Momondo — The World Piece

[pieter]

How far would you go to bring the world closer together? Watch as 61 strangers from different countries offer their bodies as a canvas to send a message to the world.

momondo was founded on the belief that everybody should be able to travel the world because traveling unites us. But today, our world seems more divided than ever.

In response, momondo has created The World Piece. In the film, people from around the globe meet to tell their personal story and show their commitment to bringing the world together.

Shoulder to shoulder, they create a visual manifestation of the connections that unite us across borders and cultures — revealing that if we dare to connect, the world can’t fall apart.

[pieter]

[Jaga]

Pieter, I could see that this was a very important event for these people from so many different countries, that bounded them all together.
I watched it today, although I realized that you posted it already yesterday.

It is interesting since just today I had a thought that I am one of these privileged people who had interactions with people from so many different countries and cultures almost all life. Now it is more normal but it the past, it was a rarity. It is still a rarity in many isolated areas.

People travel a lot, but they usually don't interact with the natives if they don;t know the language etc...

so we are very lucky here in the forum that each of us is able to have such a full life

[pieter]

Jaga,

We share that experience. That we are few of these privileged people who had interactions with people from so many different countries and cultures almost all our live. It started for me in the expats street in the harbour town Vlissingen in Zeeland where I grew up as a baby, toddler and little child with the French neighbour girls from our neighbours. My sister and I who were younger than these French girls were younger and we were living (toy) dolls for them. Later I experienced the international family from Poland, the USA, Denmark and the South-African family. And since I live in the country of immigrants, since the seventies I was used to immigrant people and children. On my primary school, high school and during my vacational university years. Amsterdam and Arnhem are even more multi-cultural than Vlissingen. The Indonesian, Surinamese and Dutch Antillian cultures of our former colonies were always around just like our Dutch Turks and Moroccans. Next to that I had and have Iraqi Kurd, Iranian and Afghan colleagues. Nearly every day I work, speak with and exchange work related information with my Afghan colleague cameraman and editor. I spoke a lot with him about his Afghanistan, why he left (to give his daughters a future, he wanted them to study), his vision about Pakistan, Russia (the Sovjet heritage in Afghanistan), India, China, the USA and the Netherlands. Quite interesting.

In Arnhem alone 195 nationalities live, people from 195 countries, we have a quite international vocational university here and we have an international school for children from expat parents.





Foreign students are welcome in Arnhem. The blond woman with the microphone in the beginning of the video is an Arnhem GreenLeft alderwoman of the muncipality who personally welcomed the foreign students. Arnhem considers it important to be an open and creative city.

The city and it's new architecture has advanced a lot in the last recent years. You see that in the buildings and transparent architecture later in the video. This is also due to the Pan-European and quite international and creative economy of the city. The contribution of expats, foreign contractors and import Dutch people with mixed heritages (Turkish/Dutch, Indonesian/Dutch, German/Dutch, Polish/Dutch and etc.) over here. There are a lot of 3D designers, architects, graphical designers, fashion designers, artists, musicians, theatre makers, Audio visual branche people, dancers and creative entrepreneurs (free lancers and small and middle large companies) in Arnhem.

Cheers,
Pieter

[Jaga]

I agree, I think people have different values in their lives. For me being able to expand outside of my small and comfortable world was very important.
I had a privilege like you to live in the area where I was surrounded by people from different cultures - we lived close to the dorms of Jagiellonian university - that were full of african and asian students even during communism, or maybe because of it.
I lived in the house that was build by Jagiellonian university for their employers, mainly professors and lecturers.
I kind of wish I was closer to common folks and learned more technical skills earlier in life. My mother ingrained in me the respect for everybody. she was from the working class from the Upper Silesia and these people were exposed to a lot in their life.

[pieter]

Jun 28, 2019 21:25:59 GMT -7 Jaga said:

I agree, I think people have different values in their lives. For me being able to expand outside of my small and comfortable world was very important.
I had a privilege like you to live in the area where I was surrounded by people from different cultures - we lived close to the dorms of Jagiellonian university - that were full of african and asian students even during communism, or maybe because of it.
I lived in the house that was build by Jagiellonian university for their employers, mainly professors and lecturers.
I kind of wish I was closer to common folks and learned more technical skills earlier in life. My mother ingrained in me the respect for everybody. she was from the working class from the Upper Silesia and these people were exposed to a lot in their life.

Dear Jaga,

I can understand your upbringing and thus the classical scientifical academical university intelligentsia milieu you came from in Kraków. The Academic staff of the Uniwersytet Jagielloński consisted of 3,857 in 2017. In that year the university had 43,405 students, 38,535 Undergraduates, 1,655 Postgraduates and 3,215 Doctoral students if I may believe Wikipedia. I know that classical scientifical academical university intelligentsia milieu from Amsterdam because my Amsterdam girlfriend lived in a University student house (we had a LAT relation back then), and I spend a lot of time in that house, with her, but also with the university students there. I attended their dinners, university student parties, their university student clubs, sometimes had breakfast or lunch in their university cafeteria, the UVA mensa at the Oudemanhuis Poort. I loved to eat and have my Orange juice and coffee there.


University of Amsterdam

I got to know the academicals of the Amsterdam university intelligentsia milieu due to my girlfriends student house, due to the fact that I was interested in politics, was member of political youth organisations, went to political debates and political party meetings of various political parties. Often the young members, the grass roots organisations and the political activsits were university students. They were over represented in the political base. Next to that I liked to hang around in grand café's with an international reading table with all the Dutch and foreign newspapers and magazines (Dutch, Flemish-Belgian, German, English [British], American, French, Italian and Spanish) and in that way I read a lot of essays, articles and columns in Dutch, English and German and sometimes French [with a dictionary]. There were a lot of University students in these grand café's too. They had the same interest I had. Often studebts politicologie, philosophy, Amerikanistiek (Americna studies), sociology and all kinds of other studies. And on Dutch radio and tv programs there were often a lot of university professors or researchers who were invited as experts on some subject. I followed seminars, workshops and evening philosophy lectures at the university of Nijmegen, which I could attend as an interested outsider from Arnhem, because I liked it and found it interesting in 2003/2004. So I got to know their culture, social life, way of thinking, reasoning and the subjects they studied. I was a member of the University of Amsterdam rowing club Nereus in Amsterdam and participated in the competitions between various university student rowing clubs from Utrecht, Leiden, Delft, Rotterdam and Amsterdam. I was somewhat an outsider as being a vocational university student, but I integrated, got my very extensive rowing training (with a beautiful blond Dutch, but vicious and fanatic rowing drill inspector) and participated in many rowing competitions with the other clubs from the cities I mentioned, Triton (Utrecht), Njord (Leiden), Laga (Delft) and Skadi (Rotterdam). First I didn't found myself at home amongst these university students, because they were members of the elitist Student society of Amsterdam, also called the Amsterdam Student Corps.

Gathering of new members of the Amsrterdam Student Corps in august 2016


New students are humiliated by older students who treat the new students as cattle in a farm. Amsterdam Student Corps, 1962. The process is called 'Ontgroening' in Dutch, Hazing, the practice of rituals, challenges, and other activities involving harassment, abuse or humiliation used as a way of initiating a person into a group including a new fraternity, sorority, team, or club.

Hazing at the university of Leiden Student Corps Minerva. Hazing also ads to the elitist character of the student corps. You have to grow throught the ranks.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hazing

I of course can't compare that with your situation of grewing up inside a classical scientifical academical university intelligentsia milieu. Your mother did a great job by teaching you respect for everybody. That is a great lesson you can learn and adapt in life. Unfortunately my parents were to ingrained in the time they grew up with pillarization and social class differences in my fathers case and communism, fake state news (like my mother told me the official communist state press was), Marxist-Leninist education (with the busts of Karl Marx and Lenin in the class of their communist party member teachers) in which they ideas of Marx, Engels and Lenin were tought as the truth. My mother lived in a dualist world with the socialist/communist truth at school and later when she started working partly at work where her supervisors (bosses) were communist, but the more intelligent architects, Urbanists and technical drawers, accountants and administrators were not. My mother worked at an Urbanistic bureau in Warsaw which planned, designed, visited and coordinated to building of new working class neighbourhoods, infrastructure and etc.

Jaga, I grew up in a harbour town with a Labour majority (Social Democrats) and therefor the redistribution of income and redistribution of wealth was seen as important in Vlissingen by this Labour city management. In contrast with Arnhem where I live and where you have poor neighbourhoods and rich neighbourhoods in Vlissingen the Social dempocratic city council and the Labour executive board of a municipality deliberately built mixed neighbourhoods with houses and apartment blocks for the Upper class (high class), middle class and working class. My parents for instance have an upper middle class house opposite to a plain row of working class houses. My parents circle of friends and former colleages are high class and upper middle class people, but their neighbours are working class people and upper middle class people. These people can get along fine and that mixes of milieus is an excellent example of the Social democratic policy that worked in that field. My parents are different than the working class people and have different friends, but in the same time they have social relations as neighbours with their working class, sailor, bus driver neighbours.

The same with my Polish grandparents who lived in a mixed apartment block building with all kinds of milieus. That was communist Poland in which people in apartment blocks had little space and my grandparents shared a kitchen, bath room, toilet, coolroom (they didn't had a refridgerator) with their neighboors.
My Dutch grandparents came out of the time of pillarisation, differences between the milieus and lived in upper middle class environments all their lives in Rotterdam and Epe (Gelderland, after their retirement from 1948-1986). My Dutch grandfather died in 1962. I unfortunately never had the chance to know him and my Dutch grandmother died in 1986. I had a great bond with both my grandmothers. My Polish grandfather died in Poznan in 1976.

Cheers,
Pieter

[pieter]

Jaga I don't believe that the hazing process is linked to the university world in general, but is part of the Dutch old university student culture. I think very positively about universities in our cities. University cities are often more interesting than cities without universities or larger education centres. For me for instance Nijmegen is a more interesting place than Arnhem, because it is an university city and Arnhem not, but I love the green environment in Arnhem and it is a fact that a lot of people who studied at various universities live and work in Arnhem. I would welcome a private or state university in Arnhem, but we probably already have enough universities in the Netherlands.

[pieter]

[pieter]