The Travels of the
Techno-Freedom-Fighter

2b is what they like to call in Dutch a KrakCafé(Squat-Pub) "werkhuis" 2b is the only squat in the centre Zaandam, all the other so called Squats are what they anti-squat I'll come back to this later. It is basically a rundown group of flats that have been turned in to a bar and sleeping area.

It was squatted by a Dutch Socialist political party called "Rosa", as a political action to make the citizens of Zaandam aware of the unfair real-estate "industry" in many Urban Centres in the Netherlands. See there is a real shortage of affordable housing in the inner city. This has a terrible impact on the urban village culture that was quite common in Dutch cities up to the 1980s. Rosa had no intention to have anyone live in the Squat once the protest was over. One thing led to another and squatters from two other evicted houses ended up staying there and so began the saga of 2B.

Last Saturday night was 2B's second birthday, that means that have had people living in the house for two years with out being evicted. This is something to celebrate as it is very often the case that the KrackPunt (squat) will be retaken once the right processes have taken place. There are other squats in and around Amsterdam that have been around longer but 2B is right in the hart of Zaandam and is prime real-estate. An number of the local "underground" DJs where there doing there thing there was also a kind of exhibition of Photo art and other things like that. I know quitte a lot of the people there and had a really great time. It is not often when you get to observe contemporary youth culture in a country if you are a traveler that is. Like in Australian most of the backpackers that go there don't really get to see what it is like to be a young person in Australia.

The Krak culture of the inner urban centres in Holland is the mainstay of the "Dutch underground" Techno music. Many of the KrakPants (squats) have there own radio stations, unregistered "illegal" radio station. They're not actually illegal the techno culture just likes the word. What it is that like everything in Holland there are many exceptions to the rule. And the Krak culture is allowed to exist as many of its activities fall between the cracks. See the Krak Culture is like many other issues that the Dutch have decided to gedogen. gedogen is not really translatable; into English nor any other language. The nearest approximation of "gedogen," in English, is "to tolerate." Tolerance is passive, though. Gedogen is active. Gedogen is an open-eyed tolerance, and a matter of governmental policy

Lately, there has been much commotion around gedogen in the Netherlands itself. This was mostly due to recent catastrophes such as the explosion of a firework storage facility in Enschede, which destroyed a whole neighborhood of that city, and the large fire that broke out on New Year's Eve 2001 in a cafe in the town of Volendam in which more than a dozen people, mostly teenagers, were killed and many others were badly burned. The neglect of safety regulations involved in these catastrophes is widely perceived to be related to the attitude and the policy of 'gedogen'. Increasingly, the policy of gedogen has come to stand for administrative negligence and incompetence, instead of a responsible and socially responsive way of dealing with intractable social issues

Even though it seems that it is all fun and games, the Krak culture is at its core a movement for affordable housing in cities. And even though the Krak culture is not really socially acceptable, it was still really great to be a part of it for a couple of nights.