English
Nederlands
2006-09-03
Forty-Seventh Column
Tonight my forty-seventh column was broadcast in Gendertalk #574.
You can find the complete program in the Gendertalk archive.
Or you can find just my column at:
http://eveliensnel.com/audio/PRAGUE01.mp3
A full transcript of the text is below:
Prague
Last week we had a short vacation in Prague in the Czech republic. As you know I was a bit apprehensive about this trip; afraid to have to use my passport with a male name in it, afraid to run into trouble at the security check and most of all worried about the acceptance towards transsexual women in Prague.
The first hurdle to take was the passport check at the Dutch airport. The lady who had to check it looked very carefully at me and at my picture in the passport and she came to the only possible conclusion: This was indeed my passport. And that is all she needs to know. If I look similar enough to the picture in my passport it doesn't matter if I die my hair green or purple or grow breasts. So she smiled at me, handed back my passport and told me I was free to go ahead.
The second hurdle is the security check. But since I passed the metal detector without a bleep, people hardly looked at me there. Julia had a lot more trouble passing that stage. She hadn't taken off all her bracelets, so the detector bleeped and she was searched as if she were a terrorist. Ridiculous to think we would want to blow up the aircraft on our way to a great vacation! If we want to do that, we will do it on our way back home!
So far so good. We arrived safely in Prague and we didn't have any problem getting into the country there.
We soon noticed many people were staring at me in Prague. I may feel quite passable in the Netherlands, but apparently that has to do with the acceptance of the Dutch people as well as with my looks. In Prague people looked at me as if I were a creature from a different planet! They certainly aren't used to seeing gender queer people there.
But there were no real problems. One evening, when I was a bit more dressed-up than usual, because we wanted to go out, we almost had some trouble in the subway. A couple of guys on the platform were looking at me in a rather aggressive way. We made sure we got into a different compartment of the subway than they did and we didn't see them any more.
Before we went there I had already done some Goog'ling to find out about the acceptance of queer people over there and I wasn't disappointed. I had found several gay-friendly bars and restaurants in Prague, so I had decided to look at some of those to give you a report about them.
Café-Café on 10 Rytířská is listed as a gay bar in our travel guide, but most of the guests are heterosexuals. It is a beautiful place with large windows and lots of mirrors, a place to look at people and to be seen yourself. Being close to Václavské Náměstí it is often visited by tourists and all the staff speaks some English.
Another nice place we visited was Street-Cafe Maler on 28 Blanická, listed as a lesbo club in my travel guide. Unfortunately it was not very busy when we were there, but their pages on the Internet show that it is not always so quiet. We found a very pleasant atmosphere and nice modern music there. The bar personnel didn't speak any English, but some of the guests did.
I haven't told you about the sheer beauty of Prague. This can be found in any travel guide and on the Internet. All I wanted to tell you is that it is also a safe place to go for us genderqueers. Recommended!
<< Home
You can find the complete program in the Gendertalk archive.
Or you can find just my column at:
http://eveliensnel.com/audio/PRAGUE01.mp3
A full transcript of the text is below:
Last week we had a short vacation in Prague in the Czech republic. As you know I was a bit apprehensive about this trip; afraid to have to use my passport with a male name in it, afraid to run into trouble at the security check and most of all worried about the acceptance towards transsexual women in Prague.
The first hurdle to take was the passport check at the Dutch airport. The lady who had to check it looked very carefully at me and at my picture in the passport and she came to the only possible conclusion: This was indeed my passport. And that is all she needs to know. If I look similar enough to the picture in my passport it doesn't matter if I die my hair green or purple or grow breasts. So she smiled at me, handed back my passport and told me I was free to go ahead.
The second hurdle is the security check. But since I passed the metal detector without a bleep, people hardly looked at me there. Julia had a lot more trouble passing that stage. She hadn't taken off all her bracelets, so the detector bleeped and she was searched as if she were a terrorist. Ridiculous to think we would want to blow up the aircraft on our way to a great vacation! If we want to do that, we will do it on our way back home!
So far so good. We arrived safely in Prague and we didn't have any problem getting into the country there.
We soon noticed many people were staring at me in Prague. I may feel quite passable in the Netherlands, but apparently that has to do with the acceptance of the Dutch people as well as with my looks. In Prague people looked at me as if I were a creature from a different planet! They certainly aren't used to seeing gender queer people there.
But there were no real problems. One evening, when I was a bit more dressed-up than usual, because we wanted to go out, we almost had some trouble in the subway. A couple of guys on the platform were looking at me in a rather aggressive way. We made sure we got into a different compartment of the subway than they did and we didn't see them any more.
Before we went there I had already done some Goog'ling to find out about the acceptance of queer people over there and I wasn't disappointed. I had found several gay-friendly bars and restaurants in Prague, so I had decided to look at some of those to give you a report about them.
Café-Café on 10 Rytířská is listed as a gay bar in our travel guide, but most of the guests are heterosexuals. It is a beautiful place with large windows and lots of mirrors, a place to look at people and to be seen yourself. Being close to Václavské Náměstí it is often visited by tourists and all the staff speaks some English.
Another nice place we visited was Street-Cafe Maler on 28 Blanická, listed as a lesbo club in my travel guide. Unfortunately it was not very busy when we were there, but their pages on the Internet show that it is not always so quiet. We found a very pleasant atmosphere and nice modern music there. The bar personnel didn't speak any English, but some of the guests did.
I haven't told you about the sheer beauty of Prague. This can be found in any travel guide and on the Internet. All I wanted to tell you is that it is also a safe place to go for us genderqueers. Recommended!
Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home
© 1985-2006 E.G. Snel
