Week 5: Back in Rotterdam

This week I have decided that from now on I will write weekly rapports instead of daily. It was nice to do it for the first month but I think that it’s a bit too much sometimes.

This week we had a very regular week. Tuesday I encountered the Turkish rage. At this time, a politician called Geert Wilders wants to show a film on the Koran, a film in which he burns this holy book and in which he shows the world how violent it is. The entire country talks about it daily and you can feel the tension in the air. Because the Rotterdam population is almost for 50% Islamic, some people are afraid of riots like in Paris or in the Islamic countries. This aspect is not nice for the Turkish students; they hardly understand what’s going on and why anyone could make a film like that. The four of them are very open-minded and love the guidelines of Ataturk who said that everyone is equal and therefore everyone should be respected. Especially because of this last thing they don’t understand why the people in the Netherlands (and also in Belgium) can’t just get along with each other. For example; they also asked me how the situation in Belgium was because they heard about the ‘splitting up’ of the country. They really didn’t understand the way we treat each other. I think they’re right. How difficult can it be for such a small country not to get along with all the inhabitants?

Another thing that annoys the Turkish students is that every teacher has to make a remark on the fact that the girls in Turkey don’t wear scarves and are more modern than the Turkish girls in the Netherlands. The Turkish girls explained to us the reasons for this. The Turkish immigrants here are mostly from the centre or the eastern part of the country. Most of them aren’t educated.
In those parts of Turkey social control is also a lot more present then in the region where they come from (Izmir and Ankara).

Today we yet had another teacher who had to point out these differences and the way in which he did it, wasn’t really nice to them. The openness of the Dutchmen is also something to get used to. It still hasn’t grown on me, let alone the Turkish or Spanish students can already deal with it all the time.

Besides this little negative thing, the lesson ‘Ethical dilemmas’ was quite interesting because I had the opportunity to think about ethics and I just love that. Thinking about values, about the big Why?, it’s just relaxation for me.

Another thing that really relaxes me is art. This week we visited the museum Boijmans-van Beuningen. This museum is the biggest of Rotterdam and has a beautiful collection and at the moment, there are also very interesting exhibitions. The mixture of older and contemporary art was really nice. I got to know some new names of artist of whom I really want to see more work.
Before we went to the museum we had a nice discussion about using art in the lesson. This was interesting, especially because my final dissertation is about symbolic photographs (art) in the lesson of religion.

This wasn’t our only trip this week. We also visited a mill which is still working and which makes snuff powder. Snuffing is a real art and it was nice to hear more about it. It was a pity it was so cold in the mill. The man who guided us, was a really good narrator and he could really catch and hold our attention.
Afterwards we went to eat some pancakes and poffertjes (tiny puff-pancakes). I took a bacon pancake, the rest had poffertjes. I had a conversation with Edgar and Mrs. Verloop about the differences between Belgium and the Netherlands. We also talked about music (why is it that there is a lot more Belgian rock music than Dutch?) and about nice parts of Belgium. I also had to explain the relationship between the Walloon provinces and Flandres. Again.
It is striking that everybody asks two things when they hear I’m from Belgium
(1) How is the relationship between the French-speaking and the Flemish?
(2) Is it true your education is really disciplined?
After a while you get used to it and you start to develop a standard answer. Another thing that happens (before you give that answer) is that you take a big breath and think by yourself: “Here we go again!”

“Here we go again!” was also what I thought when I got in the car of my Belgian neighbour (my neighbour from Belgium who works in Rotterdam on some Fridays) who was going to take me home for yet another weekend.