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Tanja, our resident German member takes us on a web-based tour, reflecting on ‘the good old days’ in Oldenburg and reminding us how much a town the size of Cambridge could offer - we’ve lots to learn from our Sisters around the world.
Ahhh, the good old days! Everything was better back then! The grass was greener, the roses rosier, my friends friendlier...
There's nothing like a little rose tinted reminiscing when times are hard, is there? How convenient, then, to find oneself at work with buggerall to do but to idly look around the Internet, and then to stumble over a web site that feels like home: www.oldenburg.gay-web.de. Ahhh, the good old days!
A good seven years ago I left Oldenburg for an 8 months work experience experience in Huddersfield - and yes, this is a public admission that I'm not really from Yorkshire - I know, I had you all fooled...
Anyway, I somehow managed to get stuck in this country (and hurrah to that!), and there is not a lot I miss about Germany; bread being one thing, the NaUnd Verein another.
In aforementioned good old days, the NaUnd Verein was my stomping ground; coming out at a no longer tender age, it felt that I had a lot of catching up to do; and as I could quite comfortably pass as straight in my appearance, I may also have felt that I had something to prove, who knows.
The NaUnd Verein is a group of lesbians and gays working together. Na Und literally means So What; the defiance in the group's name may be a bit of an indication, I fear, of how very, very old the group is. It started in 1985, and it has been going strong ever since. Have a look on the web site, if you have nothing better to do. Even if you don't speak any German, you might get an impression of how our Northern German sisters (and brothers) act.
Oldenburg is roughly the size of Cambridge, I believe: 155,328 inhabitants (52.3% of those are women, incidentally, 41% are between 19 and 44, and about 12.000 are students, just so you know!).
Look at the gay-oldenburg site and marvel at the choice of groups it has to offer: coming out, lesbian & gay centre, university, sport, youth, to name but few (and but those that were around in my days). Look, then, at the Lesben & Schwulen Zentrum link to get to the NaUnd site - or, no, on reflection, don't! I had a distinct feeling that there were pictures to show you, but there aren't, it's all warm welcoming words and history...
Instead, why don't you click on Rosige Zeiten, the lesbian/gay magazine, one of my babies. There you WILL find nice pictures - of Maja, to start with, our own queen bee, in Editorial - but that's in the Feb/March edition, so let's just hope that the April/May edition doesn't go on line too promptish. The RoZ has a strict policy of having the editorial written by men and women in alternating sequence each edition.
Then, treat yourself to a look at the Magazin, and on to Neues aus dem Hempels. No matter which edition you'll be looking at, you will find cheerful photos from Hempels, our own café/ bar - another of my babies.
When I joined the group in 1993 (or thereabouts), we were in the middle of moving out of a grotty little room in the cellar of the AIDS-Hilfe into our own place. One of the group's men had bought a house, which he was going to let: upstairs as private accommodation, downstairs as office, meeting and cafe/ bar space for NaUnd.
And there you have my good old days: our own space. As the fine, upstanding, reliable and regular member of the group that I was back then, I had my own key to the building. After a hard day both at work and at University I'd often make my way to the Centre to sit in the office and work on whatever page of RoZ I had to work on. Or, if it was a Thursday (women only) or a Friday (mixed), I'd go to Hempels, our café, either for my two hour shift behind the bar, or to relax with me mates and a bottle of Urbock, or both. Or I'd spend a little while on looking after the lending library we were developing (I see from the pictures on the web that it must have doubled in volume since I left. Sigh!). Or, if it was a Wednesday (if memory serves) I'd attend either the Plenum, our fortnightly group meeting, or the editorial meeting for RoZ. Where did I get the energy from, I ask myself?
At one of those I volunteered to write about the trouble our neighbours in Bremen encountered at their Christopher Street Day parade (CSD, the German Pride). That was the seed of yet another of my babies: the following year we had our own CSD in Oldenburg. I was up on that stage, talking to the masses, I'll have you know! Yes, all right, that's beside the point. The point is: the "CSD Nordwest" in Oldenburg was a rather surprising success at the time, and that attendance has grown to quite unexpected numbers over the last seven years. So... go back to the homepage and have a look at Lesben und Schwulen Tag (L.u.S.T.). Pretty pictures of the parade in Oldenburg (not so pretty ones of the Stonewall Pub incident on Christopher Street in New York in 69) - and warm welcoming words and histories and all that, of course.
Which brings me swiftly (no groaning in the back rows, there!) to the aim of all this reminiscing: around this time last year I had an idea; I couldn't quite decide whether it was a naff idea or not, but was persuaded that it was worth airing this idea. I suggested to twin with Oldenburg, see if we could get a little Pride/CSD exchange going. The lack of response was deafening - but I'm not that easily defeated. I'm going to Oldenburg this year, and I'm going to take part in the parade on Saturday, 22 June. Anyone to join me??? Let's, just for a moment, assume that you're not sufficiently interested in this sort of thing. Well then, perhaps I may have achieved something quite different, set another trend: there seem to be plenty of us who have not grown up in this country. Wouldn't it be quite interesting to hear how our sisters act in, say, New Zealand, South Africa, Iceland, Canada...