After I came back from two weeks of backpacking in the Baltics, two years ago,  I was asking myself why it is so easy to talk to anyone you meet when you are a traveller, and why (in most places!) this is something less accepted in your daily life.

Conversation Café promotes “talking to strangers” in the setting of an hour and a half dialogue. As an American organisation, the website also give tools “how to talk to strangers”, for people from cultures where this is less ‘aceepted’! In a very simple way it helps you from making first contact, into a small conversation, ending up “feeling at home in this world”!

It’s about opening up to the person next to you, being curious and probably being surprised by what you get. Is it also about trust? About trusting the other?

Level 1
Glance up from your book to see who else is around. Say hello to the bus driver who has driven you to work for 6 years.

Level 2
Glance up from your book, catch someone’s eye, and smile. Quickly, go back to reading. Smile at the bus driver, say good morning, and thank her as you get off.

Level 3
Comment on what someone near you is reading. Sustain a one-minute exchange. At the bus stop, say good morning to someone who has waited with you for the bus for years. Ask them how they are.

Level 4
Come to a Conversation Café. Only talk when you want to. Make up a bogus name if you need to. Promise yourself you can politely leave after half an hour if you are suffocating, angry, scared, bored, or sitting with people so much smarter or dumber than you that it’s not worth your time.

Level 5
Talk. Listen, Learn. At will. Feel at home in your skin. Feel at home in the world.
[from www.conversationcafe.org]

A couple of weeks ago I saw them for the first time: a basket of umbrellas next to the entrance of Bakery Hartog near my house, with a tag saying “leenparaplu”, meaning “lend-umbrella”.
I asked the lady at the counter, and she told me most of them come back.

Is it because people buying their bread at this bakery, with only whole weat products, can be seen as more trustworthy? Or is it the general openness of Amsterdam that enables the bakery to trust their clients? Or would it work in any place? Give trust, and you get back more than you gave…

To see JR’s work I will have to go to Paris, but to admire Shephard Fairey again, I can just go to Amsterdam Central Station!!
I visited his exhibition at ICA Boston this summer and loved it! Back home I found Boomerang cards of his work in a café! His work just for free! But to see the work IRL,  one morning walking outside CS, still half asleep, was a very good start of the day! I have to make sure to see it again, before it’s gone again!

JR is back, with the eyes of women on walls and bridges this time, but not (yet) in Amsterdam though: Women are heroes!

What is nowadays the role of civilians in democracy? In a representative democracy, to be precise?

Is it just showing up on election day, trusting that the politicians will do what they ‘promised’ and in case needed protesting to mis-use of power?

Or should civilians have a stronger voice in policy making? Should civil servants consult them while drafting new policy? Does it really make a difference?
Is there enough trust?
* From the civilians, that the civil servants and politicians will really listen to them, respect their point of view and really integrate it in the plans?
* And from the side of politics, that the civilians don’t only participate for their own good, can look further than their own street or doorstep, and want to play a role in making their neighbourhood, city, country a better place?

How can web 2.0 play a role in improving trust in civil participation?

Doina Ioanid on Romania’s silent civil society Observator Cultural – Romania

Since I became a civil servant at the municipality, I have been even more interested in the relations and communication between (local) government and the civilians. How to create a civil participation that is beneficial to both parties?
I have been involved in a building project for 2 years and in the Netherlands consultation with the neighboorhoud is important. Sometimes difficult, when people don’t trust the municipality anymore because of negative experiences in the past and won’t communicate normally.

The article below (from Eurotopics) reminded me of what a friend from Georgia told me, when he was in the Netherlands a couple of years ago: that he was surprised how big the civil society was in the Netherlands. In Georgia not many people were involved in benevol activities. A friends from Slovenia explained me earlier this year that because of a long history of communism many people from Central/Eastern European countries need time to have faith in the government again.

Writing in the weekly Observator Cultural Doina Ioanid bemoans the lack of a civil society in Romania, particularly as politicians tend to ignore the country’s real problems: “Civil society remains silent. After so many years of accepting state power the Romanians have lost their voice and attitude. Worse still, they have forgotten how to be citizens and defend their fortress. Instead they are content with the right to stare vacantly at the television. To be concrete, being a citizen requires assuming responsibility and taking a stance on what happens around you. Passiveness and a lack of intervention is the worst that can happen to a new state like ours. Yes, there are associations and foundations and NGOs, but they are few and they are weak. Then there’s the intellectuals as formers of opinion. But their presence still doesn’t allow us to distance ourselves from all that is going wrong or violating civil rights, to be able to criticise or sanction it. … Twenty years after the fall of communism the Romanians have forgotten how to take a stance. They have forgotten that rights and obligations go hand in hand. They are content to assist the politicians in their confused actions, powerless and dormant. Perhaps the time has come to wake up.” (16/09/2009)

“Find what you love.
Do what you believe is great work.
Keep looking. Don’t settle.”

A very inspiring speech of Steve Jobs (Apple Computers)!

As a European I could say that “all Asians look alike”. This ‘other group’ that I am not familiar with looks like one homogenous group. But if an Asian would say he cannot keep me apart from this other person from my country or continent, I might be surprised. “Don’t you see the differences between us: our accents, our clothes, our social backgrounds, the sports we play, the newspapers we read, our religion, our hobbies, …?”.  All these aspects put together make who I am, in a unique way. There will be probably nobody else who combines all these different identities.

So why do we so often forget that people from the other group are also made of so many different identities, and that if they are from Morocco, they are more than for example their religion. They are a combination of their social background, the sport they practice, the kind of books they like to read, the number of brothers and sisters they have…

If we meet a person from this other rather unfamiliar group, even if they live in the same country as ours, it can help to know something about his culture to grasp the differences between us in a general way. Even if we don’t always like it: we need some kind of framework, boxes, to understand the world. But we should try the framework to be hybrid, so there is space for other aspects and colours … and to be surprised!

Earlier this week I heard Halleh Ghorashi speak in a lecture “Give Space to Diversity”. She is a Iranian-Dutch woman and has a refreshing approach to integration in the Netherlands.

In an entry in May 2007 I already mentioned the concept of hybrid (connected to progress) shortly. Halleh Ghorashi focuses on this concept in the context of realising that a person is not just a blind carrier of his culture, but makes liaisons between the cultures that he or she encorporates (this reminds me of “Identités Meutrières” of the French-Libanese author Amin Maalouf).
Democracy, she says, means giving space to the minority, giving space to being different, to being a cultural hybrid. We cannot move ahead if we see the other as ‘the absolute other’: this leaves nothing in common and no way to connect. Due to Dutch history Dutch people are still used, onconsiously maybe, to put groups of people in boxes (it’s only 50 years ago that people from protestant and catholic societies would not mix).

In a training on Deep Democracy a while ago I learned about giving voice to the minority and realising that the minority holds a part of the wisdom of the whole group. In the context of Dutch integration it would mean realising that former migrants are as much part of Dutch society as the ‘autochtone Dutch’ are and that they hold a part of the wisdom of our shared society. Weneed to build the present and future together to be able to move ahead in a consructive way.

…more about this soon, I hope!…

The road they travel is important “because every step brings us closer towards encountering the other. That is why we are on the road in the first place.”
A quote from The Other – Ryszard Kapuscinski, which summarises my travelspirit. I promised months ago to write about this book, but it was only traveling myself again (finally), that I found the words.

One part about traveling is ofcourse seeing the beautiful landscapes and cities, seeing it for yourself… But to me the essence about traveling is about the people I meet. The reason to travel somewhere is almost always to meet a friend and visit his home country. But I have rarely left on a trip to meet a friend, without meeting someone, with whom I became ‘friends’ and visit this person a next time. The reason I want to travel is not just to find my next traveldestination, it is the meeting itself, the unexpectedness of the meeting, the new insights, views.

As a traveler you seem to have some kind of priviliege to talk to anyone, on the street, on the bus, at the trainstation, in a bar. Sometimes to ask the way to the trainstation, but more often just to get to know the other a little bit. The first question seems to be very often: Where are you from? (which is ofcourse not as easy as it sounds). Co-travelers will be more than happy to talk, because they are also on the road. But even locals will open up easily, much easier than if you had been a Local Stranger. As if Foreign Strangers are more harmless than the person you don’t know who lives next door.

It would be interesting to find a way to use this innocent approach to the other for people in your own community. But in the meantime, I try to keep this travelspirit, meeting people I don’t know, by hosting travelers through couchsurfing. It’s amazing how many people from really all over the world contacted me within a week, asking to surf my couch. You really have to be carefull not to become a budget hotel, or actually a free hotel, but it keeps you on the road, even being at home!