that Montenegrin soldiers overcome their phobia and behave like real soldiers whom don't deal with fears for other people.

Friday morning I had a meeting with representatives of the Ministry responsible for police, together with a representative from an international organisation responsible for security. They noted that there are no known cases of homophobia. That's not strange, becuase Montenegro doesn't opress minorities that much, according them. Also Montenegro would have very few rape cases, men would pay so much respect to women that they would not consider raping them!!

Afterwards I spent a nice weekend at the coast of Montengro. Those moments I learn so much on how it really is to live your life in secrecy, how a society not accepting you can completely shape your life towards heteronormative standards. It really hurts to see how it affects people.

Monday morning I got a lift to Tirana. My companion only spoke Serbian, Albanian and Arabic, so we had an interesting three hours. The roads between the South of Montenegro and Tirana are so beautiful. Small roads taking you through mountains, with many cows and chickens on the way. We passed Skodahr, where you'll find small open markets all along the roads, and many people on bicycles, which made me feel being at home of course. In Tirana the traffic was one big mess, at a certain point we were not driving on the road anymore but on the left side off the road, trying to pass the traffic jam. In the middle of the traffic smoke a pig was slaughtered. Later that afternoon I guy severely got beaten up by a group of people in front of my eyes, I was unable to do anything which frustrated me.

Now I arrived in Pristina. Am here for only one day. It is interesting to see groups of activists growing in all countries. At the same time I so much understand the difficult situations in which they are working. Donors trying to push them to deliver results, but at the same time the activists undertaking the work (often voluntarily) have to deal with their personal issues too. The beginning of this year a young gay guy was beaten up by straight people here in Kosovo. Due to his faced opression he became addicted to drugs (likewise many other young people in Albania and Kosovo unfortunately do). A few weeks ago he died of an overdose. Such issues affect young activists, as they stand powerless.

100

Blog number hundred was supposed to be a festive one, but I am afraid you will have to cope with my grumpy mood. I am at Belgrade airport, waiting for my connecting flight to Podgorica. The schedule of JAT doesn’t correspond with the schedule of my travel agency, and as a result I have to wait over four hours for a connection. The signs indicating that Belgrade Airport now has WLAN do not mean that you can actually access the internet. All this wouldn’t have been that bad if my morning would have started good. But this was not the case.

First I fulfilled my civil obligations by voting for our new parliament.

Then I took the tram to the other side of Amsterdam to collect money at the bank for the coming IGLYO conference. Which due many bureaucratic rules about which we were not informed was not possible!!! Crisis in Amsterdam this morning.

Sergeant Leonard Matlovich

Bad, bad computer!!

Wednesday we have elections in Netherlands. To be honest: it's such a circus that I'm barely following it. All discussions seem so far from reality to me. Today I found a leaflet from the creep above in my postbox. One of his election statements is that he will forbid women to wear headscarfs if they are civil cervants of teachers. Also he wouldn't allow new mosques and regulate old mosques. People like him and it makes me said. Actually I wish that all men whom look like this creature were forced to wear headscarfs so that we don't have to look at them.

Anyhow, in one of the most busy weeks of the year my laptop treathens me to give up... Grrrr. I know I should talk bad words about it here as it might even stop working promtly, so let's change subject.

This weekend I spend a very peaceful weekend in Brussels. I really like the city and we've been doing cultural things such as visiting a party full of bald, middle-aged, often-under-influence-of-chemicals men. Very interesting. I also saw a African soul-concert and yesterday I went to the movies. For me the ultimate preparation for the upcoming weeks of travelling.

50 year

Next year the EU celebrates its 50th anniversary. This will happen by celebrations in many different countries. The Commission has taken the initiative to design a logo, which will be different in each member states. Now, even before the party started, Member States are complaining that they have not been consulted about the logo. The French are complaining that all these different logo's fail to symbolize EU's unity. I wonder whether they prefer to have only the logo below, giving up the French one... now that would be real unity .

Amsterdam at night

It's a few weeks later. Autumn is filled with activitities, there are only a few days that I spent at home in October and November. I've been seeing many good old friends and I've been meeting great new ones lately. Have finished an project application of almost two thumbs thick for a project in Turkey early this week. This weekend was the first and the last in this period to rest a little bit.

So I visited Kees and Marianne in Groningen, together with Jeroen. Groningen is in the very north of the Netherlands, and it smells like sugar beets in the streets. Kees and Marianne are renovating the house that they bought, a project for which I have respect but would never even consider doing myself. Spending a year in dust and in between building materials is something I wouldn't be able to cope with! But fair enough: the first results of their work are great!

Yesterday I went to the museum night in Amsterdam: all museums, but also the zoo, was open at night. We saw sleeping animals and animals that barely sleep at all, which was actually quite exciting! The guide told us for instance that every year a wild male stork returns to his partner, whom lives in the zoo, to fertilize her.

This week I'm up to the Baltic states, for the general assembly of the youth forum.