SP1: Immigrants - IC Thread

[Variota]

Duo's:

@Variota and @Sancti Imperii Catholico
@Fulgistan and @Oyus

This is the thread where you can post the various things in that you make together with your partner. Once the Speed Date becomes larger, I'll include an index to the various stories. To promote the idea, get people excited and all that jive, I'm going to 'pick' this thread to show up on the front page. Once we have a new Speed Date IC thread, I'll unpick this one and pick the new one to keep the most current Speed Date thread in the spotlight. 

Speed Date OOC thread - in case you want to ask questions, etc.

[Salvia]

This transcript was originally featured on NSBN Radio Network on 20 September

 

[Theme music plays]

 

As the summer draws to a close, Salvian Variotians across the nation celebrate traditional holidays.  NSBN correspondent Mark Kingsley has the story in Trinity.

 

 

 

Walking through the large city of Trinity at night is a busy affair.  Trains and buses are stacked full of people as they make their way across the city, the tall buildings and wide streets crowded and fully illuminated.  Like so many other cities around Eurth, the place never truly sleeps.  Even transitioning away from the night into the early morning, the city plaza and nearby neighborhoods continue to bustle, the lights turning night into day.  It appears nothing is out of the ordinary for the busy city.

However, in the district of Meronx in the northeastern part of the city, the primarily Variotan neighborhood called “Huis” (short for Huis Weg Fan Huis, literally “Home Away from Home”) is more lively than usual.  The sailors and port workers openly mingle with the “higher-ups” of society, a strange sight for many cultures and people, as traditional Variotan music loudly transcends into the sky.  There’s a large mix of people coming from all sorts of ways of life, drinking, eating, and dancing together.  Even ethnic Salvians join in the celebration.  So, what is this celebration then, something so big for the Variotians that they have a massive block party well into the night, where everyone from a C.E.O. of a company to a homeless man drink and party together?  I wanted to find out, so I walked towards the party. 

After wriggling through the crowd of dancing people, I was able to meet with the host of this party, Hank Lantboer get more insight into the celebration. 

We began talking, the party continuing without a pause from my arrival.  The massive party, he said, was due to a traditional Variotan holiday called Mast Day.  Traditionally held at the end of the summer, it used to celebrate for first-time captains and sailors that had survived their first season, but has since taken a more modern outlook, now just celebrating adults and teenagers that are moving on to a new phase of their lives.  The story could’ve ended there, but the host kept telling me stories of his ancestors coming to Salvia. 

Variotans, the third largest minority in Salvia not counting its Marenesian neighbors, never mass migrated to Salvia as Salvian Protestants once did to Variota and other Protestant nations.  Instead, they slowly trickled in.  Most Salvian Variotians can trace their roots to workers and sailors of the Variotian Marenesian Company, which conducted and facilitated trade between Marenesia and Variota.  Others arrived after bad harvests or due to family connections.  But, as my host explained, some Salvian Variotian’s ancestors came from Variota in the late 1700s, when ideological clashes with their church led to a religious divide.   These people, including Lantboer’s ancestors, came seeking a third, more hardline religion that they could follow.  Whatever the reason, a not insignificant number of Variotians continue to live in Salvia today. 

I thanked him for his time and began to wander around the party.  A lot of Variotian traditions are still preserved to this day in the Salvian community.  Some obvious ones, like traditional food, decorations, and dances are easily observable.  But Salvian Variotians have retained many subtle traditions from their homeland as well.  The rich are still expected to flaunt their wealth to a certain extent in front of their friends and neighbors- something found in this party as upper middle class families sponsored this celebration, and similarly do the same for others.  Like their homeland though, they do this for the worse-off, giving food to passing homeless people and taking any person that wants to join the party.  

Salvian Variotans have been able to combine two very different cultures into something truly spectacular.  And while many face problems in the form of discrimination in the workplace due to stereotypes, they still found a home in Huis Weg Fan Huis.