Bureaucracy

I missed a big part of my sleep last night because the European Commission told us to redo the budget for the famous A3029 application in their format. Now I knew that they are strict, but thought that my budget was better than their format. Of course that is stubborn, but I thought it was a bit ridiculous to make such a complicated budget in a improvised word format, and made it in a clearer excel sheet. Well, and so I did. Now I am finished and prepared the other documents that we had to send them (originals, they want originals). I think that the whole process of writing this application has cost three of for weeks together now... We better get the money!

Anyhow, now I woke up with pain in my shoulders, which came through the fact I went to the sport school. The pain is welcome because it assures me that I have trained :-) Being in the sport school was a refreshing experience. I suddenly remembered how much I like cardio, but how much I hate fitness... Most of it I can do, but I can't do the thingies for the belly muscles. It is true: I can belly dance but I can not train my belly. Guess I am going to do this at home the coming weeks, so that I can enter and leave the gym without any shame...

Back to work

After the holidays work has started again. Last
I have been catching up with a lot of things, and we started the year with a first board meeting together with the new board. I am very happy: we decided a lot of things, many procudures were handed over, tasks were divided and responsibilities were taken. It seems like it is going to be a another very interesting year for IGLYO....

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From London to Bucharest

I celebrated Christmas in London, which was fabulous! London was not what I expected it to be during Christmas: it was desserted! Only on second Xmas day, when the sales began, everybody was suddenly rushing into Oxford street. We had great fun with decent amounts of alcohol, huge amounts of food and lots of sleep in between all the things we did. It was nice spending Christmas time once not as usual with family, but with other beloved ones. On my way from London to Bucharest I bought myself a digital camera, which will enable me to keep to keep a better visual history of my life.

Romania was beautiful! And I can't believe that this holiday already ended. It was great meeting lots of nice people, all being so friendly and welcoming. We travelled quite a lot. After we started in Bucharest (in which the house of People was absolutely the most amazing thing I was), we went to Brasov, a lovely winter resort. Unfortunately it was raining a lot and the wind was blowing so hard that tiles fell of the roof next to our room. We moved on with a train (Romania has a very well organised and cheap public transport system) to Sibiu cultural capital of Europe 2007: a very promising city! A nice ancient city centre where we also celebrated new years evening.

Then we went to the Romantic city Sighisoara (see photo on the right). This is where Dracula has been born! It was not him who made this place special though, it was the well preserved medieval surroundings! Eventhough the city is not registered as protected by UNESCO (a true shame!), the people take very well care of it. Except from the cars it was like walking around in the middle ages, which is wonderful.

Many impressions later I am sitting again behind my table in my Amsterdam flat. It is good being home, I am ready for the new year and just subscribed myself to the fitness so that I'll make sure it will be a healthy one. Above all the start of this year is already a very happy one!

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.