Christmas Party at Frauentreff

Because my flights on Saturday were cancelled, I was able to attend the holiday party for workers and clients of Frauentreff, the organization for migrant women where I'm interning this semester.

Jugendzentrum Alte Trafik: A youth / community center where many of Frauentreff's social activities (including the holiday party) take place.

The majority of Frauentreff's clients are Muslims from Turkey and the former Yugoslavia, so I was a little surprised that the organization had decided to host a Christmas party. But that's something interesting about Austria -- Christmas is as much a national holiday as a Christian one. A Chinese-Austrian kid on my floor looked at me like I was crazy when I asked him if his family celebrates Christmas (even though they're not Christian), and it wasn't considered a breach of etiquette for workers at the youth center in the neighborhood where I work to take their young charges (who are also Turkish Muslim) to one of the city's largest Christkindlmärkte. Frauentreff simply turned the concept of a Christmas party into a multicultural festival of eating, dancing, and general merriment that made my travel mishaps seem worthwhile. Like Frauentreff's immigrant clients, I was in Austria -- somewhere I had never intended to be (at the moment) -- but that wasn't going to stop me from making the most of my time there.

The evening began with salsa dancing from many of the Latina women Brie, the other Central College Abroad intern at Frauentreff, works with as a German teaching assistant. We then sat down to eat with Maya, a woman from Serbia who leads an exercise class on Fridays, her 2-year-old daughter, and two women from Turkey who work at a youth center in a neighboring district.

A mix of Austrian, Turkish, Pakistani, and Yugoslavian treats

Aşure: A sweet Turkish cereal with beans, nuts, and grains

It was at this point that the real entertainment of the evening began: Turkish belly dancing. 

It has always amazed me that Turkish society, in many ways so conservative when it comes to women's modesty, is also the root of what I've always considered a blatantly sexual dance form. I sometimes felt the need to avert my eyes as the two belly dancers wiggled their hips, bellies, and breasts as they gyrated to the beat. But that was just my American conditioning. Belly dancing, at least in the way I experienced it on Sunday, exclusively in the company of other women, isn't about sexuality at all. It's about women taking ownership of their bodies, and the ways in which their bodies can move. And that's something that everyone -- hijab-wearing, nearly illiterate grandmothers from the rural villages, young children, and yes, the young men gathered outside the windows of the youth center to watch the "performance" -- can enjoy.

The Turkish music kept blasting, even after the belly dancers had finished their performance, as everyone joined in for a mix of Turkish folk dances and more individualized grooving. And I mean everyone: From Vera, a 70-year-old Austrian woman who has lived in the neighborhood her entire life, but has decided to embrace the new wave of immigration rather than complain about it; to Noor, an 18-year-old Gymnasium student from Pakistan by way of England who attends Frauentreff events both with and without her non-German-speaking mother; to Sabine, a hippie German teacher from Germany who's frustrated by her students' inability to progress linguistically but loves her job anyway. (The two American college students trying to get some professional experience during their study abroad semester certainly fit into the category of "totally random" as well.) But none of that mattered as we laughed, danced, circled, and shouted in time with the music.

Brie and I even received an invitation to drink tea with the two Turkish youth workers sometime in January. Immigrants to Austria often get a bad rap from their Austrian neighbors, but I've had nothing but wonderful experiences in hospitality from the immigrant women I've met during the course of my work with Frauentreff. From this invitation for a housecall, to the one from an Afghani woman who was lonely every day in her apartment when her children went off to school, to the total willingness of the students at the German courses I've visited to share their snacks with me during Pause, I am often overwhelmed by the friendliness and generosity of Frauentreff's clients, who have so many issues of their own as they struggle to make a life for themselves in a sometimes hostile environment. It was wonderful to experience this community at its fullest during the holiday party.