Gers! Magazine: the best that Rotterdam has to offer.

Okay, I admit it, I cheated. I only heard of this magazine because my son knows one of the photographers.
And it took 5 editions before I caught on. But then. WOW!!!

(Btw, I don't know who the artist is that created this comical bicyclist, but it's a great picture! Imagine me stopping dead for Gers!)

Full stop! This is a wonderful magazine!

Not only does the magazine have a proper, recognizable "Rotterdam- touch", but it is chock-a-block of amazing photographs.

Sure, I like text. I write text. Text is what makes the world go round, as far as I'm concerned. And Gers! has a lot of well-written text.

But I'm an "image-thinker", and so images are ever so important to me. And my son is an aspiring photographer, so I'm always on the look-out for good, inspiring photography. And am very often disappointed. As soon as I think: "Hm, I could do that...better?", I am disappointed.

And believe me, I did not think that once when leafing through Gers! #5.

Take, just for example, the article about transgenders. Very 'hot': think Conchita Wurst.

In a text header it says: "The Netherlands are, supposedly, free and tolerant. We are mostly indifferent though".

Here you are. This is why this is a good, no, a great, magazine. No beating about the bush. The truth. Raw, Rotterdam honesty.

It has an article about the Rotterdam hookers. Whores, yes. Rotterdam, harbour and whores go together like ships and sailors. But the sailors dock far, far out, in Europoort, and need to be transported with minivans to the sex clubs of  the harbour district. Again, the raw truth about an old port which lost its red light district to building projects and managers.

And there's much, much more. About football (Rotterdam and football are a given), about jazz (Rotterdam and jazz are a match made in heaven; this windy city is created for jazz, like that other windy city Chicago), about multiculti projects, about immigrants.

With a very definite large multiculti immigrant population Rotterdam is a hotbed of dissent and creativity at the same time.

Gers! is a typical Rotterdam slang word, with its root in Jiddisch.  My mother saw her Jewish schoolfriend dragged from her home and deported in 1942. It was a defining moment in her life.

I grew up with a love-hate relationship with Rotterdam because of her stories (not the thing you want to hear over and over when you are a naïve romantic girl in the sex, drugs and rock&roll Seventies), but also with an over-developed feel for honesty, justice and tolerance.

Gers! seems to have this same feel.

Now all we need is an English version!!!

(By the way, for € 15,00 you can become a 'fan', and they will send the newest edition to your home.)

Ugly words....Why do people feel they have the right to use them??

Yesterday, 19 March 2014, there were elections in my country, for local government. This is a manifestation of democracy. 
I hurried home after work, because I wanted to be able to vote. Voting is a right, but I believe it is my duty as well, as there have been women who have fought long and hard for other women like me to get the vote.

When I hurried back, for I had to go to choir practice immediately afterwards, I turned on the radio in the car. And what I heard on it, made my hairs stand on end. There was a politician, called Geert Wilders, sowing hate in a café in The Hague. No other word for it.

We are a multicultural society. We have been a multicultural society for centuries. We have welcomed Huguenots, Jews, protestants from England, and later we have invited workers from Italy, Turkey, Morocco, Tunisia, and now Poland, Bulgaria, Rumania and the Baltic States amongst others.

The EU makes crossing borders easy. We have chosen this, ourselves. In a democracy, the majority rules. We have chosen this.

And yes, it isn't a piece of cake, this multi-culti life.

But to actually set aside an entire race as second class citizens, scares the shit out of me. Because this has happened before. And haven't we learned from this???
My mother saw her Jewish girlfriends deported from her Rotterdam street in the years 1940-1945. This has traumatized her for life!

And now this Mr Wilders is using his right of free speech, and he makes Dutchmen in a bar cry out that they want less Moroccans in 'our' country? What about all those Moroccans born in our country - being Dutch in all but ethnic heritage? Paying taxes in our country? Working hard to raise their kids in our country?

Wilders has crossed a line, here. 
Yes, we have the right of free speech. Yes, we experience problems with our multicultural society. Yes, there are criminal Moroccans. But there are criminal ethnic Dutchmen too! And criminal....fill in the dots yourself.

I work with colleagues from Morocco. They were upset, today. And I understand them. I work with pupils from all over the globe. And they were upset, today. And I understand them.

People are people. Whether they are from outer Mongolia or the North Pole. Who cares?! As long as they behave themselves as intelligent thinking human beings, it doesn't matter if they are white, yellow, black, purple or striped with gold dots!

Mr Wilders plays an extremely dangerous game here. For if there are recriminations now, if there are reactions, if some Moroccan gets so fighting angry that he does something rash, all Wilders has to do is point the finger, and say: "see? Told you so!" And a substantial group of my countrymen will nod and cry victory.

Holy Moly, don't we learn anything from history then?
I am undone.