Looking Back: A Long Weekend in Belgium

As a birthday gift for Else last year, Ilse planned and booked a trip to Belgium. So, mid-January, we got on our train (Else's first Thalys train ride!) to Brussels. Before our trip, Else, as a dedicated dinosaur lover, found out that the Museum of Natural Sciences in Brussels has an impressive dinosaur collection. So: off we were to meet our friends, the dinosaurs! The collection indeed was formidable, we probably killed a photo machine (we didn't do anything wrong!), and Else tentatively tried her French skills learned on Duolingo (unintentionally rude, but well ...).

Another quick train ride away, we reached Bruges a few hours later. Ilse had booked us a fantastic hotel (even with an outside swimming pool—we hope to be back there in summer!) in the city center. During that time, we both were quite tired and exhausted and Bruges was the perfect place to relax—the city center is rather small and we could reach everything within half an hour from our hotel. Although the city is beautiful, it didn't have too many sights we had to see so that we didn't even feel the pressure of a tight sight-seeing schedule. We visited the few sights we wanted to see, but we mostly roamed Bruges without an exact destination and lazed around at cafés, bars, and restaurants, drinking wine and beer, eating fantastic meals and Belgian waffles.

We already knew that Belgium is one of the LGBTQ+ friendliest countries in the world before we started our trip: many queer people went to Belgium to get married long before Germany legalized same-sex marriages. In contrast to our trip to Portugal last year, we didn't even think about traveling as a lesbian couple. And that was perfectly okay! Not once did we feel judged, not accepted, or—and that happens almost everywhere at some point—sexualized (that might have been luck, though).

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Cochem: A Few Days in the German Countryside

Cochem is a place in the German countryside, in Rhineland-Palatinate. Although it is a district seat, it is rather small with about 5,000 inhabitants. Although it is probably easiest to arrive by car, traveling by rail is convenient as well. And as you know: we will always prefer to travel sustainably! We had booked a vacation home with a surprisingly comfortable Murphy bed (our first time in a Murphy bed!) and a little kitchen. Although Cochem had almost no COVID-19 cases when we visited, we nevertheless wanted to be careful and a place where we could make our own food was a perfect solution. But although it rained a lot, we luckily could enjoy a few patios. Cochem lies at the Moselle and is part of the Mosel wine region. The Mosel wines are amongst the best (if not the best) wines in Germany and the local/regional wines in Cochem were delicious. Since Cochem is a popular town for tourists and day visitors, there were lots of restaurants. But this popularity also meant that prices wer...

Why Intersectional Feminism Is Important to Us

As white persons born and raised in a Western European country, we are very privileged —more than most people in the world . But, at the same time, we are women and we are lesbians. We are from non-academic working/middle class blended families. We are not skinny. Still, we count ourselves lucky. We know that so many people struggle. Struggle with discrimination in so many ways, on so many levels. And we believe that society/societies should acknowledge these struggles. All of them are valid. Some struggle more, others less. Maybe, some people don't struggle at all. But we never know how severe a struggle is felt that we would disregard. We believe that it is important to share experiences of discrimination, that it is important to make these visible. Perpetrators should not be protected. Perpetrators should be called out. It should be normal to call them out. Both of us have experienced discrimination as a woman, as a lesbian, as a child from a non-academic working/middle...

Are you friends?

Yes! Of course we are friends. We are even best friends. We know almost everything about each other. We spend more time with each other than anyone else. We enjoy each other’s company. We talk for hours, we laugh about the most stupid jokes (and some good ones as well). We can be who we really are—in the joyful moments as well as in the sad or stressed ones. We live together. But we are so much more than what you are assuming. We also sleep in the same bed. We love each other—not platonically, but romantically. We share more with each other than we would with friends—however close we are with them. When we are holding hands, we don’t do so as friends, but as partners and lovers. And we certainly don’t kiss each other as friends. So while we would appreciate when people would accept displays of affection as natural and shareable with everyone, this is probably not the reason why people think that we are not a couple. Presenting as rather femme, we are too easily mistaken as heteros...

Else & Ilse | LGBTIQ+ adventurers

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