Why is Croatia called Hrvatska?

Gonna give you all a little recap of my week spent in Zagreb, Croatia. We got here on Sunday afternoon and checked into the wonderful Youth Hostel Ravnice, which is right next to a chocolate factory so air is quite fragrant (ie licorice, hot chocolate and cat food). Traditional Croatian food is meat, potatoes and weird breaded cheese things. Pretty meh. One of our lecturers didn't show up so we had an impromptu lesson in Croatian. I don't remember many words, just the essentials. For example: pivo = beer, moliem = please, voda = water, dobro dan = good day, hvalla = thank you. And the most absurd word, trg = square. A lil bit about Zagreb architecture: Croatia has been part of three different empires (Ottoman, Roman and Austro-Hungarian) and in the third one the Queen decided that the signature of her domain would be this garish yellow color so they painted all the buildings at the time yellow. They are still nasty yellow to this day. (I stole Katie's photo)



We had the same lecture three times in 2 days. Not really but it was all about the history of the feminist movement in the former Yugoslavia and the use of rape as a tool of war and ethnic cleansing in the break up of Yugoslavia. Yeah, heavy stuff. In the week before coming to Croatia we went to The Hague to watch one of the Serbian Party leaders on trial for crimes against humanity that happened almost 20 years ago. Anyways, these lectures took place in warm rooms after lunch and well...we had a hard time staying awake. I did not sleep of course and watched everyone else nodding off. Turns out the key to staying awake during immensely dull lectures is to think about sex. But then this is awkward because when you suddenly tune in again you realize that you are slightly turned on while someone is talking about sexual violence. Niet so goed...

Two examples of lecture faces brought to you by Andi and Katie, taken by Don


Not gonna lie, I was really underwhelmed and skeptical about the relevance of this trip for the first couple days but that changed on Wednesday. We did a reading of "Necessary Targets" by Eve Ensler which she wrote after several visits to Bosnia in the 1990s. I played the role of Seada, a young woman who is delusional after she lost her baby and was sexually assaulted during the war. Reading the play was a very moving experience and really made the purpose of this trip resonate with me in a meaningful way. In our discussion after the play I realized that in post-conflict areas, where the conflict is still in living memory, outsiders always reduce the area and its people to that conflict. This was best exemplified when one of the Bosnian women in the play called out the American for being a "story vulture." We have to remember that life continues after the conflict and that life existed beforehand as well. That afternoon we heard from a Member in the Croatian Parliament, namely the youngest woman ever elected at age 20. She was second to last on a list of people in her party (the reason why she made it to the list was to fill two quotas at once-age and sex) and they won the majority of the votes so she made it into Parliament! She has been reelected twice and was third on the list in the last election. Her lecture ended with this story: Bumblebees should not be able to fly according to physics, but no one ever told the bumblebee that and it flies everywhere. The metaphor being that women are capable of doing anything, but our culture says otherwise so we must all fight against those nay sayers!

The Croatian MP! Once again stolen from Don.



So whilst in Croatia I ate the following cuisines: Italian, Chinese and.....Mexican!? I never expected to find Mexican food this far from Mexico (it barely exists in Amsterdam either!) but I was ecstatic. The decor was cheesy to the max, with posters of bell peppers, Corona and guys in sombreros everywhere. The appetizer: spicy doritos with ketchup and a weird sour cream wannabe. I split the biggest item on the menu with Adriana and it came with: a burrito, an enchilada, a quesadilla, a flauta and something else. Not quite the Mexican food I'm used to, but it still brought a smile to my face and reminded me of home.

NOM NOM NOM....wait wtf ketchup on my burrito?!


We had lots of free time between lectures so Ilana, Devra, Lauren and I wandered around Zagreb a lil bit and took some wonderfully ambivalent tourist photos by the Cathedral and the center. Here they are! (Devra = septum piercing, Ilana = buzzed hair, Lauren = black hair)







On Thursday we had a lecture in the morning about Queer Zagreb, a group that organizes a queer cultural festival each year. Some stuff they have done is really cool (painting rainbow colors in the area between the crosswalk lines) and some stuff I did not really agree with or understand (infecting a machine with a mock AIDS virus and then producing clothes that have AIDS to signify how fashion is killing gays?! Ummm...) This festival is really heavily funded, which surprised me, because it gets money from the government for promoting culture. Nice loophole! That afternoon we heard two sides of the debate over sexuality education--the side we all agree with and then the religious/conservative side. Now it would have been really easy to hate on the religious guy and rip him apart, but how productive is that? He is no more likely to change his views than I am to change mine. So instead of rambling about how awful it was I'll leave you with this choice quotation: "the anus is fragile not like the multilayered, cylindrical, vagina." Whaaaat!? Ok so his English wasn't the best and half of his Powerpoint was in Croatian.

He was way too charming. Just look at him.


On Friday we had our last lecture which was about the group Zagreb Pride. They differ from Queer Zagreb because they aren't as funded and do more things throughout the year. We saw a clip of the first Gay and Lesbian Pride that happened in Belgrade, Serbia in 2000 (plus or minus a couple years) that never even got started because a riot broke out and people got beat up just for looking different (like this tall guy with red hair was in the wrong place at the wrong time). This was like the Balkan version of Stonewall in America because it helped launch the Gay and Lesbian movement. I don't think there has been another attempt at a pride parade in Belgrade, but they have had one every year for 8 years or so in Zagreb with heavy security. Unfortunately, after the parade is over, the police leave and some participants in the parade get followed home and assaulted. So it's still not the most friendly environment for alternative sexualities but it has gotten better with increased publicity. After the lecture I went to a football game where we participated in a demonstration against homophobia in football. The football hooligans were crazy, waving flags, jumping and singing/shouting at the top of their lungs. When we unleashed our rainbow flag and banner, the opposing team unveiled a banner that read "Go cure yourselves" in Croatian. Sigh. But there were no riots at least. The whole thing got caught on film and ended up on youtube. I look like an idiot in the video for 3 seconds because I didn't know what to be doing so enjoy!

http://danas.net.hr/hrvatska/page/2010/02/26/0708006.html?pos=n1

For fun times we relied on our guide Cvijeta to show us the queer scene in Zagreb. One night she took us to a bar where it was lesbian night. There were many attractive people there, but no one was dancing!! I don't know if this is just lesbians or Croatians or both but they were playing some great music and we were the only ones gettin down. We also saw a Serbian grrrrl punk band called Vibrator in Reverse in a little rainbow room at an old squatted factory. That was fun until the room got so filled with smoke from everyone chain smoking that we had to leave. We had Saturday off and luckily it was the most beautiful day we had seen since being there. I didn't need to wear a sweatshirt! It was in the 60's and felt like Santa Cruz!! Ari, Dan, Ilana, Devra, Lauren got sandwiches at our favorite place called Pingvin, ate them leisurely in the park and basked in the sunlight. Needless to say, it was marvelously relaxing. At this point I had finally come to appreciate and enjoy Zagreb and we had to leave the next day. Boo.

Gettin Feisty on Mijn Fiets

Dutch Prep for this post: fiets = bike. fietsen = biking. I will be using these terms cuz they sound better!

So my new obsession is fietsen. At first, I was terrified to ride my fiets because of all the traffic. Amsterdam is the #1 city for fietsen in the world and the fiets really do rule the road here (except for the tram). Even though it is super fiets friendly, you still have so much to watch out for: other fiets trying to pass you b/c you are that slow tourist, fiets jumping out of nowhere to cross the street, cars motorbikes trucks and other motorized terrors, pedestrians (especially the intoxicated ones), and the big bad monster TRAM which runs on tracks that are fiets tire size and love to trap riders.

I've had my fair share of almost getting run over, honked and yelled at by all of those. But my scariest experience by far was when I crossed the street in front of the tram and narrowly missed getting hit by a couple feet. You see...I bike slow, don't have a firm grasp of the traffic rules yet and trams can't stop with ease. Scarrrryyy!!!! I've been learning though and each journey I gain a lil more confidence. Being a successful fiets rider takes a lot of skills. You have to know your psychology and physics to figure out how fast, who's going where and when to chance that yellow light. You also need a super awareness of your surroundings so that you don't ride over a deep pothole and wreck your crotch or take a wrong turn and end up on a street with ladies in a window (which I did once).

It is such a rewarding experience though, once you've sorta kinda got the hang of it. A couple nights ago my ride home felt amazing, the only way I can think to explain it is: a warm blueberry muffin smothered in butter. Here are some of my fietsen milestones: riding all the way to school without stopping to walk my fiets cuz I'm tired, wearing my backpack instead of strapping it to the back, passing someone else, fietsen at night, in the snow, knowing my way without a map, conquering the roundabout, arriving early, fietsen less than sober (don't worry marm, it was at night and there was zero traffic), fietsen on my own with no one to follow, scratching my nose, finding a parking space.

I don't have a name for mijn fiets yet, which is strange because I usually always name things. Any suggestions? I'll be postin some fietsen fotos soon for jullie (=you all).

Crossing the street is like playing Frogger Live

First update from Das Nederland! I didn't have regular internet access for the first week because we were staying in hostels and/or were kept busy to keep from being on facebook all day. Now I am living with Dia, my Buddhist host mom who is currently chanting in the living room, so I will have internet fo free all the time! I guess I will start at the beginning....

Chels and I woke up at 5am to get to LAX by 7:30 since my flight was leaving at 10. There was hardly any traffic so we got there really fast, but it took me forever to get to the gate because United didn't want to let me on the plane. Why? It looked like I was violating the Schengen Agreement so I showed them my letter from SIT, they made a copy in case The Netherlands decided "to send me back" and then let me check in. My bag was 51lbs. Fail. My flight to Chicago was pretty short, and I spent most of it doing my pre-departure reading. At O'Hare I met up with Ari and Katie at the gate and we talked about our concerns/excitement etc. On the plane a nice Dutch girl, whom I later learned was actually from Belgium, sat next to me and we talked about my program and made chitchat. I finished my pre-departure homework around 5am Amsterdam time and tried to sleep but there was some turbulence that kept waking me up. About an hour before landing we flew over England and I got soooo excited and it actually hit me that I was going to in Europe. The real thing, not just the map version. We had to circle around the airport because there was snow on the runway. AHH!! Real live snow. Everywhere. Katie, Ari and I made it through customs, had our passports stamped, retrieved our huge bags and went to the meeting spot, a red and white checkered statue thingy, to wait until 2. Devra was already there and we all instantly recognized one another from facebook and just general queerness that would indicate participation on this program.

Eventually everyone was at the spot except for Melissa, whose plane was delayed, and we were all very anxious to get out of the airport because we had been there for hours. Our academic director, Kevin showed up and we followed him like duckings outside and got onto a red charter bus from the 1960's called the Artiemobiel. We drove through the green and snowy countryside to Egmond, a touristy beach town that was deserted since it was February. The 9 hour time difference started to hit me on the bus but I tried to stay awake. I don't really remember much from the first day since I was kinda delirious from the jet lag, but I know that I went to bed around 7pm. So it turns out that there is not a lot to do in Egmond except hang out in hallway hammocks and ride teeter totters so thats all we did. We went on a bike ride through the dunes and to the North Sea, which was amazing since it was a gorgeous sunny day. Kevin said he would give a euro and ISP immunity to anyone who would skinny dip and of course Devra took him up on it. I liked being able to witness one of Devra's crazy stories that they will tell in the future. After the beach we rode into town and browsed around the tourist shops that were trying to get rid of all their winter stuff before the Germans come. We also had our first Dutch lesson with Eduard and learned "Ben jij lesbisch? No, ik ben homo." Which means "Are you a lesbian? No, I'm a gay man." Dutch is just as funny as I thought it would be, especially the sound of ui which sounds like auuuwww.

We left Egmond on the Artiemobiel again and took the tourist route back to the city stopping at a windmill, a cheese and shoe factory and an old fishing village. They are restoring the windmills for historical purposes since all the water pumping is done automatically now and we got to climb to the top of this windmill from the 1600's. I ate way too much cheese and had some crazy severe gas later, oops. And wooden shoes are more comfortable than you would think! When we got to the city, the bus pulled onto the sidewalk on a bridge over Vondelpark and dumped us and our luggage and we had to drag everything through the mud to the hostel. This hostel was way more hip looking whereas the one in Egmond was like a semi-classy beach resort thing. We went to the SIT office that night for a talk about safe sex and afterwards went to an Irish pub near the hostel and I got my first rosé beer, which was sooo tastey because it was sweet and did not taste like beer, or bier. We ended up not paying our bill because our waitress disappeared and we didn't know that you had to ask instead of them bringing it to you, Whoopsy! I don't think we can show our faces in that pub again, oh well. The next day we had a talk about homesickness and found out who our host people were going to be. I got placed with Dia, whom Chelsea had told me about and said we would be a good match and apparently so did SIT. Our second night out we tried to go to a gay club, but it didn't open till midnight so we ended up in a bar called Woody's (which was surprisingly not queer but it turned into a guerrilla queer bar, ha) where they played salsa and traditional Dutch music. The next day we went on a scavenger hunt throughout the city to find various different things and to figure where we would be having Dutch class. We didn't really get lost, but got to know Prinsengracht (the outermost canal ring) really well. This city is incredibly small because I only know a handful of people in it and we ran into each other a lot even though we all had different places to go.

Last night there was a host family reception at SIT and everyone met their host people. I gave Dia and hug and we chatted for a bit about the Motley. Dia and I left right away and I took the tram home and then we went grocery shopping for dinner and had stir fry with peanut sauce. It was super yummy. Dia is vegetarian so I will be having some great veggie meals this semester! I met her two cats, Mickey who is SO FLUFFY and the other one is skinny and I can't pronounce its name. Mickey snores and likes to sleep in the middle of my bed. I'm supposed to explore my neighborhood today but instead have spent the morning doing this crazy post. It's super cold and foggy outside. Booo.

Actual classes start this week and at the end of the month I am off to Croatia! Pictures coming eventually...