Aces Booklet Lowres Gesamt Final

7/27/2019 Aces Booklet Lowres Gesamt Final

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thoughtsor acesAuthors share theirviews and visions


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contents


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Foreword

Boris Marte ........................................................................................................................... 6

ForewordChristine Gamper .............................................................................................................. 8

European Identities, Values and VisionsThe skies above EuropeGoran Rebi .................................................................. 12The confict o inherited interspacesNikola Madzirov................................ 16From the rear echelonsBeq Cuaj ..................................................................... 20Europe as a vision and a realityGyrgy Dalos .............................................. 24

School EuropeA school called EuropeWerner Wintersteiner............................................... 32Hard times boost creativityMichal Hvorecky................................................. 36

Intercultural DialogueEurope Forever youngDesa Muck.................................................................... 42Where are you rom?Fatos Kongoli .................................................................... 46RecognizeZlata Filipovi........................................................................................... 50

Drawings on Intercultural Dialogue

Dan Sorin Perjovschi.................................................................................................... 57Active Citizenship

Learning to be a participatory citizen

Why does it matter at all?Vedrana Spaji-Vrka.......................................... 60Citizens or changeHedvig Morvai-Horvat ...................................................... 64Making the world a better placeFilip Kovacevi.......................................... 68

Community SpiritHeddas morningIva Prochzkov ....................................................................... 74Being a volunteer in the Republic o Moldova

or how we dodged the subbotnikIrina Nechit.......................................... 80

New RealitiesThe Internet as provocationVladimir Zarev.................................................... 86

Imprint ...................................................................................................................................... 92


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orewordby Boris MarteERSTE Foundation


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So what does your foundation do, like, really do?

A common question rom people that are unamiliar with the work o ER-STE Foundation, and a good one, too. Where to start? Maybe with an easy-sounding, nice to explain project, with aces. School exchange. We sup-port school exchange in Central and South Eastern Europe. Together withtwo partner organisations we set up the biggest international network oschools in this part o Europe. Students work together on projects, haveun and learn about intercultural - or even trans-cultural as some put it -experiences, teachers are being oered methods and tools that they canuse in their classrooms, and representatives o Ministries o Education romall teen participating countries exchange and meet again with studentsand teachers. A project like aces is or many students the rst chance tounderstand what it means to be in a oreign country. What sounds simple,

and what still is a prime example or a quickly explained project, is a com-plex and deep-reaching idea put into practise.

The organisational structure is outstanding and needs to be mentioned:aces would not be possible without the great cooperation o many peo-ple rom at least three institutions. We have established it together withInterkulturelles Zentrum rom Vienna and it became more internationaland stronger through the help o VEL DOM rom Bratislava. And it wouldcertainly not be the same without the high amount o external input be

it workshop trainers and acilitators at the kick-o and academy meetings,the aces council, the ministry representatives, artists and educational ex-perts at the big events or authors rom all teen aces countries contrib-uting their thoughts and ideas. But all this super-structure would be little,had it not been or the teachers and students bringing in their ideas, work,interests and enthusiasm.

This little book is or all o those who would like to see their aces horizonseven more expanded. A big thank you to all authors and contributors o

this book providing us with more ood or thought. Some o the texts clear-ly say: The world is not perect, and aces reects this. All the un within theproject might help to cover misunderstandings and still existing problems,but its purpose is not to ignore them. It gives a sae ramework or over-coming dierences and conicts by giving examples or excellent coopera-tion. Let us not take sympathy, understanding and interest or granted, butrather let us continue to meet, exchange and discuss.


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orewordby Christine GamperInterkulturelles Zentrum


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At the beginning theres always a thought

aces Academy o Central European Schools was a project idea basedon the ollowing three belies: rstly, that education can be a key actor inthe process o European integration as it promotes the development oEuropean citizenship, secondly, that schools can play a decisive role incross-border communication processes and the development o commonvalues, and lastly, that international cooperation o schools contributes tothe strengthening o the region. Thus, supported by the Ministries o Edu-cation o the rst eight partner countries, we ounded this school networkin 2006 oering concrete opportunities or students, teachers and schoolsto actively take part in intercultural exchange and to become a vital parto a shared vision o Europe. At present the network comprises teenCentral and South Eastern European countries with a growing number o

aces member schools.

Active participation is a key element o aces. By granting internationalschool partnership projects selected in an annual competition, aces en-courages more and more students and teachers to meet and work togeth-er with peers rom other countries. Apart rom the single school projects,the aces network conerences the Kick-O Meeting and the Academy- serve as additional platorms or urther exchange, mutual learning andeducational innovation, bringing together delegations rom all project

schools as well as other stakeholders. The aces events take place in dier-ent aces countries, thus travelling there also bares the chance to experi-ence another place and to make new encounters.

To enrich and stimulate the discussions o the participants, aces regularlyinvites prominent gures rom the partner countries to share their thoughtsand visions on topics such as European values, citizenship and active par-ticipation, intercultural dialogue, conict resolution and media literacy. Thisbooklet gathers the maniold views o these writers, artists, scientists and

activists reecting also the conditions o and the experiences made in theregion. Many thanks to all the authors or contributing and or being oureducators in their own special way.

We wish you an inspiring reading experience!


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Recycle, 2005

Dan Perjovschi

Courtesy o the Artist


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European Identities,Values and Visions


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The skiesabove EuropeThere are no borders. Not for thought,

not for feelings. Fear draws the borders.

Ingmar Bergman

Goran Rebi


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As the son o immigrants, I have learnt to overcome borders romchildhood, I got used to living amongst many cultures, and reactedvery severely to the word oreigner. When asked where I liked it

better, there was no answer, as even then I elt European. That was at atime when, in every country still, the national ag was raised and a hymnwas ervently sung at midnight, at the end o broadcasting on TV. Out oyearning or a supranational afliation, I passionately watched TV showslike Games without Frontiers in which teams rom dierent Europeancountries competed against each other in imaginative sporting challenges,

and the yearly Eurovision Song Contest. As dubious as the quality o themusic was, as negligible its cultural authenticity, as incomparably high theassociated ideal was or me. O course, I also shared in the national prideo my new home country, as it was once called: Austria: twelve points, Au-triche: douze points ...

The really major European experience in my youth though, long beoreAustria became a member o the EU, was the school exchange betweenmy school and a French secondary school in Orlans. I stayed in a French

host amily or a month, separated rom my parents and riends, and everymorning I went to school with their son. In this direct manner, I was able tolearn a lot rom the lie and culture in France, and this encounter undoubt-edly signicantly marked my ducation interculturelle.

(Flashback) 50 years ago, ater the start o the launch o the E-U-R-O-P-E spaceship to the sound o Beethoven, the Euronauts, representativesrom politics, economy and culture, on board the space capsule look downto the continent that is moving urther and urther away. Overcome, they

initially point to their dierent origins. Look at the rivers there, crossingeach other, thats where I was born. The big mountain there, my town liesat its oot. In the end, they are all in agreement: This new perspective willconquer all borders! While the outline o a mysterious presence becomesvisible rom above, they praise the uture values and diversity o Europe.

(Leap in time) Today, during the ceremonious live transmission on the oc-casion o the 50th Birthday o the EU, its citizens are sitting in the towns


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on those ar-o rivers and mountains, in ront o their television sets shak-ing their heads. European values? Whats that? The utopia o a borderlessEurope has become reality or us who live within those borders. But theprocess o cultural rapprochement has stalled. What has become o theintellectual curiosity or others? Ater the countdown o the media enthu-siasm over the union o peoples and tolerance, a new ear o oreigners hasemerged in Europe in the same way.

(Cut-away) The well-known artist duo 0100101110101101.org is posting post-ers o an imaginary European blockbuster entitled United we stand inlarge cities - the plot sees a united task orce that saves the old continentat the last minute beore its ruin. Could Europe be a op?

(Dream sequence) Children o dierent languages and cultures land with

parachutes on ar-o rivers and mountains. In order to realize the dream,they scatter to go and learn about and understand the lie o others inthe same way as the ancestral athers o the idea o European unicationthought: We do not unite countries, we bring people closer to each other.In the sky, the powerul spaceship E-U-R-O-P-E is slowly pulling away.

The continent of Europe is so wide,

Mein Herr.

Not only up and down, but side to side,

Mein Herr.I couldnt ever cross it if I tried,

Mein Herr.

So I do

What I can...

Inch by inch...

Step by step...

Mile by mile...

Man by man.*

(Fade-out)

(* rom the musical Cabaret, Lyrics o Mein Herr by Fred Ebb, 1966.)


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Goran RebiThe lm director and screenwriter Goran Rebi was born in 1968 in Vrac/Vojvo-dina in the ormer Yugoslavia and grew up in Vienna. Ater his lm studies, he madeDuring the Many Years (1991) and At the Edge o the World (1992) in which he doc-umented Georgian independence and civil war. Jugolm was his rst eature lm,which he made in 1996 and which recounted the bloodshed in the Balkans. In 2000,he surprised us with the documentary The Punishment and let the yet unheard voices

o young people o Belgrade, between NATO bombing and millennium celebrations,be heard in the West. His lm Donau, Dunaj, Duna, Dunav, Dunarea (2003) is a roadmovie on water. Following a voyage down the river Danube, it combines dierentdestinies across borders. Forthcoming productions are the eature lm Illegal Gar-dens, an unusual story o passion in Iran, and the screenplay Francuski, the tragic-comic story o a Soviet convict.

Goran Rebi has been invited to many lm estivals and his prizes comprise the Aus-trian National Film Award, the Diagonale Award or Best Austrian Film, the Giam-paolo Paoli at the Festival Dei Popoli in Florence, the Audience Award in Mannheim-Heidelberg, Best Foreign Film in Ischia, Best Script in Herceg Novi, Best Film in Novi

Sad, Fipresci in Vrnjacka Banja, a Honorary Mention in Karlovy Vary, Mention de Ci-nma Jeune Public de Laon, the Austrian Talent Script Award, the Silver Award HongKongs Critics Choice and the Silver Award o Bergamo International Festival.


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The conict oinherited interspaces

Nikola Madzirov


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To be born in the Balkans usually means being born with a pacemakerin the heart, the purpose o which is to constantly appease the ar-rhythmia o the inherited East-West mental conict. The depth o

this problem is not in the sides o the world despite their historical andcivilization denotations, nor is it in the conict but it is rather in the acto inheriting, because hereditary diseases are the hardest to cure just asinherited property is the hardest to divide. Like everyone in this region,I was growing up in a time when the blood in my veins was running ac-cording to the laws o dialectical materialism, while my heart was beating

ollowing the 7/8 rhythm echoing rom the East. On the day o my comingo age in 1991, as an act o initiation, I was granted a new state system andan independent republic. From my ather I had inherited the aith in doubt,and rom my communist education the doubt in aith.In my language, in the root o the word education (obrazovanie) theword cheek (obraz) is hidden, something quite concrete and touchablewhich served as an object to punish our disobedience the usual slap-ping in school. However, in the Balkans, the moral phrases to have a clean

cheek or to preserve ones own cheek share a context much broaderthan the educational one, and translated literally they mean to keep onesdignity, i.e. to be onesel, even when the educational system in commu-nism said: Be ourselves!. The word education contained within itsel thelinguistic and the ideological conict between personal reedom and ree-dom o personality in a strictly dened uture wrapped in shiny tinoil. Butthe packages with an indenite expiry date are the most cancerous ones.In my school, we used to wear single-coloured uniorms as i dressed in

garments made o cloth or manuacturing state ags. Those textile wallsupon our bodies were supposed to be a dark cloak to hide the conictsthat arose rom the social status or the natural body growth o each indi-vidual, while in the classrooms above the loudspeaker that announcedthe importance o all state holidays ramed behind the dusty glass, the dic-tator was smiling sweetly at us; surely he was dressed in dierent clothes.However, the inner conict arisen rom the amily myths and the bemoan-ing continued to live, as there were neither clothes nor colour to cover the


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inherited hopes and ears. The cloning o the soul was noiselessly beingaccomplished not in the laboratories but in the closed classrooms.

At the bottom o my winter clothes cabinet still lies my school uniormrom twenty years ago. I believe this is one o the ew ideological monu-ments that cannot be broken nor permanently placed in a park or a ac-tory yard. The moths are to nish their job, just as the moistness in thebasements is eating away the collected works o the leaders o the ormerideological and educational matrix. Remembering becomes the main mo-tive or a conict, and the conict produces even stronger remembering,and here each second sentence begins with Do you remember... Peopleremember their childhood, and they do not orget the war.

I would like not to remember those imposed ideological aspirations and

pains which, like lead weights, were dragging behind me every time Ichanged my home place. My high school books have not just been eatenaway by time but also by all the changed spaces o uncertainty. Now thesebooks have only museum value but would not be useul even to a museumcaretaker. I believe that my child will not inherit rom me the inner conicto the interspaces as the voice o the man stuck in a lit between two oorsis nothing more than a scream or help.

Nikola MadzirovThe poet, essayist and translator Nikola Madzirov was born in a amily o Balkan Warsreugees in 1973 in Strumica, Republic o Macedonia. His poetry has been translatedinto thirty languages and published in collections and anthologies in the US, LatinAmerica, Europe and Asia. Nikola Madzirov is the Macedonian coordinator o theworld poetry network Lyrikline.

For his poetry book Relocated Stone (2007) he received the Hubert Burda poetry awardor authors born in Eastern Europe and the most prestigious Macedonian poetry prize,Miladinov Brothers, at Struga Poetry Evenings. For the book Locked in the City (1999) hewas given the Studentski Zbor award or the best debut and or the collection o poems

Somewhere Nowhere (1999) the Aco Karamanov prize. Inspired by his poetry, two shortlms were shot in Bulgaria and Croatia. The contemporary American jazz composer andcollaborator o Bjrk and Lou Reed, Oliver Lake, composed music based on Madzirovspoems which was perormed at the Jazz-Poetry Concert in Pittsburgh in 2008.

Nikola Madzirov has participated in many international literary estivals and events in theUS, Latin America, Asia and Europe and has received several international awards andellowships such as a KulturKontakt ellowship in Vienna, Internationales Haus der Au-toren in Graz, Literatur Haus N in Krems, Literarisches Tandem in Berlin, Villa Waldber-ta in Munich and International Writing Program (IWP) at the University o Iowa in the US.


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Welcome to aces, the world of smiles! When I rstcame to aces, I saw a world I had never seen before.It was a truly unique experience for me. aces feelslike a family, one big family that cares about you and

your needs, and gives you unlimited amounts of fun,good time and learning. Its like a magical place, like theones weve read about as children, a place in which magichappens. aces is the factory of smiles. It is like one bigcorporation that uses your enthusiasm and creativity

as raw materials to create happiness and knowledge.

Whenever you are attending an aces event, wherever youturn around, you will see smiling, happy people, eager tolearn, make new friends and, above all, have fun.Martin Naevski, student rom Macedonia and tutor at the aces Kick-OMeeting 2011 in Sarajevo

I want to express my gratitude and appreciationfor being part of such a great event, where peoplefrom different walks of life unite in order to become

more open-minded teachers and to enable theirstudents to gain more colourful experiences.Vjollca Shahini, teacher rom Kosovo

In all my life I never had such anamazing experience, and I think thesememories will never fade.Cristina Lupuor, student rom Moldova


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Beq Cufaj

From the rearechelons


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In early 1991, ater completing my military service, I enrolled in the Univer-sity o Pristina. Even though the Serbs were already resorting to violentmeans they had not yet expelled us rom the university.

Those were the inamous years o major political changes in Yugoslavia.Pluralist Slovenia and Croatia wanted to break away rom Yugoslavia, andBosnia and Macedonia sought to join them, too. The Kosovars were tryingto set up political alternatives to oppose the apartheid o the Miloeviregime.

Apart rom the Belgrade communists who had already turned into nation-alists, the political prisoners under Titos regime, such as Tuman in Croa-tia, Izetbegovi in Bosnia, and Demai in Kosovo, also contributed to this.

And when we talk about Kosovo, this unit o the Yugoslav Federation alsohad its political prisoners under Titos regime. That kind o liberal commu-nism was not to their liking. They stood or another model: the communismo Enver Hoxha. They wanted the unication o the Albanian-inhabited ter-

ritories and the authority o Hoxhas iron st. For many successive dec-ades, hundreds o young Albanian men rom Kosovo and other Albanian-inhabited territories in ormer Yugoslavia were sent to Belgrade jails orcarrying the idea o Enver Hoxhas communism, along with their ideal othe unication o Albanian territories. Thus, in the early 1990s, ideologicalprisons started to crumble to dust, along with Yugoslavia.

Many Albanians rom Kosovo, Montenegro, and Macedonia also managedto escape rom those prisons. They received a heros welcome. As or my-

sel, I was doing military service at that time, so I was unable to attendthose reception ceremonies which might have been a warning sign to Bel-grade that the Albanians had no intention o renouncing their aspirations,inspired also by a pathos with olklore tones that the West would helpliberate Kosovo.

But let us turn back to my studies or, to tell you the truth, I was not in-terested in politics that much. There was only one thing in my head: to


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complete my studies as soon as possible and ee the country. However, Iwas just at the beginning o my studies and a lot o work was needed orme to graduate.

There were two kinds o students at the Faculty o Literature in Pristina: Ahandul o them loved literature immensely and did not care about otherthings. The other group, which had the absolute majority, consisted o theri-ra who had been reused admission to other aculties and had chosento study literature to become teachers. Or they joined simply to kill time orengage in political activities against the Miloevi regime.

That did not bother me much because I was neither interested in attendinglectures nor socializing with my ellow-students. I hardly knew any o them.I would meet them only when we had exams.

I met him or the rst time during one exam. Let us name him N. He did notattend lectures, just like me. And he stood out as being much older thanthe other students. He was somewhere in his thirties. Just like the otheryoungsters o that state who studied in parallel institutions in Pristina, N.was short. He wore a pair o gold-rimmed spectacles. He had landed in theYugoslav prisons when he was 19 and had spent 13 years o his lie there.Now he wanted to nish the studies he had started 13 years ago.

Yet, he was very knowledgeable, having had the chance to work in the pris-on library or many years on end. He had learned many oreign languagesand had read books by many writers. But he was very modest. When Italked with him about literature, I elt like orgetting my work and my loveo it because N. was trying to tell me something with his paternal care, orto put it more precisely, the care o a political commissioner.

I do not know how long I carried on with him. I only know that that savagepart o categorically reusing every single thing prevailed in me. Particularly

that o direct political engagement or the Albanian cause in the Balkans. Iwanted to read books and perhaps even write one mysel one day. However,N. wanted not only to read books but also remain in the rear echelons ohis comrades o the Movement. I knew by now that they respected him alot. And as he was one o the main leaders o the Movement o Albanianprisoners in ormer Yugoslavia, this implied that they were tied together bya common ideal which many Albanians, or to put it more precisely, theoverwhelming majority o the Albanians in the Balkans did not care about.


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I could never understand, now and until I die, what had kept and still keepsN. in the Movement. A man who had read all the books that should be read.

The conicts in the ormer Yugoslavia took their course quickly. Thousandsand thousands o innocent people were killed, villages and cities were de-stroyed, and whole regions and states were devastated. Just or the sakeo appalling nationalism. I had already lost all contact with N. I had noidea, but assumed that he would have been part o military movements. Iwas right. Ater the war in Kosovo, the last one in the territory o ormerYugoslavia, I saw N. quite closely again, in the rear echelons o the newpoliticians who had taken o their military uniorms and had done up theirties. N. was wearing a tie, too. For years on end, I watched him on TV pro-grammes and read his name in newspapers and internet portals. Until oneday, a ew months ago, I saw that he had emerged rom the rear echelons.

He had become a minister, a minister in the central government, and wascharged with the education o young people when the state o educationin Kosovo was more difcult and serious than in any other country in Eu-rope. It seemed, however, that my ormer colleague had not read any otherbook ever since he had gotten out o prison, or he speaks like the averagederanged politician o the Balkans, a region still suering rom major prob-lems o both the past and the present, and the uture as well.

Beq CufajThe ction writer and essayist Beq Cuaj was born in Kosovo in 1970. He studiedLinguistics and Literature and moved to Germany in 1995, where he works as a writerand journalist, among others or the newspapers Frankurter Allgemeine Zeitung andNeue Zrcher Zeitung.

During the war in his homeland, he published essays in various publications in whichhe commented on the events in his country with clear-sightedness and great sympa-thy. In 2000 these essays were collected in the anthology, Kosova Rckkehr in einverwstetes Land [Kosova Return to a Devastated Country]. In 2005 he publishedhis rst novel, Der Glanz der Fremde [The Radiance o the Stranger]. To date, Cuaj

is the author o six books, poetry, essays, novels and o one theatre play. His bookshave been translated into German and Serbian, his essays into more than teen lan-guages. Cuaj lives in Germany and in Kosovo.


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Gyrgy Dalos

Europe as a visionand a reality


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In 1983, my riend and colleague Gyrgy Konrd dared to draw a map othe changes he longed or. In Antipolitics, he wrote: I dont only con-sider Budapest, Bratislava, Prague, Krakow, Warsaw and Berlin as Euro-

pean. And i I were to add St. Petersburg and even Moscow to Europe, whythen should I stop at Vladivostok? They are all part o Eurasia. There are nonational boundaries between them. One can think on a Eurasian scale. Thatis a perspective that is better suited to the second millennium than the per-spective o small Western Europe. I would like to think o mysel as a son oa utopian Europe whose arms reach the calm ocean o both San Francisco

and Vladivostok and which preserves peace in the rest o the world.On Hungarys honeymoon with the new democracy, Europe was a key con-cept. Mentions o the continent in the media reached such an extent thatit brought author Peter Esterhzy to the idea: Whoever even mentionsthe word Europe should automatically be made to pay the treasury oneForint (which would not have resulted in any real recovery in view o themountain o debts and the start o a recession). Expectations were well-meant, but nave. By taking on European standards in politics and ethics,

resounding economic and social advancement was expected democracywith all its benets but without the downsides o the capitalist economicsystem. Obviously, the development process was much more difcult. Theknocking on the EUs door alone went on or teen years.

Now weve made it, Hungary is already marking its ourth year in the newEuropean calendar. The all o communism or, as we call it, the change osystems, required enormous eorts rom the country o ten million, themarket economy did not turn out to be automatically people-riendly at

all, to put it mildly, and the previously state-subsidized culture increasinglyturned into a welare case. But what exceeded the powers o imaginationo the eighties the most was the act that the collapse o one o the twomighty military blocks could not by any means bring the world closer topeace and that, within our narrow geographical environment itsel, every-thing but a harmonious continental democracy emerged. In retrospect, wesay with a shake o the head: How could we imagine such a rosy uture atall in view o our difcult and complicated past?


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An excuse may be that most phenomena could not be anticipated at all atthe end o the Soviet era. Firstly, nobody thought o the crazy rhythm ochanges, secondly, even many economists underestimated the difcultiesin the transition to a market economy and thirdly, and perhaps most impor-tantly, nobody expected the national revival to the extent it has reachedtoday. Some countries like Poland, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and Albaniawon the rule o law in their ormer geographical span, while complete-ly new states appeared on the map in the nineties: Armenia, Azerbaijan,Byelorussia, Bosnia, Germany (as a unied country), Estonia, Georgia,Croatia, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldavia, Montenegro, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia,Slovenia, Czech Republic and Ukraine. The changes to the map aected aterritory with a population o almost ve hundred million people.

On the one hand, the creation o these modern nation states was the most

natural thing ater so many decades or even centuries o heteronomy. Edu-cated Marxists would grudgingly have described this process as objec-tively progressive, as they did about the creation o the Reich in its time.On the other hand, the decline o the great empire meant enormous disin-tegration, which, particularly in the cases where the right to sel-determi-nation was denied to most people or minorities, occasionally bore apoca-lyptic traits. While border and customs ofcials across the EU are slowlybeing condemned to unemployment, around 40 new inter-state bordershave come into being since 1989, at the time o the Euro triumph, more

than 20 new national currencies, rom the Estonian Kroon to the SlovakianKoruna, have been introduced, and while NATO, not least or nancial rea-sons, is pursuing the reorganization and standardization o the continentsdeence systems, new national armies are being created in Eastern Europe.The act that some Moldavian or Ukrainian banknotes were printed in Parisin the early nineties only highlights the absurdity o the whole process andurther illustrates the gul between East and West.

The countries which belonged to the ormer political or ideological scope

o inuence o the Soviet Union were more or less isolated rom the reeworld. Unlike most authoritarian states o the West, like Portugal, Spain,Greece or Turkey, the dictatorships o the East made sure that their peoplemissed out on the decades o post-war Europe and, with them, the mod-ernization o political lie. More than teen years separate these countriesrom the real existing socialism, but they still live today and yesterdayat least in parallel, whereby we sometimes understand the entire nationalhistory that has been swept under the carpet amongst the latest levels


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o time. Hackneyed ideas o the grey prehistoric times, the middle ages,the early modern era, the animosities sparked by centuries o oreign rule,myths, illusions and ears mark all current events rom Baku to Warsawwhich would be unimaginable west o the Leitha river.

Last December, 46 Polish ofcials rom three conservative governing par-ties proposed a motion in Sejm whereby Jesus Christ should be selected asKing o the Rzeczpospolita (Republic o Poland). This proposal that seemsso absurd and which was rejected both by a parliamentary majority andby the clergy, stems rom a 17th Century tradition. At that time, Mary waschosen as the ruler o the country by a symbolic marriage with King Kazi-mierz in order to protect Poland in the war with protestant Sweden. Therewas certainly no majority behind the patrons delusion, but religious andsymbolic politicizing is no stranger to the otherwise highly modern Polish

society in the 21st Century. The scandal over the secret service involvemento Cardinal Stanislaw Wielgus not least shows how conicting this moder-nity seems. The case o the spiritual leader is portrayed both as a strictlyprotected church secret and as a grandiose media scandal.In the autumn o the same year, unrest broke out in Hungary. The causelay in the growing social expenses o the reorm programme o the liberalsocialist government. But the immediate trigger was a speech made byPremier Ferenc Gyurcsny in which he admitted to misinormation during

the election campaign in ront o internal circles. Since the somewhat radi-cal conict coincided with the tieth anniversary o the national uprisingo 1956, some o those involved imagined themselves as direct successorsto the reedom ghters and preerred historical locations or their ralliesat that time. Other than the traditional tricolour ags with the so-calledrpd stripes, some demonstrators carried a medieval symbol which waslater used by the ar right in the pre-war period. Irrespective o the embar-rassing connotations o the latter symbol, it would surely be less probablein Germany that protests against the restrictive policies would have taken

place under the banner o Frederick Barbarossa.

But the more recent past also puts its unmistakable stamp on the politi-cal culture o reorm countries . In Hungary, in the Czech Republic andnot least in the ormer GDR (German Democratic Republic), a statisticallyquantiable mass nostalgia or the golden seventies and eighties appearsas a reex, above all, o the middle and older generation to a present timein the atmosphere o which they could no longer eel at home. In the dismal


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successor states o the ormer USSR, existential insecurity is expressedin the direct shit to communist parties which have beneted rom thisby winning several elections. In all the signicance o social plights whichdrive people into the arms o the ormer rulers, we must point out thepsychological background and gaps in this phenomenon. Tens o millionso people are living in a historical vacuum and long or a stable value hi-erarchy.

We see the sometimes violent domestic policy struggle o the East, likein Serbia, Ukraine or Georgia, as the typical atermath o socialism. Thisis vehemently ought out away rom the institutional ramework and wit-nessed as a revolution by the citizens involved. In most places, they correctthe sometimes imperect election results, but in the best o cases lead toa new division o sinecures amongst the dierent power elites which again

still smell o the old machinery, irrespective o their ideological bias.

This mainly means that all twenty-two states which gradually came intobeing out o the ormer East Block in 1989/91 and which are currently onthe most dierent levels o integration, are by no means idealized Euro-pean partners, even i they ull the ofcial EU acceptance criteria. Theywill remain captive to the logic o their historicity and will only be able toovercome it o their own accord. On the question o democratizing andhumanizing the domestic conditions o these countries, o driving the gov-

erning groups to respect human rights, it is the greatest possible mistaketo reuse or accelerate club membership as a means o applying pressure.We cannot imprison a country in the community o reedom-loving peo-ples, as it were.

At the same time, this dierent nature o the new members and more soo applicants should have us doubting. The precursor o the EU, the Eu-ropean Community ounded in 1957, came about at the height o the ColdWar when the continent wanted to assert itsel within the scope o the

Atlantic Alliance. Two years ater the creation o the Warsaw Pact and oneyear ollowing the suppression o the Hungarian uprising, the end o theblock conrontation was hardly oreseeable. When the European Parlia-ment began its work in 1979, nobody expected that ree elections couldever take place beyond the Iron Curtain. Even the highly praised dtentedid not really bring the Eastern Block countries closer to their Westernneighbours, and the only rm and indissoluble bond between dictatorshipsand democracies was their growing debt.


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The collapse o the Soviet Empire presented a challenge to the EU, a taskit could not be equal to in its existing structures to date. Whether we wantto or not, the integration o each individual new member is changing thecharacter o the community o states, and a potential doubling o theEuropean territory and population, a logical step based on its principles,would have burst open its original structure. Paradoxically, the acceptanceo Turkey would cause ewer technical problems than the integration ogeographically and culturally closer candidates such as Albania or Georgia.In any case, a massive expansion would complicate the control over thewhole system and it would even now be advisable to think about decen-tralized solutions while maintaining the value community.

Finally, please allow me to make a personal comment. Even i our aestheticoptimistic vision o the eighties has been disproved by actual develop-

ments, I dont believe that the private uturology that was developed onthe kitchen tables o dissidents was a mere intellectual pastime. On thecontrary: At that time, we produced ideas with everyday intensity with-out caring whether they would ever be approved or promulgation. Today,however, our society enjoys the most liberal reedoms o speech in its his-tory and it seems to have, and I say this with some melancholy, little desire,daring and imagination to think about its own uture.

Gyrgy Dalos

Gyrgy Dalos was born in 1943 in Budapest, Hungary. From 1962-1967 he studied atMoscow University. In 1968, he was sentenced or subversive activities and orbid-den to work. Consequently, he worked as a translator rom German and Russian. In theseventies he was involved in the Hungarian Democratic Opposition. Dalos receiveda scholarship or the Berlin Artist Programme rom 19841985 and was employed inthe Eastern Europe Research Institute o the University o Bremen. From 19871995he worked as a reelance journalist in Vienna. He was Board Member in the HeinrichBll Foundation rom 19921996, Leader o the Hungarian Institute o Culture in Berlinrom 19951999 and literary curator or Hungary at the Frankurt Book Fair in 1999.

He has been awarded the Adelbert-von Chamisso-Prize 1995, the Gryphius Special

Prize 1999, the Golden Badge awarded by the President o the Hungarian Republic2000, the Order o Merit o the Republic o Hungary 2006 as well as the Leipzig BookPrize or European Understanding 2010His most important books are: The Circumcision (1990), Proletarier aller Lnder, ents-chuldigt mich! (Ende des Ostblockwitzes) [Proletariats o all countries, I apologize!(End o the East Block joke)] (1993), The Guest rom the Future (1996), Der Gott-sucher [Godseeker] (1999), Ungarn in der Nussschale. Geschichte meines Landes[Hungary in a nutshell. History o my country] (2004), Die Balaton Brigade (2006),1956: Austand in Ungarn [1956: Uprising in Hungary] (2006) and Jugendstil [ArtNouveau] (2007).


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Immigrant, 2005

Dan Perjovschi



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School Europe


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Werner Wintersteiner

A school called Europe Learning to live togetherwith those who are

diferentLEurope occidentale, foyer de la dimination la plus importante qui ait

jamais exist dans le monde, est aussi le seul foyer des ides mancipa-

trices qui vont saper cette domination.

Edgar Morin


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Systematic learning requires special institutions, even schools. But inturn, schools require contact with the outside world in order to makeliving learning possible. Because through all learning in individual

subjects, we must not orget that the point o learning, that is learningwith a capital L, is not specialized knowledge, but education, i.e. the abilityto integrate knowledge rom individual disciplines into a world view andthereore develop into a person who can make an active contribution tothe tasks o society.

The most important lesson we learn today is to live together peaceully, butwith inevitable conicts, in a globalized world. Only a democratically organ-ized and politically conscious world community will be in a position to solvethe challenges o our time a humane lie or all o the earths inhabitants,the conquering o environmental threats and the preservation o peace.

For this purpose, Europe is both the ends and the means, both the prob-lem and the solution: Learning or Europe means learning to live together

in a united, but by no means unied, continent. But how can we learn orEurope? Only as an encounter with the never-ending diversity in Europe.This diversity results rom the long and rich history o the continent which we mustnt orget is both a history o racism and colonialism and a his-tory o enlightenment and emancipation. For the uture, learning meanslearning rom both these strands o history.

Thats why the Academy o Central European Schools (aces) is so impor-tant: aces is a Central European project, but a project with no centre, cre-

ated or transversal exchange. aces is more trans-cultural than intercultural,which means that individual cultures are not seen as sel-contained andcompletely dierent units but as dierent and dynamic mixtures whichyearn or new exchange and new mixtures. And it could even turn out thatimmigrants sitting in more and more European classrooms are an importantconnecting joint between European youth who dont have to use a oreignlanguage in order to communicate with others. aces is a project o politicaleducation, but not on a national level. It is rather about inventing European


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citizenship, which is currently showing the rst signs o existence politi-cally, or example in the right to vote in municipal elections or EU citizens.

Finally, it is signicant that relations between teachers and pupils have alsobeen revolutionized by projects such as aces: Pupils receive new tasks andsignicantly more responsibility. They must organize their learning them-selves, muster all their linguistic and communicative abilities in order tocommunicate with young people rom other countries, and they must, to acertain extent, teach themselves. They dont need teachers so much to tellthem what they should do but more to show them how they should do whatthey want to do and help them actually do it and evaluate it. That meansthat teachers also have new tasks and probably more responsibility. But thatis the other side o it, that learning in projects such as this is more relevantto lie than normal schooling, and thereore also more personally important.

School Europe can thereore become a actor in the renewal o school.

Werner WintersteinerWerner Wintersteiner is university proessor o the didactics o German and peaceeducator. He is the ounder and director o the Center or Peace Research and PeaceEducation as well as the current director o the Austrian Educational CompetenceCenter at the Alpen-Adria-University Klagenurt, Austria. Furthermore he is lecturerat the European Peace University, Stadtschlaining, Austria, member o the Council othe Peace Education Commission o IPRA (International Peace Research Association)and member o the Advisory Board o the Global Campaign or Peace Education.Werner Wintersteiner is co-editor o the periodical inormation zur deutschdidaktik,the Culture o Peace Yearbook, the peace-educational periodical Friedenserziehungkonkret as well as member o the scientic board o the periodical Wissenschat &Frieden.

His books include Pdagogik des Anderen. Bausteine r eine Friedenspdagogik inder Postmoderne (1999) and Htten wir das Wort, wir bruchten die Waen nicht.Erziehung r eine Kultur des Friedens (2001). He is also co-editor o Education to-wards Intercultural Understanding. The European Youth Academy Handbook (2002).


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aces is not an organization, its a family at its nest, withfellows from all over Europe. Its about building bridges between

apparently distant and different countries. I have found outthat people from other countries are just like me. Today, aces is

something our lyceum breathes with, a brand new beginning for ourschool community. T he aces spirit has settled rmly in my heartand in the heart of each of its participants.Cristina Guu, student rom Moldova

T he world changes when people change. If all acesparticipants have had some life changing moment or onethat has opened their eyes for a problem or a solutionto it, that means that the world has been changed alittle bit for the better. T his experience, for most ofus I think, means that we have grown as people because

of some difculty we faced while trying to realize ourprojects, some strength we showed or achieved whilefacing real life.Yordanka Dimova, student rom Bulgaria

T his experience has changed my life forever. T he moments andmemories I have lived there have made an impact on my life, andI will never forget them. I would like to share them with myfellow students and I would like to inspire them to make adecision to change their lives, to change their future.Ivan Rossa, video team member rom Croatia


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Hard timesboost creativity

Michal Hvorecky


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Icome rom a amily o teachers. Both my grandmother and my mothertaught dea children and those with impaired hearing, while my granda-ther and ather lectured in universities and wrote textbooks. Other rela-

tives have taught German, music, biology and other subjects and special-ized elds. In act, I also teach, albeit a sporadic and very specic subject writing because I believe that there is room or improvement also in thisart orm.

The older I get, the more I realize just how strongly pedagogues inuenced

me having had my share o excellent and eeble ones alike. It was mostlythose who quickly had to retrain ater the Velvet Revolution who ailed tocope with what it was they were supposed to be teaching. One proessorat grammar school, or example, was lecturing on books that she clearlywasnt even acquainted with best o all I recall how she spoke about theconclusion o Kakas novel The Trail which, in reality, was never nishedThen there was another teacher that would read a lot and who knew ex-actly how to get her audience enthused about the work in question.

In recent years, I have been invited regularly to speak at secondary schoolswhich I enjoy doing even though it is mostly unpaid. I see it, possibly na-ively, as my obligation or most students I represent the only contact theyhave with contemporary literature throughout the our years they spendat high school. Almost everywhere the curriculum ends at 1945, with theother sixty-ve rich literary years since then being let to the good will othe Slovak language teachers and the willingness o their pupils. I try to in-doctrinate the students with the passion or reading contemporary novelsand short stories, and the talented ones I encourage or creative writing.

Teachers Day on March 28 is now hardly commemorated by anyone hereat all, and i it is, then it is reduced to pathetic statements by some deputyprime minister about the knowledge, sacrice and patience o the archi-tects o human individuality. Its just as well that Slovak teachers are sosel-sacricing and have endless patience, or they would have gone onstrike long ago. Teachers in most neighboring countries earn considera-bly more. Slovak teachers earn a third less than the average wage, which


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means roughly 170 Euro less than the rest o the population, and even lessthan crane operators or metal workers. Even though their salaries werenally increased a little last year [Ed. in 2009], ination took its chunk outo the total amount in the end. Salaries in state administration grew even inthe ace o the economic crisis When it comes to remuneration in Slova-kia, priority is always given to soldiers and the police with the justicationthat they are our security orces. It is as i teachers represented no orceat all. The lack o appreciation o tutors has gone on too long. In 2010, thestarting salary o a university-educated teacher is 497 Euro. With this pros-pect, pedagogy graduates head anywhere but to the education system.

Even though the cost o living in Slovakia is on a par with that in Austriaand Germany, or instance, hundreds o people in similar proessions tomine, with a university education and work experience, have to make ends

meet here with this income o 400 or 500 Euro a month the likes o art-ists, thespians, poets, librarians, critics or literary translators. Whats more,creative people have to pay two percent more in taxes than the rest o thepopulation, as they have to pay compulsory ees also to post-communistart unds. This is why I admire all the more the many artists and teacherswho put so much creative energy into their work, in the ace o such una-vourable conditions. Hard times are oten inspirational times or creativity.I have spent several years abroad, had a ew books published there andimproved my command o at least two oreign languages. Many people in

Germany have told me just to stay there, and I admit that I gave it someconsideration. The act is, though, I am at home in Bratislava and that iswhere I want to stay, even though there are no bursaries in Slovakia orcreativity, or literature houses, or the kind o interest in culture so common-place in more advanced countries. Thats why I am so glad the schools inmy country are active participators in the aces project, which encouragespedagogic endeavours and inspires the pupils. The teachers do deserveproper recognition and acclaim or their achievements.

Even ater thirty-ve years o practise my mother is still teaching with pas-sion. With shock in her voice she recently told me how the Ministry hadcalled her school: The pupils were being compelled to go and welcome theRussian president at the Slavn War Memorial, a symbol o true socialism inthe capital city on the Danube. I had to do the same as a child, every timethe Soviet leaders visited Bratislava. Well, now even this is starting to berevived. In my country, we keep on learning till the end o our days.


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Michal HvoreckyThe ction writer Michal Hvorecky was born in 1976 in Bratislava, Slovakia. He got hisMasters Degree at the Constantine the Philosopher University in Nitra. Hvorecky isthe author o six books o ction and one theatre play. His books amongst themPly, Eskorta and Dunai v Americe have been translated into German, Polish, Italian,Bulgarian and Czech. His plays have been perormed in Germany and Austria.

In 2004, he was ellow o the Writing Programme at the University o Iowa and in2009 he won the International Journalism Award in Berlin.


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Dialogue 2, 2008

Dan Perjovschi



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Intercultural Dialogue


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Europe -Forever young

Desa Muck


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Iam a writer, so I wont try to be a philosopher or give you wise advice,I will only tell you a story. Neither am I young anymore, not or a longtime now, so I am ull o memories like an old ur cap is ull o dust. These

memories lled me up and smothered me with nostalgia bringing me tothe verge o tears all the time or making me smile like an annoying oolwhen I was attending the Academy o Central European Schools competi-tion in Vienna last year as a member o the jury. I am a little embarrassedto admit that I actually cried an old mans tears when I was looking at theprojects o the young people. They were so creative, innovative, they radi-

ated dedication to the subjects and reedom o the spirit demonstratingthe great amount o work they put in the projects. But I was most touchedby how group work connected the young people. Regardless o what na-tionality, culture or habits identied them, they became riends and someeven ell in love.In my days o ollowing their socializing and youthul eagerness, I wasthinking a lot o my youth. I lived in the period when Slovenia was part oYugoslavia. At those times our youth travelled around a lot. Since I did not

have this opportunity, I quite envied them. Those were the times o hip-pies; crowds o young people were hitchhiking like nomads all over Europewith the main destination mainly being Aghanistan and India. Not manyo them came here, to Ljubljana. Maybe this is why we considered themas some kind o stars. With them they brought a glimpse o a richer worldwhere you could get everything that was not possible in our country atthat time. We were not poor or hungry, but there were plenty o restric-tions on imports rom the western countries. We observed them sittingwith their huge rucksacks in ront o Figovec, a place in the centre o the

city, where young people used to gather. They had long hair, and the airaround them quivered with reedom. They smelled o adventures and Ipainully wished to be one o them.

Whenever it was possible, we made contacts with them, invited them toour homes and listened to wonderul stories rom their journeys. We askedthem about everything, as though we ourselves just intended to set outon the road and imagined this would really happen. We bragged about


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them in ront o our riends and elt incredibly important to have met them.Those young travellers were the biggest trophies o our youth.

So, the greatest miracle or me was when I nally earned my own moneyand could aord some modest journeys. I absorbed every moment, everyview with all my heart, so that I could live on my little inner treasure or along time when I was back home. This is why I took pleasure in watchingthis relaxed celebration o youth and riendship, and this beauty o natural-ness with which they socialised in Vienna. Despite the act that the projectsthey careully prepared were all incredibly interesting you will not believeit, but I remember each o them and I was amazed at their inventivenessand reshness, it was their riendship that most astonished me. And theirpartnership as well. And not even the competition could break the bondsthey made.

I am grateul they let me be part o their youth.

Desa MuckDesa Muck was born in Ljubljana in 1955 and is one o Slovenias most versatile au-thors or children and young people. Her novels, textbooks and radio plays have re-ceived many awards and have been widely translated. Many o her books belong tothe set texts or the childrens reading competition Bralna znacka.

Beore Desa Muck made writing her main proession, she worked as a technical illus-trator, a carer or mentally handicapped children, an actress and a presenter, and shepublished 150 dime novels. She attracted a great deal o attention with the parallelpublication o her two books or young people, Pod milim nebom and the good-humoured textbook Blazno resno o seksu (1999).Since 1985, she has also been working in television and radio, has adapted RoaldDahls Mathilda or the theatre. In 2000 she was the leading actress in the TV seriesBolninica na Robu. The author lives in Mokronog with her three daughters.


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You are really doing an extremely good thing,bringing all these people together and enablingthem to encounter various different cultures,nations, and points of view and thus to pull downstereotypes, to become tolerant and to feelequal and equally important.Milena Fortner, teacher and jury member rom Slovenia

Students have more connections, see the world froma different perspective, become open-minded, learnthe skills and benets of networking, understandhow the world works around them. Parents

appreciate the positive change in their children andtheir high motivation. Schools are better off whenthe stakeholders have positive attitudes towardsalternative forms of educational activities.A teacher who participated in an online survey on aces in 2010

I have become more open-minded. Now I am able to nd asolution more easily. I made a lot of friends around Europe andI found out that it does not matter where you are from. Itis important to feel free to talk and tell your points of view.

I was in different situations. I have realized that the worldis not as pink as I thought it was. A lot of children whotook part in the project this year discovered the joy of givingand the fact that only we can change the future of many people.Volunteering makes you a better person and this world needs

this kind of people!Catalina Maria Vlad, student rom Romania and speaker at the aces Ceremony 2012


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Fatos Kongoli

Where areyou rom?


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The event I want to tell you about happened about hal a centuryago, when I was a teenager in the sixth or seventh grade. I lived in aquarter o the Albanian capital where there was a ootball stadium

and a nearby building that was unlike the others: It only housed oreigndiplomats and their amilies. In ront o the building was a eld enclosedby a ence.

The eld beyond the ence was usually deserted, except in the summermonths during beach season, when it was lively. You could see many chil-

dren playing there boys and girls arriving or a holiday rom various coun-tries with their diplomat parents. We never mixed with them, nor did theymix with us. Sometimes they would play ootball on their side o the enceand we would play ootball on our side. One aternoon, our ball went overthe ence. Fortunately, there were no oreign kids there so we drew lots tosee who would go to the other side and get the ball. It turned out that Iwas the one to go.

I entered the oreign zone through a hole in the ence and, while I was

trying to get the ball, a boy emerged rom the building. We stood ace toace and he smiled, and I smiled. He asked me i I understood at least someEnglish and I conrmed that I did yes, I understood some English. It wasthe rst time that I had the chance to speak to a oreign boy o my ageand use my knowledge o English rom school, and I was delighted whena question just popped out o my mouth: Where are you rom? He toldme that he was Bulgarian and he told me his name Georgi. To be polite, Ialso told him my name. Finally, as I was walking away, he suddenly made aproposal that took me a while to understand: to organise a ootball match

between the kids rom the oreigners building and the kids rom our neigh-bourhood. I ound mysel in an awkward position as I was not sure whethermy riends would accept it, but I did not want to lose ace and I promisedthat I would talk to them and inorm him soon about the date o the match.

I returned to the other side o the ence and told my riends about theproposal. At rst, they were all thrilled and ull o competitive spirit un-til Fredi, one o the boys who played or the school team, said: I cannot


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promise anything now as I need to speak to my dad. I he lets me play withthe oreign boys, then its ne, but i he doesnt, I wont. Those words camelike a cold shower and our initial euphoria aded. However, I was not awareo the problems I was creating or my ather in my nave attempt to organ-ize this match with the oreign boys.That evening, someone knocked on the door o our at. I heard a quiet con-versation and then my athers voice calling or me. Two police ofcers stoodat the door. What have you done?, my ather asked, and I stood there eel-ing conused and shrugged my shoulders. He ordered me to get dressedand we accompanied the two police ofcers to the police station. They letus in a hall or a long time beore taking us to a room where two peopledressed in civilian clothes were waiting or us. In the meantime, my athertortured me with questions about what I had done and each time I would

answer nothing. It never occurred to me that this incident could in any waybe related to my meeting with Georgi on the other side o the ence.

I cannot tell you how long we were in that room with those two people incivilian clothes. They were trying to nd out what I had been talking aboutwith the oreign boy, who else was there, whether I had met that boy orany o the other boys beore and how I knew that he was Bulgarian andthey just looked at each other when I told them that I asked him in English:Where are you rom?. Aha, one o them said. Where are you rom?

Where are you rom? And then the gloomier o the two ordered me toleave the room, while my ather remained behind.

When he nally emerged rom the room, my ather was pale. I never oundout what they had told him. I you want them to send me to jail, you goand practise your English with that Bulgarian boy, do you understand?,he told me as we went back home. His expression shocked me. I under-stand, I answered quietly, although I certainly did not understand any-thing. I wanted to ask him what I had done, but I kept my mouth shut. I had

to just listen to him and do what I was told and never again meet withthe boys rom the oreigners building; otherwise he would be suering theconsequences.


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Fatos KongoliFatos Kongoli was born in the central Albanian town o Elbasan in 1944 and grew upin Tirana. He studied Mathematics in Tirana and China and, ater having graduatedin 1967, worked as a mathematics teacher or two years. Subsequently, he wrote orthe cultural magazine Drita and worked as an editor or the publishing house NamFrashri.

Fatos Kongoli is deemed to be a co-ounder o the Albanian democracy movementbut eventually gave up his political activities in avour o a career as a writer andtranslator. Since 1972, he regularly publishes novels in which he addresses the deadhand o communism, its surveillance machinery as well as the political and socialupheavals which have ollowed since. Along with Ismail Kadare, Kongoli is the authorread most in contemporary Albania and is deemed to be the most important chroni-cler o the transition rom communism to democracy. An English translation o hisnovel The Loser was published in 2007.

Kongoli has received numerous distinctions or his work. He has been awarded theAlbanian National Award or Literature several times (including or the best novel o

the year and or his complete works). His novel The Dream o Damokles was awardedthe Balkanika prize in 2003.


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Recognize

Zlata Filipovi


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Peace is so precious. We dont know it, until we lose it. It is like health wenever ully appreciate how lucky we are to be healthy until a simple coldor a sore throat reminds us how good it was beore we had it. I am a

rm believer in never losing sight o the value and preciousness o peace, anddoing our very best in preserving and maintaining it, doing our very best toavoid ever losing it and i it ever arises, doing everything in our power to pre-vent conict or resolve it as soon as possible. The longer the conict lasts, thedeeper it goes, and the more difcult it is to get out o it, to get back to peace.

I thought that wars happen to other people, much like we think diseaseand poverty happen to others. I thought it happens to people with namesand lives dierent to my own. I distanced them as dierent because ter-rible things dont happen to me, to my amily, to my city, my country. But inthe 1990s Bosnia it all unortunately happened to us. Uncalled or, innocentor its sudden and brutal arrival in my lie, I learned the preciousness opeace, its ragility and the cruelty o war. And how being me was no im-munity against experiencing conict.

I am also a rm believer in the act that the only way to truly ght war andconict is through the heart and the stomach, through empathy and com-passion. It is so illogical to resort to such a high scale o violence to resolvedisputes and disagreement that it seems insufcient to just rationally argueagainst it. The only way to see the other and its point o view is to recognizeonesel in the other. All o us around the world have very simple desires tobe sae, to prosper, to learn, to have riends and grow, to be surrounded byour amilies, to listen to music, eat well, have holidays, new shoes, cool T-shirts.

The trick is that all o us whatever colour, nationality, ethnic or socialgroup have these same desires. The only way to resolve conict is to getback to the basics that we are all essentially the same, and that we all,essentially, want the same, very simple things.

It is only by being able to ully identiy and empathize with the other,realizing that by denying the other the same desires and rights that wehave eels the same as it would eel to be denied them ourselves that we


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can hope or more lasting solutions to preventing conict and sustainingand maintaining our precious peace in our homes, schools, communities,towns, countries, region.

I was inspired and delighted to see the work done at this years aces Acad-emy. To see young, creative, involved and enterprising people engage andwork with each other. I quietly walked around them, listening to the lan-guages and accents they had, like a little spy I plunged into their conversa-tions and discoveries they made about each other through their collabo-rations. What stood out in my mind is hearing them all recognize eachother. While some media, politicians and historians high above would labelthem dierent, perhaps even historically and politically at odds with eachother, they themselves were astounded by how similar they were. Music,sports, riendships, love, amily they make sense to us all. That recog-

nition that the other does not exist, that the other is the same asourselves, that the other is me happened. The most valuable lessonhad been learned, and then, on top o it, they came up with creative andinspiring solutions to collaborative and educational projects that dealt withenvironment (another precious thing we all share), minority and disabilityrights (another recognition o the other) and many other relevant issues.

What a pleasure it had been to be surrounded by all that good will andenergy, by all that potential. The un, the kindness and generosity they

expressed towards each other, the thirst or knowledge and desire to shareare all elements that will not only help all the individuals grow into the bestpersons they can be they will also have a collective eect on the devel-opment and growth o their schools, teachers, amilies, communities andcountries. Motivated, hopeul, engaged and empowered, they are takingownership o their own uture and, with it, a more hopeul uture or us all.I can only hope that each school in Central and Eastern Europe will havethe privilege and luck in being involved in one o the uture aces projects.By meeting and working together, the imagined boundaries between di-

erent people will be broken, and that hugely important Recognition willtake place. And it is the key to a more hopeul uture or us all a healthy,peaceul and prosperous one.


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Zlata FilipoviZlata Filipovi became renowned internationally when her teenage diary, publishedin 1993 and chronicling lie in war-torn Sarajevo, was an instant bestseller. Publishedin editions by Viking and Pufn Books, it has since been translated into thirty-six lan-guages. She holds a BA in Human Sciences rom Oxord University (2001) and MPhilin International Peace Studies rom Trinity College Dublin (2003). She has spokenextensively at schools and universities around the world about her experiences and

has worked on many occasions with dierent organizations such as the Anne FrankHouse, UN and UNICEF, also being a three-time member o UNESCO Jury or Chil-drens and Young Peoples Literature Prize or Tolerance.

Her written work includes contributions to several books and newspapers, includinga oreword or The Freedom Writers Diary (1997) and the English translation o Mi-losevic: The Peoples Tyrant (2004), or which she has also written a oreword. Morerecently, she has written a contribution to the Prentice Hall Literature, The PenguinEdition: Grade 6 (2007) and has co-edited Stolen Voices: Young Peoples War Diariesorm WWI to Iraq (2007) which has come out in eleven other countries. She heldinternship positions at the UN Children and Armed Conict Division in New York and

International Crisis Group Ofces in Paris. She sits on the executive committee oAmnesty International Ireland and currently works or a documentary lm productioncompany in Ireland.


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Jeans, 2003

Dan Perjovschi



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Drawings onIntercultural Dialogue


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Dialogue 4, 2005

Dan Perjovschi



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Dan Sorin PerjovschiDan Sorin Perjovschi was born in 1961 in Sibiu, Romania. He is a visual artist mix-ing drawing, cartoon and grafti in artistic pieces drawn directly on the walls o themuseums and contemporary spaces all over the world. His drawings comment oncurrent political, social or cultural issues. He has played an active role in the devel-opment o the civil society in Romania through his editorial activity with Revista 22cultural magazine in Bucharest and has stimulated exchange between the Romanianand international contemporary artistic scenes. He is currently living and working in

Bucharest, Romania.

Dan Perjovschi had exhibitions in the United States o America, Portugal, Germany,Spain, Hungary, Switzerland, Sweden, Great Britain etc. Recent books o the artist arePostmodern Ex-Communist (2007), Non-Stop 1991-2006 (2006), Kunstraum MyWorld (2006), Naked Drawings (2005), I Draw I Happy (2004).

For his work the artist has received several awards amongst them the George Mac-inuas Prize 2004, the Henkel CEE Prize or Contemporary Drawing, Vienna 2002, andthe Gheorghe Ursu Human Rights Foundation Award, Budapest 1999.


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East Meets West, 2007

Dan Perjovschi



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ActiveCitizenship


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Learning to be aparticipatory citizen Why does it matter

at all?

Vedrana Spaji-Vrka


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By the end o the 1990s, I was preparing research on how primaryschool pupils understand rights, democracy and citizenship. I drat-ed a questionnaire and, in order to check it, I asked a group o 4th

graders who attended an elementary school in my neighbourhood to helpme review the content. They accepted with great enthusiasm. In the nextew days, we engaged in a ruitul discussion on the content o the ques-tionnaire. It was a kind o mutual training through which we did not onlycome up with a valid research instrument but learned a lot rom each otheras well. A week later one o them came to me visibly enraged.

Democracy sucks! Participation sucks!, he said with tears in his eyes.Is that so? Why? What happened?

In a shaken voice he told me that, a day ater we had nished our work,the pupils decided to make their teacher practice democracy in theirclassroom. The idea was to simulate the elections or the top governingpositions in the country, and, in order to make pressure on the teacher,they agreed to enter their class next morning with protests, such as: De-

mocracy in school!, We want elections!, Its our right to vote!, Ourvoice counts!, and so on. The teacher (whom I had told about their as-sistance earlier) and their classmates accepted the idea and so the wholeclass did democracy that day.

Well, thats a great success! You should be proud o yoursel!, I inter-rupted him.

There is nothing to be proud o! What you said is all wrong! Democracy

is not air!

As I had no idea what went wrong I began to eel miserable mysel. I triedto recall our discussion to nd the clue but nothing helped me explain hisreaction.

Could you tell me the whole story? It might help to explore it together?


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Well, he went on, we proposed to have big elections: the president, primeminister, minister or deence, and minister or police, and the teacher add-ed some other posts, too. The candidates were nominated and three o uswere on the list. Then the teacher came up with the names o her avourites.

So who was the winner in the end?, I asked.Guess who! The teachers avourites, o course!You got no position?No, the teacher said we would be the citizens only!Whats wrong with the role o the citizen?You are kidding me, right?No, I am not. Dont you remember our discussion: The power o the citi-zens comes rom their rights; the power o the president and the ministersdepends on how well they ulll their duties towards the citizens.

Then why do the candidates make such a uss to be elected? Isnt it thatthe president and the ministers get rich ater the elections while the citi-zens remain poor?

Well, I tried to explain but he ignored me. Didnt you tell us that votingis an important right o the citizen, that it is through it that citizens exercisetheir power? Why didnt you tell us that once the citizens enjoy that right,they actually lose their power? It happened to us in our class the other day,

didnt it? What could I do as a citizen? Nothing! The whole day we werethere to obey their orders! When we protested, they said we behaved un-democratically! And our teacher agreed! She said that democratic citizenswere those with good manners! I thats so why is participation so impor-tant? Are you sure you got it right?

Ater more than a decade these questions are still glowing in my head andI still have doubts whether I got it right. I have conducted several studiesin the same eld with thousands o elementary and secondary school stu-

dents and university graduates. A vast majority o my respondents is posi-tive about democracy but only a ew trust democratic institutions and po-litical leaders. Many believe they understand how democracy works despitethe act that, as they declare, they do not learn much about it in schools,are little inormed about political events and are lacking critically appropri-ate knowledge and skills. A great number also conrms that they are awareo the importance o their own active participation in the decision-makingprocesses, but only ew say they know how to engage in a dialogue, pro-


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duce the arguments and deend their interests without ear, anger or with-drawal. Many readily answer that they are aware o their own responsibilityor democratic development, but only a small number conrm their en-gagement in the activities that benet their communities, either individuallyor as members o some local civil organization.

Democracy cannot survive and cannot be strengthened without the empow-ered citizen. To be empowered means to be inormed, knowledgeable, activeand responsible. Neither o these is possible without learning that prepares usor critical questioning o ourselves and the world around us, that makes usopen or dialogue and sharing, and that makes us ready or active participa-tion in transorming those ideas and practises that work against democraticsociety and its citizens. No one could and will do it or us. The supreme dutythat we have as citizens is to engage in what we know is a better world or all.

I do believe aces Academy o Central European Schools has the power tohelp us all get it and do it right.

Vedrana Spaji-VrkaVedrana Spaji-Vrka is ull proessor (tenure) o the Faculty o Humanities and So-cial Sciences, University o Zagreb as well as the ounder and presently director othe Research and Training Centre or Human Rights and Democratic Citizenship othe same aculty. She holds courses in Educational Anthropology, Interculturalism andEducation, Culture and Identity, Education or Human Rights and Democratic Citizen-ship, European Education and Critical Theories o Education. She has held lectures andcourses internationally and also contributed to the CIVITAS BiH & the Council o Eu-rope teacher certication programme Education or Democracy and Human Rights.Ms Spaji-Vrka has also coordinated or participated in a number o research projectson a national and international level in her working elds. She is the co-author o theCroatian National Human Rights Education Programme, the European Peace EducationProgramme (EURED), the Council o Europes publications in Education or DemocraticCitizenship, the UNESCO and the Council o Europes joint Tool on Quality Assurancein Education or Democratic Citizenship, and the author o some hundred academicpapers and books.

Since 1997 her work has been closely related to the Council o Europe and UNESCO.

As a regional expert in human rights, peace and democratic citizenship education shehas participated in conerences and seminars in various countries.

She has received several awards or her work, including the Fulbright Grant or Teach-ing and Research or the University o Caliornia at Berkeley, the National Award IvanFilipovi or promoting educational theory and practice in Croatia and the EuropeanCircle o the European Movement - Croatia or an extraordinary contribution to pro-moting European values in Croatia and the Croatian country in the world in the eldo human rights.


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Hedvig Morvai-Horvat

Citizensor changeDont mourn organize!

Howard Zinn


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On December 19, 2009, the borders with Europe opened wideto Serbia, Montenegro and Macedonia. A non-visa regime or thecitizens o these countries to travel to the signatory states o the

Schengen agreement had arrived.

Eight years earlier, the citizens o South-East Europe gathered in a net-work o non-governmental organizations and local governances, connect-ing through cross-border initiatives and concrete cooperation projectsin dierent areas dened a campaign or abolishing visas. The young

organized around youth activities, local administration ofcials involvedin programmes or exchanging experiences, teachers and students in co-operation with schools in the region, artists in joint creation processes,journalists and students had all ormulated a request or abolishing visasbetween the South-East European countries and the countries o the Eu-ropean Union. Petitions were signed, conerences were organized, expertmeetings, seminars, counselling, art perormances and analyses were car-ried out, reports and a book with stories rom a queue or visas were pub-lished... The citizens o the region dened the problem in the context o

their dissatisaction caused by negative experiences, ormulated requests,and actively participated in a regional campaign that lasted or years. Amajor political and security issue, the system o the visa regime became asubject o citizens activism.Spring 1998. The Noise Spring Party in Novi Sad. A musical event organ-ized by the Student Union during which a polystyrene wall was blownapart ollowed by the beating o 20 drums, dictating a rhythm or chant-ing requests to destroy the walls built around Serbia, both rom within and

rom the outside. This marked the beginning o the idea to ound a musicestival by the students movement as part o the ght or change. As astudents initiative, the EXIT estival originated in the year 2000. Today,it is the biggest music estival in South-East Europe and it was, in act,started as a public call to resistance and a big Get out to vote campaignthat gathered thousands o young people rom Serbia, calling on themto vote in the orthcoming elections and to topple down the regime oSlobodan Miloevi.


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The changes came a ew months later, on October 5, in a democratic peo-ples revolution. Citizens activism, people gathered in collectives aroundcommon interests with the aim o achieving positive social changes, usingdemocratic means and led by a vision o humane relations, peace and lib-erty are common denominators in these two examples o major changes.

Civil initiative was a catalyst; however, it was never enough by itsel or suc-cess in the liberalization o the visa regime. It served to raise awareness aboutthe problem, or public advocacy and lobbying and, most importantly, toexert pressure on the authorities to deal with this problem with high priority.Apart rom this efcient partnership o civil society and the authorities, thiscampaign had another crucial element, and that is regional inter-connectionand cooperation o various social actors. The orce o a joint message, therequest to provide reedom o movement or the citizens in the region, was

extraordinarily strong and ocused. Surmounting the various obstacles the state borders, the cultural dierences, the historical misunderstandingsand the post-war heritage these common goals linked people, and it wasconrmed that the time had come to create new platorms o cooperationbased on common interests and using new communication strategies.

The young Hungarian art theorist Peter Fuchs said: Star Wars means thesame in all languages., reerring to generation linkage that is perceivedeven more signicantly in a digital era in which the young create a new

common identity as members o the same generation exposed to similarinuences o the globalized world. In this way, discovering compatibilityand common experience, the young people o today interconnect muchmore easily and nd a basis or interaction and cooperation.

In the course o its ten-year existence, the EXIT estival has developed, in away, using an open source model, providing a vital platorm or the partici-pation o the young generations o the Balkans, promoting social account-ability and activity. Preserving its strong social dimension, the estival repre-

sents a ramework or artists, cultural workers, civil organizations and visitorsin which, aside rom their primary roles, everyone can also engage in otheractivities and dierent topics. The key words are choice and exibility. In thesame way as virtual systems such as MySpace and Facebook whose suc-cess is proportional to the exibility o their interaces and where everyonesvirtual world is created in line with their personal wishes and needs, onlymodels or activating young people that provide a reedom o choice andenable creativity are successul in demanding investment and eort.


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There are enough examples which demonstrate the signicance o activecitizenship. The new challenges o the global world do not tolerate irre-sponsibility and apathy. The best way to overcome apathy is imagination.New, resh, innovative, imaginative. We aspire to these adjectives in variousareas o lie, so let them be the characteristics o an approach to changeour societies. Young people should make their contribution to ace newchallenges readily, in an open and modern way. Young people have an ac-tive role today, not tomorrow, in the creation o their uture. And, the wholeo society is responsible or providing them with a chance and to supportthem in this endeavour.

Hedvig Morvai-HorvatHedvig Morvai-Horvat is the executive director o the European Fund or the Balkans,an initiative o a number o European oundations including the Robert Bosch Sti-

tung, the King Baudouin Foundation, the Compagnia di San Paolo and the ERSTEFoundation. The Fund is designed to help European oundations to become moreactively involved in the Western Balkans and to prepare the countries o the regionor their uture in the EU.

Prior to this, she was director o the Citizens Pact or South Eastern Europe, a re-gional initiative ocused on cross border and regional cooperation o local commu-nities and NGOs in SEE. She began her civil activism in 1997 as a ounder and vicepresident o the Hungarian Student Association o Vojvodina. She was associated tovarious Serbian non-governmental organizations such as the Student Union o Serbiaand the Novi Sad based Center or Multiculturalism, she coordinated the CarpathianInormation Exchange Network AGORA, later the Novi Sad ofce o Partnership orDemocratic Changes and was engaged in the EXIT Festival team.She studied law in Novi Sad and Belgrade and ollowed numerous courses and al-ternative education programmes. She is an alumna o the Belgrade Fund or PoliticalExcellence in the scope o the CoE Network o Schools or Political Studies.

Ms Morvai-Horvat is advisory board member o the Reconstruction Womens Fund,o the Belgrade Fund or Political Excellence and member o the Epos Network. In2006 she was awarded the Winning Freedom (Osvajanje slobode) Award by the

Belgrade-based Maja Marievi-Tasi Foundation.


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Making the worlda better place

Filip Kovacevi


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Documents

Aces Booklet Lowres Gesamt Final