Queer Queer Queer Water ridge...

...gender isn't real. queerily queerily queerily queerily, live life how you feel.
Sweet Sweet Copenhagen.
You know those kids who go to camp and are obsessed with camp and only ever want to hang out with their camp friends?
Well color me a camper.
Or for those of you who saw Camp Queer Water Ridge, it was oh so exactly like that.
After a week of eating sleeping drinking workshoping dancing partying and swimming with the same set of lovely delightful queers every day I feel like a lifetime has passed and I can't wait until next year to go back.
Two tasty vegan meals a day, swimming in the harbor and a million djs every night dancing us til sunrise.
Sleeping in a room with 50 other people with varying definitions of quiet and contradictory sleep patterns was challenging, but thanks to my sleep pad and long honed sleep skills I did pretty well. Diva was such a hit that I had to teach it a second time and in addition to various spontaneous breaks into dancing (shout out to Carly) we got to be the final act of the strange and sexy cabaret.
I want to somehow go into all the workshops and give amazingly detailed descriptions of everyone I met, but I can't manage to get it through the sieve of my mind.
I guess I'll do as I often do and give you a few moments-
One of the most powerful discussions never made it onto the giant sheets of butcher paper where people wrote workshops as they saw fit, but was instead a spontaneous moment to talk about hate speech around some posters for "straight hate day" in Sweden. I don't like hate. I am a rainbows and unicorns and flowers and love people into submission kind of kid, but I couldn't help but be struck when one person said (loosely) "I have been a shield for so many of my friends, we get spit at, called names, there is violence. It isn't all happy and fun and dancing, We are angry and that is legitimate. We are dying out there." And they're right. A time to dance, a time to fight.
Discussions of hierarchy or oppression aside (is it the same to have sexist speech as anti hetero speech?) they had a point, We need space for our aggression. The posters came down because they made a lot of people unhappy, but the discussion of the validity of the gathering hung in the air and we had some really good discussion around it in the end.

Queer beograd. finally. After going all the way to Serbia in hopes of finding these folks I finally found them at the QueerFest. It was really great to hear them speak and to get a lot of perspective about nuance in organizing. They have to work outside of the Western Prescriptive Model Of A Gay/Queer Movement, that means working with people who see things differently, and also taking time and not always having the same goals. They don't have enough people to have the luxury of a fractured movement, and they sometimes have to prioritize safe space over Prides. One thing I found especially striking was when they decided to use the word queer and not translate it in their organizing because they realized that it had power as unrecognizable. Because haters in Serbia knew gay or homo, but not queer it gave them a few years of organizing power without as much fear about being found.
The maker of Travel Queeries came to show her documentary on... essentially the trip we are on right now. It was great to meet her and see her perform. If you ever get the chance, you should see the film. http://www.travelqueeries.com/
Other tid bits include the dress up room which had people changing and rearranging their outfits and representation a million times a day. And at some point at one of the 5 amazing all night parties one of the DJs announced that there were some queer bashers that needed kicking out and all who wanted to help should report to the yard. The dance floor cleared so fast you would think they had just put on Hanna Montana. It was amazing to see this huge wave of people defend their space like that.
Thats all I can really Say, so here are some photos for further illustration:

A Day-

The Legendary Peter Pandrew-

My new baby Divas-



What is camp without lost boys jumping off a dock?

The Gender flagging de-coder board-

Looks for days----










The "sleeping" room...

The Demo

The sun sets on my time in Kobenhavn-

Neverland.

So after a train that went on a fairy and a bus ride to what looked like the middle of no where I had arived, Queer Fest København (which, to my surprise is how you spell Copenhagen). Luckily there was BIG chalk leading the way or I never would have found the charming little circus arts school where it is housed.
I have been to A LOT of queer festivals this year. This one is the best. Everyone is sweet and lovely and it is DIY at its best with a highly organized crew kindly guiding people into making it all their own.
In the DIY spirit I´ve been rocking some workshops my first being an introduction to Viewpoints.... and well, we´ll get to the others.
When I first arrived I was doing a bit of the scared, sit in a corner eat your soup... when something magical happened. Peter Pan biked by my window, looked in, and winked. I stopped in the middle of my writing and recalled that at some point on this project I had wanted to talk about the lost boys are queer-genderqueer characters. Needless to say Peter and I became fast friends and 15 minutes after meeting had planned our life together in Berlin and wandered off to Christiania (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freetown_Christiania) to find swings.
Other highlitghts aside from Peter and Wendy (my amazing new leather femme friend Allie) include-
An amazing dress up room
Hygge (pronounced huga) which is the active verb for being cozy, I have been learning 5 words of danish a day.
a gender flagging system to bring pronjouns out into the discussion for everyone. So there is a big board with different fabrics on it that correspond to different genders (trannyboy, femme, boi, trannyfag, transwoman etc.) and their pronouns. If someone is flagging you can go to the board and figure out their pronoun, if not you have to use neutrals like they or per (short for person).

Dive´. that is to say that my second workshop was teaching 40 new Dive´members the Diva choreographed dance which ended with us running to jump in the harbor and doing the dance in various states of undress on the dock.

Then I led a femme conversation workshop about femme gender queer identities which was amazing, there are a lot of bad ass femmes in these parts.

It has been pretty weird having heavy theoretical discussions with people from ALL OVER in English, especially when definitions come up. Its pretty interesting.
anyway, I have to head back to play more and dance more and joy more.
photos later, sorry about spelling, twas a rush.
Love,
V

Ladiy fest

Nia has done a terrible job of updating while I was in Neverland...
But lets just say, Polish drag kings, contact improv dance workshops with our friends from Ljubljana, sweet nights at Silver future, and amazing dance parties.
We found a zine called SOAP which led us towards a lot of amazing performers in Berlin that we happened upon, some of whom we saw perform and hopefully we´ll be hanging out and interviewing them when we get back to Berlin.
muchy love,
V

Poor but Sexy

Berlin-
Last night I dangled my feet over the edge of the Silver Future. A place I had only dreamed of. Where the menu apologizes for the capitolism of their business and pledges to kick out anyone who hinders the comfort of the queers between its bright pink walls. A place dripping with femmenine charm with its gender queer pin up calender, chandeliers, lace and shiney fabrics... not to mention the glitter on the tables. A sign above the bar reads `Congratulations you have just left the heteronormative sector´and to the right there is a print of Audre Hepburn to which someone has added a fuzzy mustache. Every night that I leave my house I go out searching for this place and never find it. Everyone is quirky and transitory but happy and snacks dangle on a pulley from the ceiling. The beer is cheap and the drinks are printed on unicorn paper in a children's book. A preface defines the word ´Zweigeschlechtlichkeit´(gender binary in German). The sign at the entrance of this collectively owned bar from my dreams, right here in Berlin reads- Welcome Kings and Queens and Queer Criminals.
Now if only they had dancing...

Our Belgrade, Your Belgrade, Because I love Belgrade

So, I am a bit sleepy from a train ride that... well, lets just say was epic, so if this makes little sense, my apologies.

So, while we were in Serbia there was the University Olympic Games as well as the Exit music festival. This begged everyone who met us to ask- oh, are you here for the games? no. So you are here for exit? no. Then why the hell are you in Serbia? We have no idea.

Except to say that that´s how we do. We went, we saw, we enjoyed. We had drinks at the fortress with some locals, went to an 80s (or really just music no one in the states listens to anymore) dance party at the Faculty of Machinery (we have no idea what that is either), wandered, went to a foam party, stayed on a hostel on a boat on the Danube, ate a lovely $20 four course meal with wine and coffee as the sun set on the river all around us, and well... here, just look at the photos.

They are in reverse order, take it as a mind game to keep you sharp.

Nia and the most lovely Sally who joined us and a whole other cast of characters on the train from Belgrade to Vienna. Others include a woman with a big bag of flowers, a hungarian man with a story for a later date and a scottish boy with severe short term memory loss.

This would be Sally and Nia celebrating their matching head lamps



We thought we should get some snacks for the 14 hour train ride. Sally called it the super market. (Highlights of the snack pack included ajvar, a too delicious for words pepper eggplant spread, three kinds of kinder chocolate aka the kinder trifecta, strawberry juice, two liters of beer, raspberries, blackberries, figs, strawberry preserves, eurocream, bake rolls aka bagel chips, cheese, bread, peanut butter, vanilla cream filled croissants, mini waffles, and peanut puff snacks. yeah, we don´t fuck around with the snacks.)

On the great snack run we found this candy stand where we purchased caramels that I forgot to mention. Oh Balkans, we will miss you.

I sat on a huge watermellon at the Fortress. Mmmm, Femmenine.

The nude hero of Belgrade is the symbol of the city.

On travel day we like to match, it makes us feel closer when spending 24 hours a day together just doesn´t seem like enough.

The view of the fortress at our sunset river dinner

New dress!!!! Look, Nia isn´t wearing the same thing as in every other photo. Also, surprise surprise, she is eating.

On the river we found two cafe boats side by side. The cafe Argument and the cafe Dijalog. What a perfect depiction of appropriate conflict resolution... since cafe Argument is half way under water.

Vuk´s monument. Vuk standardized the Serbian alphabet to be phonetic so that the masses could become literate. He also wrote down all of the national stories. And has a sweet mostache.

I love street art too much...

Funny clay sculpture exibit all along the old city.

The end. Or the beginning.

in other news, part dva

First some old news that slipped our collective mind when doing the last odds and ends:
*roughly 5 days after my 21st birthday I was carded buying a beer... in Germany... where the drinking age is approximately 13.
*At some point while drinking on the square in Rijeka N and I got hungry and while I ordered my 8th Cevapcici in a row Nia opted for a vegeburger. She was suspicious (veggie burger in Croatia, really? but what the hell), and rightfully so. Vegeburger in Croatia means a burger without the burger. Bun, lettuce, tomato, ketchup, mustard and a slice of Amerikan Cheese.
*On a seperate occation Nia was eating a sandwich at a cafe and a passerby looked at her and while fake chewing said "gnam gnam gnam gnam" we're still not sure why.
*While stumbling around Ljubljana that first most fateful night we were contemplating sleeping in a park when a stoat crossed the sidewalk and just stood there for roughly 45 seconds, just staring.

In more recent history:
* Two days after pride our friend Sara approached us and with great horror exclaimed "You never told me that the glitter does not come off!"
* We got trendy Euro haircuts, modeled for you here in this fake garden.

In Other Food: Gnam Gnam Gnam Gnam
Here are some photos of Nia eating:
Also, upon my insistence Nia smoked some very slim, very femme tiny cigarettes with a butterfly on them.


Things we have discovered that will either result in us never returning to the land of Spray Cheese or us gaining 15 lbs each.
* Pizza Burek, Surely the best thing Globalization ever created, Like a huge flakey pizza pocket, or pure joy.
* Pita which means Pie, every morning here in Bosnia Rene goes out and brings home a new kind of Burek and pita. Here Burek only refers to the meat filled pies which magically all taste different, and you can get a pita with almost anything in it. Each more delicous than the last.
*Lemonade Beer: I generally like to be a hard as diamonds, I like my beer like I like my women hoppy beer feeme, but man, lemonade beer is just so tasty.
* more and more and more pastry. We eat pastry two or five times a day. I could chalk this up to some kind of national custom, but its actually just uy eating flaky dough wrapped sausages and berry filled strudel like delights all the day long.
*Sladoled means ice cream... but better. at some point Nia turned to me with both our cones in her hands and said, they are all so good, but cookies makes me cry. Refering to a batter flavor with cookies on top that is called "cookies". We also love Don Vito which is some kind of vanilla thing with jammy swirls in it.

* Kremsnita: every region in Slovenia has a traditional dessert (Mojca drew me a map of all of them) and the region bordering the one we are in is known for Kremsita. This is two thin layers of flakey pastry dough and powdered sugar filled with about two inches of cream filled cream.

* Eurocrem: Imagine nutella... on crack. It is one side of chocolatey hazelnut love and one side of milky hazelnut goodness. You eat a little from each side and it is surely the best of both worlds. We saw a huge jaw of it today which had a handle. I am considering starting to carry that instead of a purse.
Here are some photos of me with Eurocrem:
As for what exactly we've been doing...
We spend a few day in the little adorable river town of Banja Luka where we ate amazing food, sat in Cafes while the daily monsoon style rain storm poured down and hung out with Rene, which looked kind of like this:

We spent the fourth of July drinking plumk brandy and swimming at Rene's friend's house in the country. It looked a little like this:


And now we are in Serievo where we have been eating... but also seeing some sightes.
Sightes-
A cool sculpture:
A market with wares:
Nia warms her hands at the eternal flame:
We climbed to the top of the city and saw a really gorgous cemitary.

tomorrow we rise to catch a 7 hour 6 am bus ride to Belgrade, Serbia.