hitchin' to eastern europe (almost!)

dearest dears,

here is the play by play of the hilarious and extraordinarily fun hitchhiking trip me and two friends attempted to take to Warsaw....but we ended up in Berlin.

We started on Saturday morning:

1. John (or Don) picked us up at the designated hitchhiking spot near Amstel station. He was from Leeds but lived in the Netherlands for most of his life. He drove us south a little bit. He was really sweet and we drank some coffee at a truck stop and he gave us a little list of cities we should aim to pass on the way to Warsaw.

2. At the gas station we went up to two guys in a car and asked them if they were driving west. They were. They were Georgian and spoke a little bit of Russian and a little bit of English. They had a strange, and probably shady, business selling cars from the netherlands in georgia. The one guys name was Zura. He texted us later to make sure we were safe. These guys took us to some strange tiny gas station in some dutch town.

3. A cute old dutch couple drove us from the gas station to the nearest highway exit/gas station. They told us about their trip to the US and how much they loved san francisco.

4. We ate lunch at the side of the road in the beautiful sunshine. We walked to the gas station but it didn't look like anyone would take us from there. We went to the highway exit and waited with our signs and our thumbs. A nice dutch man (followed by his friends in a car) stopped to tell us that no one would pick us up from there. He kicked his friend out of the car and took us to a big gas station on the highway with lots of truckers. He gave us mint candies (with black licorice inside, gross!) and some fatherly advice.

5. We talked to all the truckers at the station. Most of them didn't speak English but alot of them spoke Russian so I got to talk to them. Truckers get fined for driving on Sundays, so alot of them were staying over at the gas station for the weekend, drinking beer, and waiting for Monday to roll around. The truckers were a little intimidating to approach at first, but they were all quite sweet and helpful.

6. Then we see these two guys in a car hanging out near the truckers, with German plates. I ask them in Russian if they were heading to Poland, they weren't but they were headed across the border to Germany. They told us there was a special deal in Germany that up to five people can take the train together all the way to Warsaw for 35 euros. They offered us beer and told us they would take us to Rhine. We went with them, and their gypsy friend, and drank beer in the car while listening to really loud Russian music. The one guy in the car says he wants us to have a drink with him before we get on the train, as a way to celebrate all of us meeting eachother. I can't decline that, especially because of my upbringing, and say that we can have some shots of v0dka before we go. He also tried to convince us to stay the weekend with them, relax, go to the discotheque, and drink vodka. That I said no to. So we end up in this tiny town in the middle of nowhere, stop to pick up something at the store, and these guys take us to this strange farm in the countryside. There are seventeen year old boys fixing cars. They pour us huge glasses of vodka. We make a toast. We make another toast. They keep trying to convince us to stay longer and longer. They won't drive us to the train station when we say we want to go. One of the Russian guys professed his love for me, how he wanted to get to know me better, that I should spend the weekend with them. So we pretty much just walked off the farm towards the train station.

7. We asked a woman on the way for directions to the station and she gave us a short ride to it instead. She was very sweet and had cute kids.

8. At the station we inquired about this amazing train deal to Warsaw...which of course didn't even exist...the price she quoted us for a ticket to Warsaw was not 35 euros...but rather 350 euros..hahaa. So we buy a cheap train ticket to Hamburg, where Elena has a friend, and spend the night there hanging out, going to a party, and walking through the infamous Rapperbahn (like Amsterdam's red light district but seedier, scarier, and much much bigger).

9. The next day we eat yummy food and wait at the edge of a traffic circle for someone to pick us up. It is getting dark. We want to leave Hamburg and go to Berlin. A sweet man picks us up. He is going to Berlin and will take us all the way there. He is a soil scientist and a mycologist. We talk about picking mushrooms, immigration, and his life.

10. We spend a lovely evening in Berlin, have drinks and food with jana and spend the night at her house. The next morning we wander around berlin for a while and then take a train towards the nearest major highway. It is raining and getting darker.

11. We ask a nice couple, with a huge van, if they are driving west. They are going to Koln and take us all the way across Germany through a huge rain storm. They are really sweet, play nice music, and we eat gummy bears together. They drop us off at a huge truck stop on the highway towards Amsterdam.

12. We eat food at the truck stop and Elena smokes cigarettes around the truckers and starts up conversations with them to see if any of them are going to Amsterdam. We find a sweet driver named Casper who is going to Eindhoven...which is not Amsterdam, but close enough.

13. Casper drives a truck that takes pigs to be slaughtered. Casper's girlfriend is a huge animal rights activist who does alot of work around making sure that animals are treated humanely at farms and in transport. There is a coffee maker in the truck that makes delicious coffee and a wierd gun that shoots compressed air.

14. We realize that we won't get to Eindhoven in time to take a train to Amsterdam until early the next morning. Casper, the kind kind soul that he is, drops off his truck in Eindhoven and takes us in his car all the way to Amsterdam. We have hilarious conversations on the car ride because we are all delirious from lack of sleep. We try to speak Dutch. We drink juice that looks like capri sun but has a cheetah on it.

15. We get taken to Amstel station and bike home through the empty late night streets of Amsterdam.

People are so sweet.

Rights NOT Rescue

I went to a really amazing panel discussion tonight regarding sex worker rights and the current legal state of affairs in Europe (and in Uganda).

The four women who spoke on the panel were amazing and they were either currently sex workers or retired sex workers, which is extremely important and often, I believe, more valuable than having academics speak about this topic.

The women were from the following Organizations:

1. The Scottish Prostitute Education Project

2. The Rose Alliance (no website, but here is a great video of the woman who was on the panel)

3. Soa Aids Netherlands

4. Wonetha (Ugandan sex workers organization)

There is a Dutch law that is currently up for being passed which will include mandatory registering of sex workers and also potential criminalization of the client. The criminalization of the client is the current legal situation in Sweden, in which it is legal for a sex worker to solicit, but it is illegal for the client (and the sex worker also has to pay taxes, from money that comes from illegal clients).

Many of the women spoke about the fact that the legal restrictions isolate the sex workers from one another and so they are not able to network and communicate very well.

They also spoke about the fact that trafficing and sex work have been conflated, so many of the laws that have been put in place to prevent the trafficing of women also infringe on sex worker rights, which is an unfair conflation. There is a presupposition in place that only migrant women would want to be sex workers, and individuals who are residents of a country would not work that profession.

The woman from Uganda said a really great thing, which was that "you can't make change unless you make other people uncomfortable", and I think this is so true and something that we should always remember. The situation in Uganda is quite different because of the different socioeconomic situation but also because sex work is completely illegal there and even more stigmatized then it is in European countries.

The problem with the law that is being pushed forth, that will criminalize unregistered sex workers, is that it does not deal with the trafficing situation at all. The first thing that someone who is trafficing women will do is register them as sex workers so as to fly under the radar by integrating them into the system. There is also the added problem that the criminalization of unregistered sex workers will add to the vulnerability of an already vulnerable group of sex workers who are unable to register for whatever reasons.

The fact that sex workers have to register, not just as residents of a country, but specifically as sex workers (which no other profession has to do, at least in the Netherlands) is problematic. It also perpetuates the paternalistic nature of the government system which wants to take care of and 'save' all the sex workers from themselves. As if women cannot make their own choices and decisions and take care of themselves.

The criminalization of clients, which is already an absurd law since it does nothing to protect sex workers and actually makes it quite difficult for them to work, is also problematic because there is anecdotal evidence that is actually the clients who often call the police if they believe that a woman is being trafficed or working against her own will. The example that they gave was Turkey, which set up a phone line to call regarding suspected trafficing, and seventy-five percent of the phone calls came from clients who believed that the women they had gone to see were involved in sex work against their will.

One of the solutions given was unionizing within the trade union labour movement. Some trade unions have included sex workers but it is a very difficult process because of the stigma that is attached to sex work and the legal issues around it as well. I know that the IWW does sex worker organizing as well.

The women spoke about the funding, or complete lack of funding, that their organizations receive in order to aid the effort of organizing sex workers and change working conditions, etc. Much of the funding for organizations that deal with sex work comes from harm reduction programs around HIV and other STDs. One of the largest harm reduction strategies is the ABC strategy (Abstinence, Be faithful, us a Condom), which many US aid organizations employ. The issue with this strategy is it has an anti-prostitution pledge within it and so countries that take money from organizations that employ this strategy are not able to fund any sex worker organizations with it. Notably, Brazil did not take 40 million dollars of aid money because of the anti-prostitution aspect of it.

The government is attempting to 'rescue' sex workers without addressing their human rights and freedom to make choices about their employment. The woman from Sweden made a very important point when she said that there is no 'free will' in any of the jobs that people choose. When a woman is working in a hospital cleaning up people's shit, that choice did not come from complete free will, she had to pay the rent. How is this choice any different then the choice that a sex worker has to make? Especially in a capitalist wage economy.

xoxo,

m