February 19, 2014, Year 4, Issue 44

the CEU Weekly

An independent newspaper by CEU students and alumni

Hungarian Expression Original: Csendes, mint a holdvilág. Translation: Silent like the moonlight. Meaning: S/he is a peaceful person.

Look inside for: SPECIAL ISSUE - 12 PAGES!

What do you know about Hungary? Well… PAGE 1 Protests and violence in Ukraine - Comments by

Ukrainian CEU Community PAGE 2 - 7 Alumni interview with Ádám Mestyán PAGE 8 A memorial to falsify Hungarian history PAGE 9 How can foreign EU-citizens vote in the European Parliament election in Hungary? PAGE 10 Sustainable food consumption in Budapest PAGE 10 Rock’n Budapest on a Budget PAGE 11 Puzzle & Upcoming Events PAGE 12

What do you know about Hungary? Well…

Most of us started their studies in September. Now March is approaching, and with it the knowledge that we will soon be leaving from Budapest, and from Hun-gary. However, during the months we have spent here, what have we learned about the country where we are living? Sadly, I have to personally admit - almost nothing. When I go back to home, I am al-ready afraid that people will start asking questions like: “How is your Hungarian?”, and “What were the places you liked most in Hungary?”. Then with embarrassment I will have to admit that I only know words like “köszönöm” and “szia” and that I have hardly gotten out of Budapest. Do not get me wrong. I love Buda-pest and I think that this city has spoiled me with its beauty, cheap prices and as a city which never sleeps. However, I also know that Hungary does not consist only of Buda-pest, and that this city can give you the wrong impression about the country, where the average salary outside of our city is less than 500 euros. I still know something, but… Most of my friends here are from countries outside of Hungary. We speak in English and rarely talk about what is hap-pening here; OK, we make jokes about the bureaucracy or that Hungarians never smile, but that is all. Sadly, our experience doesn’t have much to do with the land, but rather with things like the immense difficul-ties of getting our residence permit. In other

words, not the positive side. Of course, I wouldn’t say that I do not know anything about Hungary. I know that an ultra-conservative party called Fidesz absurdly criminalized being home-less in Budapest. I know that Hungarians are different from their neighbors because of their language and culture, that they have had a rough history and have always considered themselves special. Furthermore, the Rubik cube is from Hungary, and this land has the most Nobel Prize winners per capita. However, in a sense I could have read all these facts from Wikipedia. What I miss most is a local perspective on it all, which I didn’t get from my time here. I don’t know almost anything about what Hungari-ans think, value and appreciate. We are in a way studying in an isolated island in the center of Budapest. We are usually living in the dorm as a bunch of foreigners and we hardly connect more closely with Hungari-ans in our everyday practice. And going to Spar and saying köszönöm to the seller does not count! What to do about it? Many of my friends have also similar feel-ings. I know that CEU is a English-speaking university with interdisciplinary education and it has one of the most densely interna-tional student body in the world. Addition-ally, students at our university do not have much free time. However, I think it would be more than beneficial to encourage the CEU student body to experience as much local

culture as possible. My recommendation is that during the first weeks of the semester, when we have quite a lot of free time, CEU should organize seminars or lectures about Hunga-ry (e.g. history, political system) and also continue them throughout the semester. Also, since many of us know languages that Hun-garians are interested in, it would be cool to provide the opportunity of tandem lan-guage learning with Hungarians. In this sense we would get our “own Hungarian” with whom we could hopefully stay connect-ed with in the future as well. Besides that, while the Student Life Office does a great job of providing infor-mation about different events in Budapest, as mentioned before, Hungary is not only Budapest. It would also be nice therefore if they organized various excursions to the other parts of Hungary, to see what life is like there. Furthermore, when organizing workshops, they could be in places in other parts of Hungary. I immensely like Budapest and I will leave with good memories from here and from CEU. That being said, I strongly be-lieve that more attention needs to be di-rected towards trying to engage students in local life. Moreover, in our classes at CEU we often hear speak of the "Central Euro-pean perspective”. Maybe with a few changes like the ones I suggested, we could discover what this term actually means.

Karl Haljasmets, Public Policy,

Estonia

CEU students during the solidarity protest on January 26th 2014. Learn more about the different views on the Ukrainian protests on p. 2-7. Photo: Nataliya Borys

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the CEU Weekly

CEU COMMUNITY - UKRAINE February 19, 2014, Year 4, Issue 44

Protests and violence in Ukraine - Comments by Ukrainian CEU Community Like most of the CEU students, the editorial team of The CEU Weekly has been closely following the events in Ukraine including the formations of EuroMaidans throughout the country as well as the continuing violence against protesters. Hence, this section of The CEU Weekly is intended to provide a platform to CEU’s Ukrainian students and alumni who might be witnessing events at home from Budapest or who are again living and working in Ukraine. We sent out three general questions, found below, via our social media and received seven different sets of answers that you can read on the following pages. While some of the questions already seem dated, for example former Prime Minister Azarov has left office already three weeks ago, we hope that this provides our readers with some interesting insights from within the CEU community. We would like to thank Nataliya Borys, Ostap Didenko, Pawel Goralski, Iaroslav Miller, Khrystyna Rybachok, Oksana Siruk and Olha Pushchak for their contributions. The thoughts and opinions expressed by the authors do not necessarily reflect the views of The CEU Weekly editorial team.

Questions: 1. Please, provide us with some insight on what is happening in Ukraine right now either from the perspective of a CEU alumni inside

the country or of a CEU student currently living in Budapest. 2. What was your reaction to the recent resigning from office by Ukrainian prime minister Azarov? How do you see this affecting the

outcome of the protests? 3. How can CEU students get more informed about/ follow the events in Ukraine (in English)?

1. Surely the situation is too complicated to describe in one para-graph. Basically, Ukraine is struggling for people’s rights and dig-nities and standing against the ruling gang, police and army which chose to support the gang instead of protecting people. There are many victims, injured and missing people already, but people claim that their “spirit” is not defeated… Currently I am in Lviv (Western region of Ukraine) and from this perspective I can say that people are reform-minded and ready to stand “to the end”. The majority supports “maidan” (literally - “a square”, a word used to name all the pro-testers who gather on the main square in Kyiv as one unity). Peo-ple often go to Kyiv or help in other ways. Those who cannot go to Kyiv show their solidarity by blockading army garrisons in Lviv and protecting the House of Administration (which was led by a person from president’s team). Others are sending winter clothes, food supplies and money. Sometimes I help at the collection point and often witness this support. For instance, a few times when un-packing clothes donated to Kyiv, I found chocolates and sweets hidden inside. This little act shows how much people are united. I think a huge change happened in humans’ minds and system of values.

2. Oh, Azarov….he is more famous as “Azirov” (this nickname was given to him by the people, as he constantly twists words when he speaks in Ukrainian). I was happy to hear the news about his res-ignation. But I do not think that it is a victory for the protesters; it all depends on how the new government is formed. As long as it will have to work alongside with the murderous majority in the parliament headed by Viktor Yanukovych, there will not be any positive change. We need more substantial changes. 3. For those who would like to follow the news from Ukraine I’d suggest checking posts on “The Washington post” and BBC. Their correspondents and analytics often contribute solid researches. Also I can recommend the web-site of “Ukrainian Truth” which in-cludes a translated version of the most important news. Here’s the link: http://en.pravda.com.ua/. The press-center of my former University also created a platform especially for the news about the current situation http://maidan.ucu.edu.ua/en/.

Olha Pushchak, History Alumna ‘13

Left: Olha Pushchak (on the right), Middle: Illustration of the “Ukrainian nightmare”, Right: Iaroslav Miller (on the right)

February 19, 2014, Year 4, Issue 44

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the CEU Weekly

1. The situation is complicated and in order to understand what is happening now at least a brief background is needed. The peaceful protests started in late November, 2013, when the Ukrainian government decided to deny the Association Agreement with the EU. People were already extremely disappointed by the policies and situation in the country such as enormous corruption, tax office racketeering, and lack of property rights protection. Many firms were made to either shut down or surrender to gov-ernment cronies. There is a lack of fairness in courts, where kids and relatives of the rich and the powerful could easily walk away, freed, after killing people. Also, there's a lack of prospects for graduates: your career depends not on qualification but on your family connections or loyalty to the ruling party. Ukrainians were lacking both a strong middle class and strong civil society. Hence, they were willing to tolerate this calmly with the hope that closer ties with the EU would bring a gradual change to this. It is important to notice that although the president was elected demo-cratically in 2010 he rapidly used his influence and supposedly bribes and threats to force the Constitutional Court of Ukraine into making changes to the constitution and turn Ukraine from a parlia-mentary-presidential into a presidentially-parliamentary state with enormous power in one hand. This was completely an undem-ocratic and unconstitutional a move, because only parliament can make change in the constitution in Ukraine. However, the lack of Civil Society gave the president this opportunity. Over the whole 2012-2013 period the government was showing their dedication towards closer ties with the EU, however, in the last moment when it became evident that the EU would not give money in order to bribe government and cronies, the government suddenly "realized" that the agreement is harmful for the economy and decided to reject it. It was the last drop when many people felt that they have been fooled for many years and now their desti-nies and future had been traded at a bazaar. Many people and in particular students went to the city center, Maidan, to show their position. Nevertheless, the government not only neglected the peaceful protests but even gave the order to disperse them. Hav-ing observed the photos and videos of dozens of badly injured by riot police, even more people went to Maidan in December. The sentiment changed. People demanded not only a EU deal but also the resignation of the president and the government. During De-cember, 2013, while the government was pretending that it was willing to have negotiations with the political opposition, empow-ered by protestors to be an intermediary in negotiations, a lot of protestors and journalists were kidnapped, beaten badly or even killed. Of course, there is no solid evidence. But, the logical trace leads to the criminal minions of the president. Every time when the president announced consecutive meeting with the opposition some protestors were beaten or threatened next day. Therefore, more and more people started to feel that just peaceful protests through the gathering of millions of Ukrainians in many cities throughout Ukraine could simply not deliver the message to the president. In addition, the political opposition proved to be weak both because it could not convince the ruling party members to vote against the bloody government and because people felt that the opposition does not seek to change the system but only wants

t o sw i t c h t h e s e a t s w i t h t h e go ve r nme n t . Then, after the Christmas break on the 16th of January a parliamentary majority voted for the so called "Dictatorial Law". According to which, people were forbidden to protest, wear hel-mets, express their dissatisfaction with the government, post "unhappy" news in the internet, and the number of riot police and its arsenal were increased and so on. Moreover, it was voted not by using the electronic voting system but by raising hands in the parliament. Even the speaker admitted that he was not counting votes he just summed up the number of MPs in ruling party and its satellites in general. Meanwhile, many of these people were not even present in the building at that moment. This was the moment when many people realized that peaceful protests were not ef-fective and during two month they not only lost dignity but free-dom too. So the riot started. The violent riot with police clashes is only present in Kyiv at one particular street close to Maidan. However, in many Western regions people occupied the local mu-nicipalities in protest to the latest developments. In addition, in the West and South where people traditionally are even more pas-sive and where there is a lot of brainwashing, people started to protest and made the attempts to occupy the municipalities too. In response, the government hired sportsmen and gangsters to fight back the protestors and support riot police. Football hooligans from different regions declared that they not only disrespect the behavior of such sportsmen but will protect the protestors from them. Of course, there are some people that support the presi-dent but it is mainly due to the fact that they are being mal-educated and brainwashed. 2. This is bullshit. The prime minister of Ukraine has no significant political power formally. He has even less power, informally. He decides noting. Azarov was just a figure used by the president to distract people from his own deals and the deals of those people who actually have political power. With this resignation, the presi-dent has someone to blame and people have someone to hate. Since the end of 2012 there were talks that the prime minister would be changed for Arbuzov (current vice prime minister and a close friend of the son of the president). Hence, the president was only waiting for a favorable moment to use its gambit. Apparent-ly, this moment came when half of the country is rioting and there are 5 people killed by riot police. This is not even a compromise. They just think that Ukrainian people are ignorant idiots. Nevertheless, people are not fools and they won't buy it. Hence, this will not change the major demands: snap presidential and parliamentary elections and change of constitution to make it parliamentary presidential again. 3. This is a news-website that translates news into English: http://en.pravda.com.ua/. I would say the easiest way is to ask f e l l ow Uk ra i n ia n s abou t t he l a t e s t e ven t s . P.S.: There should be separate question about Russia's role who apparently wants to use its agent to divide Ukraine as it did with

Georgia in 2008.

Iaroslav Miller, Economics

CEU COMMUNITY - UKRAINE

If you are interested in discussing with other CEU students, alumni, profes-sors and experts what is going on in the Ukraine, we recommend attend-ing the round-table discussion “EuroMaidan: Views from the Ground and Future Perspectives” on Friday, February 21st 2014 at 2.00 pm at CEU, Nádor 13, Room 001. The event is organized by the CEU Center for EU Enlargement Studies and the CEU Rector’s Office. The invited speakers are Iryna Bekeshkina (Director - Democratic Initiatives Foundation),

Kateryna Kruk (Political activist and journalist), András Rácz (Assistant Professor - Pázmány Péter University) and László Póti (Senior Research Fellow - Hungarian Institute of International Affairs). The event is moder-ated by Zsuzsanna Végh (Research Assistant - Center for EU Enlargement Studies). Please, RSVP to Zsuzsanna Végh (veghzs@ceu.hu) by Thursday, February 20th 2014.

February 19, 2014, Year 4, Issue 44

the CEU Weekly

CEU COMMUNITY - UKRAINE

I don't like to analyze a “big” po-litical situation through the prism of media alone. I would never use articles reflecting on a political situation in the newspapers I study for my thesis as a source for under-standing the situation itself. I follow this principle in my everyday life as well. Therefore, in describing the situation in con-temporary Ukraine I will not reproduce any of the media discourses available, which so many individuals are now eager to do. My observations are based mostly on online video translations from Hrushevskaya street, Bankovaya street and Maydan Nezalezhnosti square, detailed accounts of the events published by various internet media portals, oral evidence provided by my journalist friends who observed the clashes at Hrushevskaya street with their own eyes and a person who is a member of one of the radical groups who actively en-gaged in the violent actions. These, I think, are the most unbiased sources available to me. Of course, these sources do not have any evidence on "big politics" which is done by ministers, presidents and various imper-sonal macro-forces, but I believe that cor-rect understanding of this "big politics" can-not anyway be achieved through reading of the popular media alone. The accounts of the events, the online media translations and the direct observations of my friends force me to focus on the ground level of the events. Some media call these events at the ground level a “people’s revolution” others “disturbances committed by criminals”. I don’t care. I am interested in understanding the mechanics of the behavior of both the crowd and the police and in the ways these mechanics is interpreted by pro-Western media. Namely, I want to understand how the clashes between the crowd and the po-lice look like, what is the content of the al-leged clashes. Of course, I am going to un-cover the ways in which the pro-Western media manipulates the evidence, but it does not mean that I am either not sympa-thetic with pro-Western media or I do not sympathize with the people who sincerely believe in the “revolution”. Pro-Western media is simply the media I usually follow; I cannot criticize pro-Russian media simply because I cannot criticize something I do not know. Here, at the ground level, one can see that something strange and unreasona-ble is happening and the media interprets these strange events in even more strange manner. One of the most vivid examples of this is the so-called Bankovaya storm which took place on December 1. The media rep-resented it as a people’s attempt to storm Administration of the President. However, was it really a storm? At videos posted on

YouTube one can see the following. The police blocked Bankovaya street in order to save the Administration from the alleged storm. A big crowd of people gathered in front of the police. Most participants of the crowd were peaceful. From time to time though quite often some participants of the crowd (very little number of people, from 10 to 30) stepped forth and attacked the policemen with stones, clubs and even a metal chain. The policemen did not respond. These attacks were not systematic and did not look like organized attempts to break up thick policemen formation in order to storm the Administration. To break up the policemen formation is not an easy task. It requires a special knowledge, tactics, equipment and trained executors. All of these were absent at Bankovaya street. The violent participants of the crowd simply beat the policemen unmercifully without making any real attempts to break up the formation. The policemen attacked during the daytime wore light armor and did not have shields. These attacks could cause se-vere wounds. In the evening the policemen got an order to disperse the crowd. The crowd started to disperse even before the policemen reach it. Therefore, it was not necessarily for the policemen to attack the people. However, now it was the policemen who beat the participants of the crowd un-mercifully while the latter surrendered. It seems that a lot of peaceful protesters were injured. Thus, what are the clashes at Bankovaya street? – First a few violent ac-tivists from the crowd beat peaceful police-men and then the attacking policemen beat peaceful protesters. The real clashes were absent. By the real clashes I understand the situation when one side attack, another side block and attack in response and it goes like that until one of the sides is defeated. Here it was always one way violence. Thus, one can see that there was neither the storm attempt nor the clashes at Bankovaya street. People simply committed a lot of unreasonable violence under the pretext of either the storm or the order from the high-er-ups. However, the pro-Western media continues to use words “storm” and “clashes” to describe these events.

Although structurally the situation at Hrusevskogo Street is almost the same, an addition of a few new elements and an intensification of some of the previous ele-ments raised its absurdity dramatically. Here the media reported of the clashes and storm attempts as well. However, here like in the previous case neither the storm nor the clashes took place: the crowd stood in front of the policemen formation and beat the latter with different staff without trying to break up the policemen formation.

From time to time the policemen went in counterattacks beating peaceful protesters and dispersing the crowd. The behavior of the police became a bit more active. The policemen regularly threw flash grenades into the crowd and shot at the crowd with rubber bullets. The instruments by which the violence was committed and the heaviness of wounds changed as well. The instruments became more diverse and dangerous; the wounds became more serious, few of them even led to death. The crowd started to use not only stones and clubs, but also Molotov cocktails and fireworks. However, the usage of the new war equipment did not really make the situation different. 99% of the Molotov cocktails thrown at the policemen simply did not reach the latter. The fire-works did not bring any changes either. Neither the flesh-grenades nor the rubber bullets dispersed the crowd. So, what is the purpose for using the Molotov cocktails if they do not break up the policemen for-mation? What is the purpose for using the flesh-grenades and rubber bullets if they do not disperse the crowd? The crowd pre-tends to storm without actually storming while the police pretend to disperse the crowd without actually dispersing… The only outcome of all of this is a lot of noise, injuries, fire and destruction. What became different at Hrusevskogo street are pictures taken by journalists’ photo cameras. They show us lots of fire and smoke, exploding flesh-grenades, burned buses and burning policemen, protesters throwing the cocktails and policemen shooting at the protesters. The media use these pictures as evidence that the situation in Ukraine is really hot and dangerous, that there is a real confron-tation between the people (who are alleg-edly extremely dissatisfied with the gov-ernment) and the police which can lead to a bloody outcome.

Continue p. 5

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Ostap Didenko

February 19, 2014, Year 4, Issue 44

the CEU Weekly

CEU COMMUNITY UKRAINE

All of this forces me to suppose that

a real purpose behind the protests which

took place at Hrushevskogo Street was not

the storm of any of the state administra-

tions as it had been initially declared. I

guess that the real purpose was a creation

of a certain media image. One may guess

that at least at a surface level this media

image would be not favorable for the gov-

ernment and the president depicting them

as bloody tyrants who fight against their

own people. However, the government by

ordering the police to use the flesh-

grenades and the rubber bullets contribut-

ed to the creation of this unfavorable me-

dia image as well. Without using this

equipment the situation would appear less

dramatic and hot. It looks like that the both

sides are interested in the escalation of the

conflict. Be it as it may, what really makes

me anxious is an enormous escalation of

unreasonable and at the same time poorly

legitimized violence and hatred from the

part of both the violent protesters and the

policemen. Certain violent individuals who

would like to bring pain and suffering to

other individuals but could not do so be-

cause of various reasons in a peace time

got a great chance to unbridle their dirty

passions under the pretext of either the

storm, revolution, protest or whatever or the

order from the higher-ups. None of the pro-

testers attacking the policemen would con-

fess that he does so because he simply likes

it. None of the policemen attacking peace-

ful protesters would make similar confes-

sions. The former legitimize their malig-

nance through the appellation to war

against the regime, while there is no actual-

ly such a war. The latter do so through the

appellation to the orders of the higher-ups

to disperse the crowd, while implementation

of the order does not require the beating

of peaceful protesters that severely. And

the media instead of pointing at the point-

lessness of the violence committed by the

both sides, instead of shaming the persons

who could not control their passions, contin-

ues to support the image of the events

which contributes to the continuous repro-

duction of deaths, injuries, hatred and de-

struction. The media does not emphasize

that a stone thrown at a policemen hit not

at the regime but at the concrete individu-

al; that a protester beaten with a baton is

not a criminal, but a concrete person. The

degree of dehumanization is enormous.

Violence is a dangerous political tool. If

one thinks that he cannot avoid it, one

should use it extremely cautiously and with

understanding of the degree of responsibil-

ity he takes. In the case of the conflicts

which took part at Kyiv this kind of con-

sciousness could not be observed. It is dan-

gerous because it creates a precedent.

Ostap Didenko,

History

Page 5

1. Unexpectedly for Ukrainian government, it turned out that people in Ukraine were ready to defend their right of being part of European community. The news about protests coming from home were certainly good news for me because it meant that people believed they could change some-thing in their country. Naïve belief or not, but Euromaidan (what we call the demon-strations and civil unrest) has not dissolved since November 2013. The next unex-pected move came from the side of gov-ernment when late in the night of 30th No-vember peaceful demonstrators were bru-tally beaten by the police forces. This step was perceived as totally unreasonable and

it caused mobilization of close to a million people in Independence Square, and shift-ed the demands from EU association issues to more radical ones of government resig-nation. Political and economic crisis in Ukraine were perpetual since Yanukovych became president but only in late 2013 due to mass protests did it became visible world-wide. Since 2010 configuration of powers in Ukraine seemed to evermore resemble the Russian and Central Asian “pyramid” or “vertical systems”. The consti-tution was changed in order to fit the presi-dent’s appetites meaning extending his po-litical power. The principal difference between these other cases and Ukraine, is the inabil-ity of the Ukrainian regime to totally sup-press civil rights and in particular media freedom. Therefore, independent journalists thoroughly reported the ongoing process in Maidan. Consequently, journalists became the subject to repressions from the govern-ment. Activists were repressed as well and six of them were killed in Kyiv. A lot of pro-testers were beaten in the streets, kid-napped, tortured, accused of falsified crimes, and even kidnapped in the hospitals by the police. The protests might lead to some-what similar results as the Orange revolu-tion’s ones, with Constitutional reform limit-ing current presidential powers. On the oth-er hand, cooperation with government could equal the “political death” of opposi-tional leaders. Several rounds of negotia-

tions that happened so far between the opposition and president did not lead to considerable results. 2. The resignation of the PM was not a sur-prise for me. During the negotiations with president Yanukovych, prior to cabinet’s resignation, some opposition leaders were offered to form a new cabinet in coalition with the pro-presidential party, which they immediately rejected. On the other hand, because of the secret agreements between Yanukovych and Russian president and the huge credit of $15 billion, now it is proba-bly up to Mr. Putin to recommend or decide who would be the next prime-minister of Ukraine. This should have been one of the topics for the two presidents to discuss dur-ing the Sochi Olympic opening. In the case that a person loyal to Putin gains the post of prime minister, that might lead to further escalation of the conflict. The intrigue after the president’s return from Sochi Olympics is whether he will compromise with the op-position or try to appoint the new cabinet from people loyal to his regime. 3. The most respectful Ukrainian media out-lets in English.

www.kyivpost.com www.day.kiev.ua/en http://en.interfax.com.ua/ www.ukrweekly.com/

www.unian.net/eng

Khrystyna Rybachok,

Political Science

the the CEU Weekly

CEU COMMUNITY - UKRAINE

Page 6

February 19, 2014, Year 4, Issue 44

1. Oksana: I am a Ukrainian CEU student currently living in Budapest. I have been involved in the revolution issues from the very beginning - when the protests were only about the Association Agreement with the EU in November 2013. Indeed, protests appeared as a reaction to the decision of the government not to proceed with the proposed European integration. However as a result it developed into the revolution caused by both economic crisis and deep corruption in the country. I think, two crucial dates should be pointed out: 30 November 2013, when the police - using force – dis-persed a peaceful student protest that ac-tually was about to die out itself; and 16 January 2014, when the government adopted a new law limiting human rights and undermining the whole idea of the de-mocracy we have been fighting for, for such a long time. Even though after fighting and even several deaths this law was abol-ished, the protests are still ongoing, be-cause the main demands have not been fulfilled yet. Mainly protesters want to enforce the version of the Constitution of 2004 (in 2010 corrupted pro-Yanukovich Constitutional Court of Ukraine declared the Amendments of 2004 to the Constitution unconstitutional and enforced version of 1996 that basically strengthened Yanuko-vich’s power). These changes would then provide an opportunity to overturn Yanuko-vich’s regime and conduct new elections. 1. Pawel: As a member of East-West Mutu-al Understanding Association in Poland and CEU Polsci Alumni from the very beginning the situation in Ukraine attracted my atten-tion. Moreover most of my closest friends in Budapest and in Poland are Ukrainians so I have the honor of being able to debate with them about ongoing problems. In the last few months I visited Ukraine a couple of times to be part of the “revolutionary debates” with representatives of local NGOs (e.g. Lvov, Crimea and Dneprope-trovsk) with the aim of searching for an ob-jective perspective, far from what our Euro-pean media try to sell us. In addition to what probably has been already nicely articulated by my peers, I would like to emphasize two issues: firstly the “revolution” is defined mostly by economic factors, which has been underrated by many scholars, politicians and journalists. A possible explanation of a neglected eco-nomic factor is the power of politics in the Ukrainian scenario, which totally eclipses all other factors. Secondly, there is no construc-tive consensus about future leadership and a remedy plan for political-social and eco-nomic crisis. By consensus I mean an internal one between, de facto, three actors: so

called “nation of Maidan”, political opposi-tion and the government, as well as exter-nal consensus between three regional pow-ers involved in the crisis: Russia, UE and to a lesser extent, the US. The “revolution” started as a pro-test against not-signing the Association Agreement, but turned into unexpected and aggressive frustration and demonstrations of resistance towards Ukrainian establish-ment per se. Let me put in this way, Associ-ation Agreement was a catalyst;, from the very start a cause from which erupted na-tional unhappiness, anarchism and lack of trust in public institutions. The 2013/2014 “revolution” is not the fruit of the last one-or-two years worsening economic situation, nor was the previous Orange Revolution. Social reluctance to government and lack of trust in political parties has been con-stantly evolving for the last two decades starting from 1991 when Ukraine, de iure, gained its independence from the Soviet Union. Nowadays Ukraine is the country with one of the lowest GDP per capita and level of income, highly unsatisfactory Hu-man Development Index, extremely high Gini Index (measuring income distribution), practically collapsed state’s pension system and very baldy ranked Corruption Percep-tions Index in comparison with any other country in Europe. From this perspective I do express my solidarism with Ukrainians and understand their frustration. To the long lists of economic factors we could add also lack of job perspectives for young, educated people and in the last month ter-rible condition of foreign currencies re-serves and exchange rate of hryvna. Although in mass media we are used to only political discussions and the fight for closely non-defined freedom of the Ukrainian nation (freedom from who? Oligarchs? Russia? Soviet-past?), I would strongly encourage all of you to go to Ukraine for couple of days and freely dis-cuss with Ukrainians what is their biggest problem. I am quite convinced that the peo-ple from the Ukrainian NGOs that I had the pleasure to interact with were pretty repre-sentative. As their biggest pain they always indicated the regime itself with all these economic negatives abovementioned. As long as economic factors are not changed, the situation is not going to get stable. At the moment, Russia is the only financial guarantee and source of all finan-cial support. It gives at least some hope to save the country from going into bankrupt-cy very soon. 1.Nataliya: As an Ukrainian student, I was involved in the revolutionary issue from the

beginning; organizing the manifestations in Budapest and supporting my friends in Ukraine. Social networks became a very important part of my daily contribution to the events in Ukraine: I translate and com-ment articles, quarrel and debate with friends and people on Facebook, harass them with my questions and mail and pro-vide the CEU community with information about Ukraine. Oksana and Pawel de-scribed quite well the current situation in Ukraine, from my point of view, it is the harsh social and economic crisis in Ukraine, which pushed people to protest. The cor-ruption, legal and political system reforms and European values were the first Ukraini-an topics on the protestors’ agenda. Faced with the problem of Yanukovich’s refusal to resign, the repressions, as well as European indifference, the demands of the protests changed to internal Ukrainian reforms: the resignation of the President and the Parlia-ment, as well as legal reform in order to change the Constitution. It is very hard to evaluate the demands of protestors, as they perpetually adjust according the gov-ernment’s riposte, and there is no coherent opposition leadership and their demands. 2. Oksana: I consider the resignation of Azarov as evidence of a despairing Yanu-kovich, but nothing more. That was just an attempt to calm down the protests by show-ing that the President is actually doing something, but he does not. For instance, now the person who replaces Azarov is also a person from the Yanukovich’s party, so there is actually no real change, apart from change of the name on the list. However, protesters did not buy that and the protests keep going with the demand of constitu-tional change and end of the Yanukovich’s regime. 2. Pawel: To be honest, we should not be naïve to believe that stepping down of Azarov is any remedy for the current prob-lem. The resignation of Azarov was dictat-ed by the pressure from opposition-pleasing crowds of Maidan by weakening an allegedly “pro-Russian government”. We should not however forget that the “revolution” is not meant to be a crusade against Russian nation - so closely tied his-torically with Ukrainians. The current “revolution” is an attempt to alter the foun-dations of Ukrainian oligarchic regime re-gardless the names of its prime minister or president. It is definitely not about hating each other, rather about the roots of social division into rich and poor, the difference between those who want change and those who can resign from creating it in exchange for stability.

the the CEU Weekly

CEU COMMUNITY - UKRAINE

Page 7

February 19, 2014, Year 4, Issue 44

This is also, to some extent, a clash of two concepts of national identity: Ukrainian-speaking represented in the West and Rus-sian-speaking represented in the South and East of the country. Nevertheless, I am of the opinion inhabitants of Sevastopol, Dniepropetrovsk or Donieck are probably to the same level tired of the oligarchic regime and ineffi-ciency of executive and legislative power in Ukraine as inhabitants of Lviv, Ivano-Frankivsk or Rovne. The problem here is that the former perceive Ukrainian nation-alists from the West coming into power as bigger threat than the current government. This mental-social stalemate resembles a bit the current situation in Bosnia, where Serbs, Croats are as tired of corrupted and abused local or central power as Bosnians themselves. Paradoxically, Serbs as well as Croats are more afraid of Bosnian rise of power than corrupted and ineffective fed-eral system itself. Until Ukrainians do not start trusting and understanding each other there is no perspective to end the crisis per-manently. Additionally, age plays a key role. Ukrainians educated, already after the Soviet Union was dissolved, mostly in Ukrainian language (and even newer gen-eration more frequently receiving educa-tion in Europe or US), tend to have princi-pally different understandings of Ukraine’s geopolitical choices. While young people more often travel to other countries and exchange their views with their foreign peers, older generation tends to freeze in “glorious time” of sovietismus. The “age” argument would explain somehow evromaidans organized sponta-neously in the East and West of Ukraine. Noteworthy is that ten years ago during the Orange Revolution, there was no suc-cess in transplanting West-Ukrainian “mentality” onto East-Ukrainian soil. What one observes today, spontaneous protests in the Russian speaking part are mainly organized by the most frustrated and dis-appointed part of society – the Ukrainian youth. This is something I fully understand. 2. Nataliya: I both agree with Pawel and

Oksana, that the resigning from office by Ukrainian prime minister Azarov doesn’t solve the current problem in Ukraine. It was a political action to calm down the protests, Azarov became Yanukovich’s scapegoat. The former prime-minister was very unpop-ular person in Ukraine, his words and ac-tions were described and mocked on social networks and whole Facebook groups such as “Azarov- bimba”(bomb) have been cre-ated. I believe that in some way, the popu-lation was satisfied that they could achieve some results, but the main demands are the President and Parliament’s resignation. 3. Oksana: First of all, such major sources as New York Times, BBC, and Washington Post are a must. I found also a nice list of the different sources of information about Maidan in

English: Newspapers, magazines

KyivPost http://www.kyivpost.com/

The Ukrainian Week

http://ukrainianweek.com/

The Day

http://www.day.kiev.ua/en

Ukrainska Pravda

http://en.pravda.com.ua/

3. Pawel: My Ukrainian comrades and friends, I do believe, already familiarized our CEU community with all necessary inter-nal Ukrainian links to follow the main events of Maidan. What I would like to focus on is a missing puzzle to objectively evaluate the situation. In European Union one can distin-guish two key players formulating its exter-nal - eastern politics. On one hand, not sur-prisingly, this is Germany as the biggest netto payer to EU budget and on the other it is Poland – due to its geographical, cul-tural, linguistic and historical proximity with Ukraine is considered at the moment one of the most influential advocates of Ukraine in EU. From the sites not only depicting main events, but evaluating, discussing and ana-lyzing them from various angle, I would recommend brilliant German broadcaster Deutsche Welle http://www.dw.de/top-stories/world/s-1429 and Polish Internet expert portal Geopolitics http://

geopolityka.net/category/english-section/ or The Centre for Eastern Studies in War-saw http://www.osw.waw.pl/en (all of them available in English). Last, but not least, we should not forget to confront the information we gath-er inside EU with the message sent by the, so far most influential external political power in Ukraine, I mean Russian Federa-tion. From Russian most competent sources I would recommend Russian Institute for Stra-tegic Studies http://www.riss.ru/analitika (unfortunately mostly in Russian) and the journal Foreign Affairs http://en.interaffairs.ru/ (in English). Naturally there is no magic mathematical formula to get to the 100 % objective outlook. Never-theless, once having read Ukrainian internal comments multiplied by Polish-German point of view and subtracting Russian sources we will be able to see something resembling the final picture from the scat-tered puzzles. CEU students good luck with striving to understand the complexity of Ukrainian “revolution”! 3. Nataliya: Oksana and Pawel described quite well the sources of information about Maidan in English. However I find the major sources such as New York Times, BBC and Washington Post are quite late giving the latest information, and to my mind, are not always accurate in their analysis. Facebook is the quickest way to get the information, but the information comes first in Ukrainian. However, a lot of people translate it or at least put some comments in English in order to inform the English-speaking community. A lot of my friends follow events in Ukraine, and often ask me “translate please”. Some sites and Facebook groups in English have been dedicated to last events in Ukraine, for instance https://www.facebook.com/EnglishMaidan. I use a lot of Russian-speaking sites, such as www.svoboda.org , which publishes the most interesting articles in English. Some of them are sometimes in English such as the blog of one influential Russian blogger Varlamov, for instance his article “The other side of Maidan” http://zyalt.livejournal.com/985632.html giving

another insight to Ukrainian events.

Authors of answers on page 6 & 7:

Nataliya Borys, History, photo on the left

Pawel Goralski, Political Science Alumnus ‘12, NGO

East-West Mutual Understanding Association in Poland,

Photo in the middle

Oksana Siruk, Legal Studies, photo on the right

February 19, 2014, Year 4, Issue 44

the CEU Weekly

Page 8

INTERVIEW

CEU puts a special emphasis on following the life and well-being of its Alumni mem-bers after their graduation. Based on pre-vious experience, articles written by or about Alumni members are quite popular among our readers, so we decided to make an off-line interview with Ádám Mestyán who graduated from the PhD program of the History Department at CEU in 2011, and is currently a Junior Fellow in the Socie-ty of Fellows at Harvard University. He also taught in the Middle East Centre of St An-tony’s College, Faculty of Oriental Studies, University of Oxford, and was a post-doctoral fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin. The CEU Weekly: You mentioned that you travel a lot. From where are you writing to us? Ádám Mestyán: At the moment I have just arrived in Cambridge, MA, after a confer-ence in Qatar and a longer stay in Egypt. TCW: You spent several years at CEU, what is your most memorable event from the time you spent here? AM: The Dalai Lama’s visit was really cool. TCW: It is easy to make friends at CEU, but I wonder how lasting these relation-ships are. Are you still in contact with people you got to know at CEU? AM: I believe that we know about and fol-low each other, both my MA- and PhD-

fellows.

TCW: You wrote your PhD thesis at CEU on cultural politics in the late Ottoman Empire, analyzing “the relations between administrations and music theatres in Cairo and Istanbul in the period of 1867 and 1892.” What topics are you interest-

ed in at the moment?

AM: At the moment, I’m turning one half of my dissertation into a book. I am now very much interested in the history of Arabic printing. Also, I’m considering a new project about the interwar Arab world. And I have

a lot of other ideas, very unfortunately…

TCW: While being a Post-doctoral Fellow in Berlin, you initiated the Project Jara’id – A Chronology of Nineteenth-Century Periodi-cals in Arabic, which is an online bibliog-raphy, hosted by the Zentrum Moderner Orient. Do you think that the future for historians will be more in the digital

world than in dim, dusty archives?

AM: Dim, dusty archives are good and are indispensable, of course, depending on your topic. Having this said, archives and digital docs are only resources. The real work is always interpretation and making connections. There are some historians today who be-lieve that digital tools will revolutionize his-tory-writing, with new quantitative methods. I, myself, believe in the importance of digi-tal techniques, but I do not see the conse-quences of this as being too so serious. Free data is only free data. TCW: At the University of Oxford you were a Departmental Lecturer in the Mod-ern History of the Middle East during the academic year of 2012/2013. What do you prefer – research or teaching? AM: I like both and I believe it is very healthy to teach and do research at the same time. Certainly, I was also lucky be-cause at Oxford my teaching load was not that heavy and my students were brilliant. TCW: You are a Junior Fellow in the Soci-ety of Fellows at Harvard University until 2016. Does this mean that you are deeply immersed in research? AM: Yes, at the moment I am absolutely immersed in research and writing. However, I’m also planning to take a break and teach somewhere in the academic year 2015-16.

TCW: You are also a poet, you have al-ready published two books of poems. In one of your poems we can read the line “Jó hónapja nem beszéltem magyarul.” (~ “I haven’t spoken Hungar-ian for about a month.”) As a poet, I as-sume, you are closely connected to your mother tongue. Do you miss Hungarian words? AM: There are poets and writers who can-not live without the everyday experience of their mother tongue. I am not one of them because, for me, language is an obstacle in itself. But I do feel that I’m slowly losing the ease with which I write and speak Hungari-an. And certainly my mother tongue carries a symbolic value for me – perhaps the last

attachment to Hungary.

TCW: You also play the bass, you were a member of several Hungarian bands and you run marathons. I presume you have excellent time-management skills. Do you have any advice for our CEU students on how to balance all their studying duties

with partying and other hobbies?

AM: Keep the deadlines! Always. And set up your own deadlines. In addition, you should always know what your next step will be. Think ahead by at least a year. And have fun at parties :) but know what is important and what is not. TCW: And one last question: what is the first word that comes to your mind if you hear the word CEU? AM: The names of my professors. TCW: Thank you! We wish you further success in your academic endeavors!

Alexandra Medzibrodszky,

History, Hungary

Photo: www.adammestyan.com/

Budapest – Berlin – Oxford – Harvard: Alumni interview with Ádám Mestyán

February 19, 2014, Year 4, Issue 44

the CEU Weekly

Page 9

HUNGARY NEWS

In January 2014, the Hungarian

government suddenly declared that by

March 2014 a new memorial will be erect-

ed in Szabadság tér to commemorate the

Nazi German occupation of the country

beginning March 19, 1944. A plan of this

artifact also became public. Intellectuals

commenting on the plan are still debating

whether its low artistic quality (absolute

kitsch) or its mendacious historical message

is the more striking feature. Péter Raab

Párkányi sculptor’s plan won the tender of

the Office of the Prime Minister; and it was

only due to a Socialist municipal repre-

sentative of the 5th district that the simple

folk living in this city had the chance to see

the plan before it would be erected. He

published the plan on his blog and since

then this plan led to a series of conflicts

over the historical self-image of Hungary.

According to the plan, the Third Reich

would be symbolized with an eagle. Here

is the first outrageous feature: the national

symbol of today’s Germany is used for Na-

zi Germany. As Krisztián Ungváry Hungari-

an historian pointed out, it is as though in a

Slovakian or Romanian monument one

would use a Hungarian national symbol to

represent brutal aggression. It is not a case

without precedents, so it’s not to say that in

other countries historical responsibility for

20th century genocides is not blamed on

foreigners. However, the issue of the

planned Hungarian memorial with the ea-

gle is aggravated by its position, since it

would be erected in Szabadság tér, a most

prominent square in the heart of Budapest.

This square is already provides

quite interesting blend of different political

symbols, a Mecca for researchers of sym-

bolic politics. Besides being the location of

the American Embassy, Szabadság tér hosts

the memorial of the Soviet Red Army’s vic-

tory expelling Nazi and Arrow Cross militia

from Hungary, which was called the libera-

tion of Hungary for decades. Nowadays

however, the same event is often labeled

as the occupation of Hungary. And let’s not

forget the recently erected Horthy sculp-

ture, about which The CEU Weekly has al-

ready published an article.

Nazi-occupied Hungary would be

symbolized in this incriminated monument

with the person of Archangel Gabriel. Thus,

there is a clear, simple message: brutal

Germany invaded poor innocent Hungary.

No one is doubting the brutality of the Nazi

army of course, however, the truth is that

Germans met very little resistance in Hun-

gary. Governor Horthy remained the head

of state and he himself legitimized one rad-

ical right-wing government after the other,

to please his German allies. There are nu-

merous proofs that E i chmann ’s

Einsatzgruppe hardly needed imported

German soldiers to implement the “final

solution” in Hungary, because he found ex-

cellent local people to send their Jewish

compatriots to Auschwitz.

Sculptors Miklós Melocco and

György Benedek (both close to the govern-

ment) support the plan of Raab Parkanyi,

arguing that the concept behind the monu-

ment refers to the “deep meaning behind

easily accessible symbols… moreover, its

historical context is not ordinary… We

could provide refuge to more than

200,000 Polish refugees. Until 1943

peaceful conditions ruled over this land. The

genocidal German troops, in alliance with

their lackeys in the Arrow Cross, dealt the

death blow to this country.” To quote Kriszt-

ian Ungvary again, he commented that

“even fewer historical distortions would be

enough to earn a failing grade in a univer-

sity exam”. One could say that sculptors

are not necessarily history graduates. That’s

why the expert opinions of historians should

have been consulted before designing a 7

meter-high monument in the center of the

capital. However, it is very clear why no

one asked historians. 2014 being the me-

morial year of the Hungarian Holocaust

(for the 70th anniversary), the government

developed a two-faced strategy to please

both international public opinion; by spend-

ing money on a new memorial center for

the Holocaust’s child victims and at the

same time to please Hungarians by falsify-

ing our history, constructing an alternative

history in which the Holocaust was the result

only of Nazi German policy and not due to

local collaboration or state-supported anti-

Semitism strengthened in this country for

two decades before WWII.

This monument is now one of the

reasons why Hungarian Jewish organiza-

tions are about to refuse participation in

any of the government-organized Holo-

caust commemorations during the year.

Fourteen Jewish civil associations already

refused all the government-funds they won

in tenders for projects related to the memo-

rial year. Many Jewish and non-Jewish

people ask themselves how far such overt

hypocrisy on the part of the government

can be beard. Many intellectuals hope that

MAZSIHISZ (umbrella organizations includ-

ing all the neologue Jewish communities of

Hungary, however not the Orthodox and

the Reform communities), the largest Jewish

community, will keep its word that unless the

plan to erect the monument on Szabadság

tér is cancelled (and two other requirements

met by the government), it would boycott

all the events of the government-organized

Holocaust-commemorating year.

Agnes Kelemen,

Nationalism Studies,

Hungary

Image: vs.hu

A memorial to falsify Hungarian history

Page 10

All EU citizens have the right to vote and to be elected as

representatives in the European elections on May 25th, 2014, in

whichever member state they happen to reside. Since every EU

citizen has only one vote (and can be a candidate only in one

member state) and can vote only in that country in which s/he is

registered in the electoral roll, there is a little bit of paperwork

required to clarify where exactly you will vote. This article aims to

help non-Hungarian EU-citizen CEU students who want to vote in

the European Parliament elections here in Hungary by clarifying

the process.

If you are officially residing in Hungary, and have a Hun-

garian address card, you are eligible to register in the local Hun-

garian electoral roll.

There is the possibility to register online (https://

kerelem.valasztas.hu/vareg/MagyarCimKerelemInditasa.xhtml),

however most of the guidelines are written exclusively in Hungari-

an. Luckily, not being a Hungarian-speaker does not prevent you

from fulfilling the process of online registration, because an Ameri-

can-German CEU alumnus was thoughtful enough to create a

homepage for foreign EU citizens residing in Hungary for the sake

of promoting participation in the European elections. I warmly sug-

gest visiting the webpage set up by Johannes Wachs: http://

voteinhungary.net/, which provides detailed, yet easy-to-follow,

guidelines on online registration and issues related to participation

in the European elections in Hungary. Moreover, he is happy to be

contacted through this page, if further help is needed.

The deadline for registration is 16 days before the elec-

tion (i.e. May 9, 2014). Online registration takes only twenty

minutes, however receiving confirmation (both via e-mail and reg-

ular mail) takes about three weeks.

Once you are registered, the voting authority (HVI) will keep you

updated on information regarding where you can vote and the

entire process. The place designated will be near your official

address (displayed on your Hungarian address card), irrespective

of where you may live in the city in May. You are eligible to par-

ticipate in the local municipal elections of Budapest as well, if you

will be residing here in October 2014.

The CEU Weekly, after having found out that the page voteinhungary.net is edited by a CEU alumnus, contacted Johannes Wachs for a quick interview. The CEU Weekly: When did you graduate from CEU? Johannes Wachs: I graduated in 2012 with an MSc in Mathemat-ics. I have been living in Budapest since the fall of 2009. TCW: How did you get the idea to launch voteinhungary.net? JW: I was not aware of my right to vote here until quite recently and I wanted to inform others. When I was registering I was quite surprised that everything was in Hungarian. I knew enough Hun-garian to manage, but I feared that for many this would be an insurmountable obstacle. In any case, registration should be very easy. Building a simple guide was the clear solution. TCW: Do you think young people are not active enough when it comes to the European elections? JW: In the last European elections only around 5,000 non-citizen residents registered to vote in Hungary out of a population of over 100,000. There is probably room for improvement among all age groups and demographics. That said, I think the poor turn-out of young voters is worth special attention. I worry that issues relevant to young people are being marginalized because so many of us stay at home (but this applies to most elections these days). This constituency, of which I am a part, namely young people living outside of their home country, is obviously greatly affected by policies decided at the European level. On a personal level, I believe that the European Union should be more than just a collection of countries with independent interests. Exercising your voting rights in another European country

is a small step towards this ideal.

Agnes Kelemen, Hungary,

Nationalism Studies

More information: voteinhungary.net

How can foreign EU-citizens vote in the European Parliament election in Hungary?

the the CEU Weekly

HUNGARY NEWS February 19, 2014, Year 4, Issue 44

“The food less travelled” – Sustainable food consumption in Budapest

Walking down Spar’s – or any other chain of supermarkets – vegetable and fruit aisle often feels like being in a world geogra-phy contest: bananas from Costa Rica, pineapples from Brazil, kiwis from New Zealand. It could also as easily be a world beauty contest for the most shiny tomatoes or glossy apples. But what’s wrong with that you ask? You may start by wondering how can to-matoes produced in the Netherlands or in India, at a first glance, look like they were just picked. To keep them nice and fresh and avoid bacteria, they were probably frozen or stored at very low temperatures, losing many important nutrients along the way. They are often wrapped in unneces-sary packaging to prevent damage during

the thousands of miles they had to travel, leaving behind a weighty carbon footprint. You may also wonder why bana-nas are so cheap after having travelled half way around the world for over 10,000 km. Spar or Tesco are definitely making money, or surely all those bananas wouldn’t be as cheap; the large trading and ship-ping companies too, or they would be trad-ing something else. But the producer in Cos-ta Rica only has the bananas he produces and gets the smallest cut – the average banana farmer in central America gets

around 1€ per day and most farmers re-ceive less money now than they did 15 years ago. Now, you may be wondering what you can do. Well, bananas are the most

popular fruit in the world and are the 4th most important crop after rice, wheat and maize. It is not all up to us consumers, that’s for sure, but there is a lot we can do. We can start by inquiring more about where our food comes from and how it arrives at a nearby store. Many well-known multina-tional companies are known for not re-specting farmers’ rights (you may recall a famous blue logo with a woman wearing a fruit hat). If information is available when you buy – and it should be – you can make a choice. But this is not just about bananas. There are many more choices to make re-garding the food we buy. Trying to buy local products is the simplest one – and in Budapest it really is! Continue p.11

the the CEU Weekly

February 19, 2014, Year 4, Issue 44

Budapest has a great nightlife scene; after being here for six months and going out nearly every weekend, I still feel as if I’ve only scratched the surface. That being said, it can be easy to get sucked into repeats of the same places you already know. That’s why I set out on a mission to discover some new clubs which, two of which opened just in the last couple months. What I found was fur-ther proof that when it comes to partying, we truly are living in one of the best places on the globe. Here’s my reviews: Kraft Most of the time Kraft is more of an elaborately themed bar than a club, but on the weekends they often host DJ’s, and people start moving their feet. They recently hosted a dubstep and deep house night and packed the place with beautiful smiling faces getting down to the beats. They are located just around the corner from CEU, so if you are looking for an after-school cocktail following an especially long day, check them out. Drinks aren’t cheap, but they are strong and fresh and worth the price for the atmosphere alone.

Dauer This place just opened a couple weeks ago, and can best be de-scribed as a mini ruin pub. The name means perm, and fittingly they have a variety of hair themed art and chairs and such. Prices are relatively cheap and on the Friday night that I checked it out there was a great crowd of friendly people hovering around and checking out the new digs. Club Play One of the fanciest clubs in Budapest, this place isn’t new, but was new to me as it’s hiding over on the Buda side. I saw Paul Van Dyk here a couple weeks ago, and it was an immersive experience with amazing lighting and sound. They tend to attract bigger DJ’s so the price of admission can be quite high depending on who is spinning. I have paid $65 dollars to see PVD before however, so paying 4,500 forint still felt like a deal! It’s a little tricky to get to on public transit, but worth the trek if you are into electronic music. Check it!

Graham Patterson, USA, Public Policy

Rock’n Budapest on a Budget

There are a number of markets where farmers sell their produce – the famous Central Market, Lehel Market and Sunday’s Farmers’ Market at Szimpla, just to name a few. But then there’s that funda-mental problem – time. In the midst of dozens of readings, papers to write and the well-deserved social gathering, a weekly visit to the market might not find its way up on the list of things to do and, inevitably, you may end up going to the Tesco around the corner. Szatyor (www.szatyorbolt.hu) makes things a lot easier. They are a Budapest co-operative that connects organic food farmers that operate near the city with residents. What started as a small op-eration is now processing dozens of orders a week, and the volun-teers at Szatyor have their hands full with all the new orders pouring in. You can simply order organically and locally produced fruits, vegetables, dairy products, meats, jams, spreads and many other goodies directly from local producers via an online system.

In about 5 minutes and 10 clicks your order is placed. You can pick it up at one of their five collection points in Budapest and, thanks to the CEU Sustainability Campus Initiative, you can also conveniently pick up your food-box every Tuesday right at the CEU (Faculty Tower). Home delivery is also available for a fee. That’s it, no long list of intermediaries and no long dis-tance travels. This makes the chain a lot shorter, which means a lower carbon footprint, a shorter time between the farm and your table (so less nutrients are lost and the products are picked at their peak) and, of course, a fairer deal for the farmers and their families. Susana Guerreiro, Portugal, Environmental Sciences and Policy Photo: Journeyman Images 2011

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he Weethe CEU Weekly

PUZZLE & UPCOMING EVENTS February 19, 2014, Year 4, Issue 44

This is a student-alumni initiative that seeks to provide CEU with a regularly issued newspaper. We publish our articles and additional materials on our blog as well: www.ceuweekly.blogspot.hu

Editor in Chief: Agnes Kelemen Managing Editor: Julia Michalsky Editorial Board: Imogen Bayley, Karl Haljasmets, Eszter Kajtar, Alexandra Kocsis, Erik Kotlarik, Philippe-Edner Marius, Alexandra Medzibrodszky, Graham Patterson, Ruth Pinto, Andras Szirko Proofreading and language editing: Imogen Bayley, Philippe-Edner Marius, Graham Patterson, Ruth Pinto

Social Media Management: Alexandra Medzibrodszky Distribution: Reception of Nádor 9, Nádor 11, Nádor 15; Library, Cloakroom, Dzsem Bakery, CEU Dorm, CEU Bookshop. Follow us on facebook as well!

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YOUR CORNER

Want to get published?

Send your article at ceuweekly@ceu.hu

Wilkommen zum “CEU Weekly Puzzle” !!! Firstly, congrats to Geza Bodnar, the winner of our previous logical chal-lenge! Today we’ll deal with a “double code”. Here’s your task: In the following code each symbol stands for two possible letters.

+ stands for I or A

* stands for B or W

= stands for C or T

& stands for E or K

? stands for L or H

The five-letter code word * ? + = & can be translated into two English words, and each one means the opposite of the other. What are the two words?

A hint: make a word with the first choice, then look for a pattern in the letters. We will draw the name of the winner from those who send a correct solution by February 22 to ceuweekly@ceu.hu. The award is a FREE LUNCH voucher to Dzsem Bakery (Vigyazo Ferenc u. 7. very close to the campus).

Puzzle

Shirin Neshat

The Kunsthalle presents two video works by the New Y o r k - b a s ed Iranian-born photographer and filmmak-er, Shir in Neshat. Surprisingly enough, this is the world famous artist’s first solo exhibition in Hungary. The exhibited works provide a quick insight to the world of Shirin Neshat who is mainly inter-ested in social and gender issues of the Islamic culture and society. However, her videos do not only stress important political topics critically, but depict personal conflicts in a lyrical visual language. A black and white two-channel video installation titled Rapture represents her more abstract, symbolic works from the 1990s. Her later piece from 2005, the color short film Zarin tells the story of a prostitute from the periphery of the society within the background of the Ira-nian political history of the 1950s. Zarin’s story became an important part of Neshat’s first fea-ture film, Women without Men, which was awarded with the Silver Lion in Venice in 2009. Dates: 13 February – 27 April 2014 Location: Műcsarnok/Kunsthalle, Heroes Square, underground exhibition hall (Mélycsarnok).More information: http://www.mucsarnok.hu/

Survivors by Jutka Rona

With her seemingly simple black and white pho-tos, Jutka Rona intends to commemorate and give attention to the shocking events of the Ro-ma Holocaust - through the everyday life and fate of the survivors. She herself is a survivor of the Holocaust and daughter of emigrant Jewish parents who were hiding by a Dutch peasant family during the last years of the Second World War. By visualizing personal stories of surviving, Rona wants to confront the audience with the events and memories which were never discussed and treated at the right place be-cause of the social segregation of Roma people in Hungary. Dates: 7 February – 30 March 2014 Location: Mai Manó Gallery, 1065 Budapest, Nagymező utca 20. More information: http://www.maimano.hu/kismano/20140207_rona/index.html

EVENTS IN HOUSE Dancing Nature Photo and film installation completed with a short live performance on the 21th of February at 6 pm on the relationship of dancing and na-ture: how the moving body interacts with the elements, power, and energy of surrounding nature. Photos by Gyula Hajdú, Janka Balogh dancing, Orsolya Vági playing cello.

Dates: 21 February – 21 March 2014 Location: CEU Laptop Area, foyer of the Audi-torium More information: CEU Center for Arts and Culture, cac.ceu.hu

Following the Peacock Screening of the anthropological documentary by Eszter Spät, research fellow of CEU, on a less known religious minority in Northern Iraq, the Yezidis: how their traditional life changed when confronted with the rapid changes of the last decades. Dates: 27 February 2014, 7 pm. Location: CEU Faculty Tower, Auditorium

More information: CEU Center for Arts and

Culture, cac.ceu.hu

By Alexandra Kocsis,

Hungary,

Medieval Studies

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