The past week I've attended the ILGA-Europe annual conference in Vilnius. It was a good conference, with interesting speakers and a lot of useful new contacts. Smoke bombs in a bar next to the conference venue late at night were less nice. But, unfortunately for the perpetrators, less impressive. A bit of smoke does not spoil the evening of group of activists that knows what its working for. The protest outside of the conference venue was also not very impressive compared to the discussions that were going on at the same time inside of the venue.
After Vilnius I traveled to Kyrgyzstan. I visited our (COC's)partner organisation Labrys - which is doing an incredible deal of work in Bishkek. With a taxi we moved on to Talas, a city with 40.000 inhabitants, no street ligths available - and poor sanitary conditions. Work is only seasonal - leaving many people in the winter to alcohol only. Charactarized by a very strong family tradition the youngest child of each family is expected to take care of the parents. A society in which it is terribly difficult for LGBT people to live.
It took as a flat tire to reach Talas - getting to Almaty afterwards resulted in a broken engine, leaving us at the highway. Fortunately two Kazakhs were friendly enough to drop us of at our hotel - reaching comfort which suddenly made me feel spoiled.
So here I sit - in the lobby of the Kazakhstan hotel, updating my blog. Another day before going home. Tonight it's time to explore some of the local scene, which -yes- does exist.
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