breaking the ice

Me and Strasbourg. A strange relationship. Not that it is my favorite town in the world. But I have to honestly admit, coming back here after a longer while felt like coming to a familiar place. Felt like coming home to friends. Partly this is because there was still sun when I landed, that makes it a lot more pleasant then waiting for the bus in the cold and dark.
I remember, one time I was picked up by car from the airport, that was definitely my best arrival.
Still I live in a prison cell here with no proper window, still the computer is super slow and in addition they now forbid smoking in the building. Not only in the building, also on the roof terrace, which I find particularly unfair! But, I am not here for smoking, but for further developing and enhancing the all different – all equal campaign. Lets see how that goes.

On Friday I had a reunion, or as we call it veterans meeting of my old school students organisation. It was nice to see some familiar faces again and talk to those people. Some faces whom I would have preferred not to see, but what shells.
I spent very intensive years from 1994 to 1998 in the organisation, I got to know Austria at the times, by staying in different youth hostels for seminars, I learned all my basic skills in management, organisational matters, rhetorics, politics, and I became a trainer. I still like to look at the pictures of those days and tell stories about the good old times. So it was a really pleasant time journey.
Many of the people I worked with in the last 12 years are much more the colleges to me, they are very important friends. Friends who tell you the truth, friends that are harsh with me at times but would support everything I really want, friends who care for me and who I care for.
The evening ended for me with shouting old austro pop songs, something no one not being Austrian will ever manage to undestand (culturally and linguistically) apart from maybe Schorsch, who tried hard for ages to get to that stage.
It was a really nice evening, though some people living in exile currently, mainly for educational purposes, were missing!

I’ve been sneezing around for a while now. Taking anti-histamines against the cruelty of spring makes me tired. Not taking anything makes me feel really unattractive – with my running nose, swollen eyes and so on. Not going outside to enjoy the sun that I have been waiting for, for the last 6 months at least makes me cranky. Yes, I am dependent on the weather, to a greater extent than I would like to be. And yes, spring weather makes me moody.

I spent Easter once again in Berlin at Queer Easter. It was my 3rd queer Easter. The first one that came close to a gender balance and I am happy about that.
Queer Easter is an event jointly organised by the International Falcon Movement (IFM-SEI), by the Young European Socialists (ECOSY) and the International Union of Socialist Youth (IUSY).
This year’s seminar was dedicated to awareness raising.
It is a really cool seminar with some really special things. The majority of the participants are queer, lesbian, bi-sexual, gay or transgender (LGBT). If you go to the seminar and are straight you are in a minority. Other then in our everyday life, where everyone assumes that one is heterosexual during queer Easter everyone assumes one is LGBT and the straight people have to come out to the group as straight. This is usually a very impressive eye opener for straight people.
I kind of like this turned around system. I like the way people feel liberated to show their true selves and the way people are open and feel save. For some participants this is the only time a year where they are completely out and proud of who they are.
Such a safe heaven event is very intense of coarse. So many people start questioning and reflecting about many things during this one week of save space. This is really cool and you can see how motivated people leave Berlin afterwards.
At the same time it is dangerous. Many people get really depressed that the world is not exactly like it seems during Easter. I just hope that everyone can turn this experience into something positive and constructive. It is a highly interactive and committed atmosphere and all participants really know why they are fighting against discrimination and what it means to be disciminated against every day.
For me, this seminar has been the most intense experience in a long time, i took a lot of food for thoughts home with me.

Originally, in my school students’ organisation I did a lot of training. I loved it, I like the way you get immediate feedback, I like the learning experience that I make during training and the one of the participants, I like the atmosphere.
Lately I have not done much training, I give lectures or speeches, and I talk at panel discussions or chair meetings. So I am missing training.
So I did not progress my skills in training. I did not learn by doing, I did not attend trainings where I would have watched and observed others, I did not training for trainers. My whole environment did progress though. People from my school student and student organisations have done further training for trainers’ courses or trained a lot and through structured debate and so on learned a lot.
When I was at the pool of trainers meeting of the youth forum last week in Preddvor this became apparent. And I also realised how much I miss training.
Last week at queer Easter I was supposed to give training and I realised how insecure I became. Usually when you do a plan for the training and you have a set of methods in case you need to adapt something to the groups needs. Now I have the feeling the methods are not part of my active knowledge anymore and this made me nervous.
Guess I should do something against it and learn by doing again.
I am happy that i could take part at the pool of trainers meeting which made me realise how much i miss training.

Already in the European Employment Strategy, adopted in 1997, die EU member states were meant to ensure that every young person is offered a start in the labour market before 6 months of unemployment.
9 years have passed since and there are still too many unemployed young people in Europe.
At the spring council last week the heads of states and government decided to reemphasise this goal. This time the council conclusion added that by 2010 every young person should be offered a job or further training within no more then 4 months.
Let’s see if this time, with the youth pact and the demonstrations in France, something more then in the last 9 years is going to happen, at least this urgency for action was emphasised a lot during the informal council of ministers for youth in Bad Ischl.

As already discussed in a previous post on Sunday, September 18, 2005, I am really interested in other people’s childhood myths. A myth is an explanation of the world that helps us grow. Childhood myths help us explain the world, and help us adapt to it. Sometimes we came up with them on our own, or we did hear them from our parents or even other kids. Here are some I collected.

“My boyfriend’s mother use to tell him that if he didn't take off his socks at bed time that his feet would shrivel up!! He still won't wear his socks to bed even if his toes are frozen!”

“If you swallow your bubble gum, your body can’t digest it and it sticks to your ribs and the proof was that it showed up in your x-rays. I don’t think I felt comfortable swallowing gum until I was in my 20’s.”

“I recently found out that there is no such thing as a dye in pools that makes the water turn bright red if you pee in it. Without hyperbolizing, I can honestly say that to my knowledge, this is the one thing in my life that I've believed the longest that has turned out to be a complete lie.”

“If you swallowed a seed, a plant would grow inside you.”

“All TV shows were live. (I was particularly perplexed when a season of re-runs of the Brady Bunch would end and start from the beginning again — I wondered how the kids got young again.)”

I would be really happy if you share some of your childhood myths with me.