The Burkha Ban

My biggest disappointment about moving to Europe has been to find out that racism is rampant here. In The Netherlands, elections are due and one of the big items on the agenda is the burkha ban. Yes, they would like to ban the burkha. They have no problems selling pot legally and having women stand at windows in next to nothing selling themselves in Amsterdam, but they'd like the burkha out. Prostitution and drugs are cool - but let's not do this veil thing. Apparently, to get your residency visa in The Netherlands, depending upon who you are, you may be asked to sit through a video of seeing homosexuals kissing and/or watch women topless. Your reaction will be taken into account in the visa process.

In the UK they're talking about the ban and in Belgium it's already being enforced in a small town - women have been fined there. We saw it on CNN to our shock. I guess the police there have not much to do when they have time to stop a woman covering her face and asking her to pay a fine.

I am disgusted! I come from a country of 2,000 years of culture, a lot of it intertwined with Muslim culture and traditions. Every time I read a story about the burkha ban or the ban on the scarf (the scarf is banned in German schools and also in French schools), I feel insulted, I feel like I'm being told that my culture is crap and I should get with the program and be entirely Western. I feel humiliated and I feel rage and I'm not even a Muslim.

Recharge those batteries

Blogging has been slow…my batteries have been sort of dying.

Winter is here! It snowed on the first of November and now it’s colder, as they say in Texas, than a witch’s tit.

All my boys went out to play today and were back in fifteen minutes demanding hot chocolate and my five year old announced he was “freezing like a popsicle.”

In anticipation of the cruel Danish winter, we planned a quick vacation to Nice last week and it was fabulous. It is November but the temperatures were in the high teens, almost twenty and sometimes above. The beach wasn’t ideal for swimming but great for sitting down and having picnics at.

It’s always tricky to plan a vacation with two kids – usually, I try to avoid flying. But we flew this time and no one screamed hysterically – but then it was only a two-hour flight.

I spent a lot of time in the hotel lobby, ordering drinks and writing, while the boys went to the beach. In our family it’s normal for me to hang around a computer while my husband takes the kids and does this or that, so that I have some time to write in peace. I get a lot of writing done while I’m on vacation – it’s free time to just let the mind wander without worrying about dinner or bath time or cleaning up or what you have it.

My husband never complains that he never gets as much time off when we’re on vacation, which is really very nice. I know friends whose husbands would say hell no, they weren’t taking the kids, if their wives suggested they needed a few hours every day while they were on vacation to do something on their own.

Batteries re-charged in beautiful Nice, I’m back to work hard on my next book (I ain’t telling what it is until I’m sure) and getting ready for Christmas. In Denmark, we don’t have Thanksgiving, so we go straight to Christmas after fall vacation in the middle of October.