Writing for CEE 2006

Transcription

Imprint:
Published and edited by:
Bank Austria Creditanstalt
Identity & Communications Department, Editorial Desk
A-1020 Vienna, Lassallestrasse 1
www.ba-ca.com
APA – Austria Presse Agentur
A-1060 Vienna, Laimgrubengasse 10
www.apa.at
Graphics by: Horvath Grafik Design, APA-DesignCenter/Frank Neubauer
Printed by: Holzhausen
Bank Austria Creditanstalt Publications service:
tel. +43 (0) 50505, ext. 56148 (answering machine)
fax +43 (0) 50505, ext. 56945
e-mail: [email protected]
November 2007
Contents
Coming closer through dialogue / Erich Hampel ..................................................................................................................................2
What good is a preface? / Michael Lang and Ambros Kindel ................................................................................................................3
Bosnian Sensitivities ...........................................................................................................................................................................4
My country – Which Road to Europe / Šefik Dautbegovic....................................................................................................................6
Central Europe – Lost, Found AND LOST AGAIN? / Gustáv Murín ......................................................................................................8
The immigrants – people without a country. The new Europeans’ Journey East – West / Janina Dragostinova ............................11
The centre is in the East / Wolfgang Bahr .........................................................................................................................................25
Departure Germany, arrival Europe / Antonia Beckermann .................................................................................................................28
Berlescu – The Village of the Old People / Cati Lupascu ...................................................................................................................31
Deaf Romanians don’t know about the EU, but the EU is not deaf to them / Denisa Maruntoiu .....................................................34
Return to Smokovich / Carolin Pirich and Nikolai Fichtner ....................................................................................................................38
A Brief Discourse On Race, Countries Getting Nearer, Killers and Ecology / Vladimír Puchala ........................................................40
Where the Heart of Europe is Beating … / Viktor Voroniuk ..............................................................................................................44
Why Kosovo may hold the key to the Balkans’ future / Stefan Wagstyl ...........................................................................................47
Business people wary of a troubled region / Stefan Wagstyl ............................................................................................................50
Bank Austria Creditanstalt in Central and Eastern Europe...............................................................................................................51
The APA as a CEE Agency .................................................................................................................................................................52
Coming closer through dialogue
Europe is not only coming together in a political and economic sense. This continent of many countries and
regions is more than just a politically or economically defined area. Europe’s regions are keen to share,
want to tell about themselves and read about themselves. Dialogue is one of the most important forces
bringing Europe together today.
Free access to information and free communication are the basis for this dialogue, but these principles are
not yet as firmly entrenched in Central and Eastern Europe as they are in the countries of Western Europe.
To foster this culture of free and open exchange, Bank Austria Creditanstalt and the national press agency
Austria Presse Agentur created the journalism prize “Writing for Central and Eastern Europe” four years
ago. The two prize sponsors see their commitment to this cause as an expression of their many years of
close and successful ties with this part of Europe.
Bank Austria Creditanstalt is continuing the long traditions of its predecessor banks, which opened branches
in cities of what is now the Czech Republic and Hungary soon after they were founded. Today, Bank Austria
Creditanstalt is a member of UniCredit Group, one of Europe’s leading banking institutions. Within UniCredit
Group, Bank Austria Creditanstalt is responsible for the markets Austria and Central and Eastern Europe.
“Writing for CEE 2006”: This year’s prize is going to a Bosnian journalist. I am delighted to be able to
congratulate Šefik Dautbegovic on winning the 2006 award. Dautbegovic works for the daily newspaper
Oslobodjenje, which is printed in Sarajevo. His article bears the eloquent title “My Country – On its way
to Europe”.
I do hope that you will enjoy reading this collection of excellent articles we have put together from
journalists across Europe.
Erich Hampel
Chairman of the Management Board of Bank Austria Creditanstalt
Head of CEE Division of UniCredit Group
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What good is a preface?
Prefaces are unrewarding. Often they are not even read. And
since they are not read very often, they can contain truisms,
which increase the trend of not reading a preface …
We are therefore not only introducing the brochure “Writing for
CEE 2006” to you, but are also warmly recommending its
exceptional journalistic work. Exceptional topics, exceptional
language, and an exceptional quality of journalism.
The article by the Bosnian journalist Šefik Dautbegovic, who
received the “Writing for CEE” Award 2006, describes the
voyage of his – and we can openly say torn – country to Europe. A voyage that needs time, a voyage that is
necessary, and a voyage that brings hope; hope that the entities of Bosnia-Herzegovina find a way to one
another and finally to Europe.
Šefik Dautbegovic criticizes his country in an ironic way and he criticizes his country satirically. He criticizes
his country only as patriots would criticize their countries. Even if a Bosnian patriot has already overcome
the division, partition and disruption of his country …
In this brochure you will find a large number of articles worth reading. Among them are the “Immigrants”
by Janina Dragostinova and “Central Europe – Lost, Found and Lost Again” by Gustáv Murín – just to name
a few. It becomes obvious what it means to “write for Central Europe”. With these words we will end our
preface and hope you will enjoy the inspiring contributions.
Ambros Kindel
Michael Lang
Spokesman of the Jury “Writing for CEE”
Head of Foreign Service, APA – Austria Press Agency
Editor in Chief
APA – Austria Press Agency
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Bosnian Sensitivities
In 2006 the journalism prize “Writing for CEE” was awarded for the third time. The winner is Šefik
Dautbegovic, a journalist working for the daily newspaper Oslobodjenje published in Sarajevo. He received
the 5000 Euro award for his article “My Country – On its way to Europe”.
Dautbegovic spent the years of the Bosnian War (1992 – 1995) in the capital Sarajevo. His “editorial office”
was situated in a cellar six meters under the ground. Dautbegovic, born 1948 in Prozor, wrote his articles for
Oslobodjenje on an old typewriter. Candles were his only source of light.
The prize-winning article describes the search for a path from the Bosnian capital Sarajevo into a Europe
directed towards European integration. During this search numerous difficulties are encountered,
constituted mainly by the postwar-circumstances specific to the Balkan State.
Since the signing of the Treaty of Dayton in 1995 Bosnia-Herzegovina has been divided into two entities:
The Bosnian-Croatian Federation and the Republic of Srpska. The state and administrative organization is
inflated and often times follows a three track route out of consideration to the three ethnic groups:
Bosnians (Moslems), Serbs and Croatians.
More Audis than highway kilometers
When Dautbegovic received his prize in November 2006 in Vienna, he regretted the fact that the different
ethnic groups in his country are still “pulling into three different directions”. In an obvious allusion to the
educational system in Bosnia-Herzegovina he said, “the integration into Europe is very difficult with divided
educational systems”. And a sideswipe was also taken at Bosnian politicians: “In Bosnia you will find more
Audis than highway kilometers”.
“A horrible dream” …
… is how Šefik Dautbegovic describes the War in Bosnia-Herzegovina today. “I suffered, but I was not
really afraid of grenades and bombs” he said remembering the terrifying events. “At the beginning I was
frightened when I heard gun shots. But then I somehow got used to it. On my way to work a grenade
exploded just 50 meters behind me. I kept on walking, as if nothing had happened. Once a grenade hit the
ground just 3 meters away from me. I looked at it but it didn’t explode. I was damn lucky …”
The Jury
The members of the jury are the Czech communication expert Milan Smid, the Slovak journalist Michael
Berko, the Slovenian author Joze Hudecek, the Polish journalist Igor Janke, the Hungarian radio-journalist
Julia Varadi, the international spokeswoman for BA-CA, Ildiko Füredi-Kolarik, and the Head of the APA
Foreign Affairs Office, Ambros Kindel. 60 contributions from 12 countries were submitted.
Prize Winners 2004 and 2005
In 2005 the Bulgarian journalist Diana Ivanova received the “Writing for CEE” award and in 2004 the prize
was awarded to Lubos Palata, Head of the Prague newspaper’s Lidove Noviny Foreign Affairs Department.
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Anna Politowskaja
The bestowal of the journalism award “Writing for CEE” to Šefik Dautbegovic was also a tribute to the
murdered Russian journalist Anna Politowskaja and a plea for the freedom of media. “One gets the
impression, that the murder is meant to intimidate every journalist”, warned the deputy editor in chief of the
Russian newspaper “Nowaja Gaseta”, Oleg Chlebnikow.
Fig Leaf
Three journalists have been killed during the seven years that he has worked for “Nowaja Gaseta”;
Chlebnikow points out how dangerous the situation is. “Our newspaper may not always be great,” he added
ironically, “but it is still the best one”. On the other hand the “Gaseta” also functions as a fig leaf, misused
by the government as proof that freedom of media exists in Russia. Such a thing would be unheard of at the
TV stations.
Endangered Truth
The longstanding head of the ORF-Office in Moscow, Susanne Scholl, reminded everyone that Anna
Politowskaja “observed and assessed with her heart and her brain, regardless of any requests or desires
from those about whom she wrote”. She repeatedly stated that everyone jeopardized himself or herself who
said the truth in Wladimir Putin’s Russia. Many thought that she was exaggerating. Her murder showed one
thing very clearly: “The symptom for the state that the Russian society is in, in its sixth year of Wladimir
Putin’s presidency”.
Murdered journalist
Anna Politowskaja, who worked for “Nowaja Gaseta”, was murdered on 07 October 2006 in her home in
Moscow. Her reports about the Chechnya War made her famous – but at the same time she had many
enemies.
The APA – Austria Presse Agentur and the Bank Austria Creditanstalt (BA-CA), awards the journalism prize
annually.
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Newspaper “Oslobodjenje“, Sarajevo, June 2006
My country – Which Road to Europe
We are headed towards the place where normal people went long ago
By Šefik Dautbegovic
The bogey about Bosnia no longer wanders around Europe, which has opened its door and is waiting for us.
There were lots of discussions and agreements about the country worldwide. Including the one in
Washington. It was said that our country can embark on the road to Europe. And, there is no joking around
with Washington. Yes, our country is not large. It is an integral body made up of two pieces.
We are headed towards the place where normal people went long ago. Since this is the case, I started
packing to avoid being late, because Europe tolerates no negligence and sloppiness. Indeed, people say
I have nothing but concerns to bring along. I wonder, which path should I take into the world.
Several paths
If I go over Trebevic, which is Sarajevans’ favorite picnic site, it could be dangerous. I might run into a
minefield … which means problems … and Europe will be out of the picture.
If I go over the Goats Bridge, it would take me no time to reach the other entity, which is still doing pretty
well. No harm came to it, even from Washington. But, the moment I were to cross the bridge, my chances
of running into Cavic would increase drastically, and he could suffocate me with the story about the RS as
the Dayton creation. I say to myself, I am not going that way either.
If I take the road on the opposite side, I won’t be any safer. What if the progressive farmers set up tents on
the highway, or, God forbid, scatter potatoes on the road, or lie down on the asphalt. I couldn’t continue
over the bodies of progressive farmers.
Even the road towards the south is not safe. The Herzegovinian educators could sit down and block the
road, as a sign of warning to the authorities, demanding a salary increase and lunch money that they could
really use.
They say they will shut down at least 80 schools because of the low salaries. They even cut down on their
meals so they could afford buying locks for this purpose. They don’t care that we will be an uneducated
nation and that we cannot enter Europe as illiterates. We are at the bottom of the chart when it comes to
literacy in Europe. The literate ones emigrated, the illiterate ones stayed behind, that’s that.
I really don’t feel like taking this road to Europe because I may run into Niko Lozancic or Ivo Miro Jovic on
their way back from an HDZ meeting in Rama or Livno. Especially Niko, who always attends such meetings,
even says something at them. They would bug me with the story about the deprived Croats, about how the
Croatian language is neglected in the schools, about the non-existence of a TV station for BiH Croats …
All I know is that Niko would not bore me with talk about the Federation, which, just for the record, he
heads, but it is as if he doesn’t. His butt rarely occupies the Federation chair, and he does not appear
publicly that often as the Federation president. He behaves as if he were the leader of a local community,
and not of an entity, the larger one, mind you. The HDZ is more important to him, period! The same way the
SDA is much more important to Sulejman Tihic than the country is, or Europe, for that matter. It seems that
Tihic only dreams about the disappearance of Republika Srpska.
It would be best for me to wait a bit. Europe is no rabbit. It will not run away, it could wait some. It would
be even better if Karadzic and Mladic were finally captured, and then I can go peacefully into the world.
They say that the investigators and Carla Del Ponte are trying, but are failing to track them down.
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I know one thing for sure: Radovan is not on an island like Ante Gotovina was. If someone thinks that
Radovan is on a beach on the other side of the world drying his underwear, they’re mistaken. Bathing is not
his strength, he never liked it. You won’t see Radovan close to water. Searching for him in monasteries is in
vain as well. They’ve searched them all, and Raso is nowhere to be found. What would he do in a
monastery? He would be bored there.
The likelihood is that, as soon as the weather gets better, he would leave his lair, sit under a beech tree,
and start playing heroic songs on his gusle (Balkan folk fiddle). He enjoys the music of his childhood. Raso
doesn’t know what Canary Islands are about, and why would he go there when there are no gusle to be
found. There’s no way he’s there.
In his life Raso kept trying to do things, but he never succeeded. In his youth he started writing poems,
which no one liked, because they didn’t even resemble poems. He tried reciting them once, but was booed
at the very beginning, because these so-called poems made no sense, and he fled the stage. If Carla had
heard them, she would have runaway to avoid listening to them.
Sure, many like-minded people are helping him hide. If they found Radovan sleeping under an oak, they
wouldn’t turn him in, they would bring him tea and a blanket to make sure de doesn’t catch a cold for the
sake of the vital national interest. This is why I am not surprised that they can’t find his lair.
We will export ministers
I find comfort in the fact that we are topping the charts in Europe in one thing. No one can beat us when it
comes to the number of governments, ministers, prime ministers, deputies, assistants, advisors, committees,
councils, advisory bodies, associations … We have 180 ministries in this country! Once we start for Europe,
we could dump off two-thirds of them in some countries that are lacking various ministers and advisors.
Many of them are not that clever, but when in need, they come in handy.
We would like to get rid of them, and, if nothing else, our experts could teach these countries how to spend
taxpayers money, how to use government cars, how to build summer houses, how to collect huge fees for
this and that.
The people in the West do not know how to do these things. They are really naïve. They don’t even know
how to snatch a taxpayer’s money, and our guys could teach them how-to in no time at all.
Our guys are experts in this. In parliaments, in governments, in municipalities … I am surprised that they
haven’t figured out how to collect a fat fee for living together with their moms or sisters-in-law. It would do
them good.
Much needs to be done before the road to Europe. We would need a broom to clean out the rotten stuff, to
install order in the country, to make it look beautiful like a bride before the wedding. Europe is like an old
lady courting us, and we keep failing in attempts to charm her.
But, since the right moment came at a bad time, who will do this, and how will it be done? When I analyze
the situation a bit, I see that our power-holders are in no hurry to take the country into Europe because they
are spending more time abroad than here anyway.
They care more about taking their wives to Europe than their country.
Šefik Dautbegovic, born in the small town of Prozor, Bosnia and Herzegovina, in 1948; graduated from the Faculty of Political
Science in Sarajevo in 1972; worked as a journalist for Oslobodjenje daily in Sarajevo since 1973; worked also for various
columns of the newspaper. At present work as an editor-commentator for Oslobodjenje.
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Slovenské pohl’ady, May 2006
Central Europe – Lost, Found AND LOST AGAIN?
By Gustáv Murín
It is hard to determine when the term “Central Europe” first appeared and who had invented it. This idea
challenged the balance of power after WW2 and struck a chord with Central European intellectuals who felt
betrayed by the political separation of West and East in Europe. The term started to be widely recognized
after revolutionary events in former communist European countries. In 1989, simply dividing Europe into the
West and East no longer made sense. In the summer of 1998, the Austrian Cultural Institute in London
organized the “Festival of Central European Culture”. Organizers invited artists from Austria, Croatia,
Slovenia, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Hungary and Italy. But this is precisely where we face serious
difficulties with the term “Central Europe”. The question is whether these are the only countries that fit this
term or whether others should be added? And if so, which ones?
Germany – yes or no?
In 1997, the respected U.S. travel publishing house, Lonely Planet, published a book entitled “Central
Europe on a Shoestring” covering the following countries: Germany, Liechtenstein, Switzerland, Austria,
Hungary, Poland, Slovenia, Slovakia and the Czech Republic. The term seemed to perfectly fit the
“traditional German concept of ”Mitteleuropa”, reliant on economic and geopolitical dominance” as
described by Emil Brix in a special issue of the publication Occasions entitled “Central Europe”, published
for above mentioned cultural event in London (The Austrian Cultural Institute, London, 1998). Between the
two World Wars, there had even been a tendency to characterize Germany as a holder of “Kultur” (culture)
which ran counter to the Western tendency towards “Zivilisation” (civilization). But according to Milan
Kundera (The New York Review of Books, 7/1984), Central Europe is “boxed in by the Germans on one side
and the Russians on the other“ where “the nations of Central Europe have used up their strength in the
struggle to survive and to preserve their languages. Since they have never been entirely integrated into the
consciousness of Europe, they have remained the least known and the most fragile part of the West –
hidden even further, by the curtain of their strange and scarcely accessible languages …”
Kundera’s description automatically excluded Germany from the scope of countries covered by the term
“Central Europe”, (not to mention his confusing remark about it as ”the most fragile part of the West” – in
fact, he understands Central Europe as “the eastern border of the West”). But according to a precise
reading of the above statement, Central Europe also excluded all German speaking countries. This point of
view narrowed down the number of countries from the nine mentioned by Lonely Planet to only five.
Another American publishing house, Welden Owen, published a book of pictures edited by Jan Morris
entitled “Over Europe”. In the chapter “The Central Europeans”, only Czechoslovakia, Poland and Hungary
are listed. Of course, this 1992 publication did not reflect the split of Czechoslovakia, but if the author had
been aware of it, he probably would have known that the Czechs don’t like to include themselves among
“Central Europeans”. They desperately want to be recognized as an integral part of Western Europe to the
extent that in the last few years, their government has sabotaged most of the activities of the so-called
“Visegrad Four”, the group of countries accidentally also covered by the publication “Over Europe”. So, from
the purest point of view, does Central Europe only apply to three countries – Poland, Slovakia and Hungary?
Who else – yes, who else – no?
György Konrád in his essay, “The Central European Dream” (in E.Busek and G.Wilfinger (Eds.) Aufbruch
nach Mitteleuropa: Rekonstruktion eines versunkenen Kontinents, Vienna, 1986) estimates the population of
Central Europe to be between 100 and 200 million people. It is a very rough estimate, but certainly more
than Poland, Slovakia and Hungary put together. So where do all of these Central Europeans live? In the
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publication already mentioned above, Emil Brix, tried to specify that Central Europeans live in “parts of
Europe extending from Poland to Bosnia and Herzegovina and from Austria to the Ukraine”. Thus, we now
have two more candidates for the Central European club who were missing at the presentation of “Central
European Culture” in London – Bosnia-Herzegovina and the Ukraine. Brix was well aware of the eccentric
position of the Ukraine when he wrote that” … academics in the Western Ukraine are putting stress on
Central Europe traditions, because this helps to overcome the lack of European contacts acting from a
Soviet past.” And he suggested even more when he defended the position of Austria within Central Europe.
“Because of the cultural traditions, Austria is a Central European country. The same holds true for the
northern parts of Italy where the challenge and magic of borders is ever present,” he wrote.
The Vilenica festival is a respectable annual literary award for Central European authors. Its organizers from
Slovenia included Italy as a matter of course. Furthermore, they included Germany in their scope, added all
three Baltic States and currently are trying to cope with the question of whether Romania is a Central
European country. Ultimately, the area we are dealing with ranges from just three to up to no less than
sixteen countries covered by one geopolitical and cultural term. Consequently it could include 55 million
people as well as far more than 200 million estimated by György Konrád. However, Milan Kundera was very
well aware of the flexibility of the practical realization of “The Central European Dream” when he wrote:
“Its borders are imaginary and must be drawn and redrawn with each new historical situation.”
At least one solid point?
Aristotle once said: “Give me a solid point and I will move the Earth.” Isn’t this the solution to our problem?
The newly discovered term “Central Europe”, frequently used in the media, calls not only for the immediate
definition of its borders but furthermore of its center. Well, frankly speaking, where is the center of Central
Europe, or better yet, where in fact is the center of the Europe?
To answer these questions we first have to deal with the vague term ”heart of Europe”.
During the years of existence of the former Czechoslovakia, Prague was constantly called the heart of
Europe.
Surprisingly (or not), a poster at the international airport in Budapest in 1996 welcoming me to Hungary
described the whole country as the heart of Europe.
However, according to the official bulletin of national airline, Adria, Slovenia on the Adriatic coast has
aspirations to bear this proud title too.
Air France, on the other hand, offers flights connecting you to any place in the world from the heart of
Europe, which, of course, is France.
The same thing is said in Luxembourg and the Netherlands.
I also heard a BBC political commentary about some political turbulence in Italy, to which we must pay
attention because Italy is in the ”heart of Europe”.
But The Times in London published a story about Bosnia with the headline ”European heart in American
hands”. And Americans took it seriously because President Bill Clinton referred to Bosnia as the heart of
Europe too.
Last year while visiting Warsaw, I found a book by Norman Davies with the title ”Heart of Europe – Short
History of Poland” in book store called Megastore.
In the book “Storm of globalization” (Jamex, 2002), Professor Ivan A. Čarota is trying to oppose selfdeception of “geopolitical disorientation” when Belarus is presented as center/heart of Europe.
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With a heart in so many places at the same time, it is not surprising that Europe is so close to a heart
attack at any moment. But this is not the end of the troubles relating to the issue of the center of Central
Europe. Of course, as befits such an important issue, we also have the officially claimed ”centers of
Europe”. There are three. Plus one.
In Slovakia (with the support of the Slovak government), a hall, commemorating its central position in the
continent, was built in a village called Krahule in the central part of the country.
However, in the Ukraine, the eastern neighbor of Slovakia, in the city of Rahov (south-west of the more
well-known city Lviv) a pillar of stones was built showing the place where the ”center of Europe”
certainly is.
It seems that the Ukraine’s neighbor, Lithuania, never heard about this, because people there have their own
stone pillar. This one was erected in 1991 and was precisely located by the French National Geographic
Institute at 25’’19’ latitude and 54’’ 54’ longitude..
These three ”centers of Europe” create a triangle with sides not shorter than 375 km – 750 km – 875 km.
However there is still one more. In the small village of Tállya in the Hungarian part of the Tokaj wine region,
you will be greeted by selection of its special wines. And at the end of your visit, you will automatically
receive a ”certificate” claiming that you have visited the ”Geodesical Center of Europe”. There is no
explanation as to how they came to have this proud title. But certainly they believe in it.
Does Central Europe exist at all?
In the hope of finding a positive answer, but giving up hope of finding its precise borders and center, we
come back to Kundera’s definition of Central Europe and repeated by Emil Brix broadly as a “cultural
landscape between Germany and Russia”. Slovak scholar, diplomat and Minister of Culture, Rudolf Chmel,
tried to impose an element of time to this definition when he once said: “Central Europe is like an
accordion. When Germans and Russians are doing well, they come closer and Central Europe starts to
vanish. But when they are in trouble and withdraw to their inner borders, Central Europe suddenly
emerges”. Actually, Germany still has trouble with the reunification of the western and eastern parts of the
country, and Russia seems to have trouble with everything. But, one day in the future when they have
resolved their problems, should we expect Central Europe, regardless of the flexibility of this term, to vanish
again? When will the future of Central Europe be finally liberated from its fatalistic past?
Translation by Bea Baloghová and Diane Seo
Gustáv Murín was born 1959 in Bratislava, Slovakia. Author of more than 1000 articles in Slovak and Czech newspapers,
magazines and the international press. Author and moderator of TV series and radio programs. Interviews with Czech, Polish,
Slovenian, and Slovak writers, journalists, theatrical directors, actor, non-fiction writer, playwright and scientist. More than
80 interviews with scientists from Slovakia, USA and Japan. Member of the Slovak Syndicate of Journalists since 1995.
President of Slovak P.E.N. Centre (2000 – 2004), the worldwide writer’s organization for freedom of expression.
10
Newspaper “Standart”, Sofia, October 15, 2005 – March 18, 2006
The immigrants – people without a country
The new Europeans’ Journey East – West
By Janina Dragostinova
The European “pleskavitza”
Our bus is leaving to go to Europe and we should be very careful. Especially at this point in time when there
is so little time left to January 2007. The steward of the bus is also very attentive. He carefully chooses his
words. The bus, he says, is equipped with a chemical toilet. However, it can only be used if you want to
pee. Because (at this point the steward makes a thoughtful pause) whoever “takes a dump” and … we
literally die. Then at the bus we will have (pause) …”a hell of a stink”. That’s right! The steward is
experienced. He has mastered the European language on sensitive issues.
In spite of this we feel embarrassed. At this moment probably none of us intends “to takes a dump”, but if
the steward says there is such a possibility, then we are all potentially guilty. The steward travels to Europe
almost every day and has definitely realized where the mistrust towards us as a country comes from. Enter
the Bulgarians in EU and hop, they “take a dump”. Totally indecent.
The steward leaves us enough time to consume the effect of his words. And we look down shyly as if we
were watching a film with our parents and suddenly there was a porn scene.
Ok, however this claim on our potential actions is only hearsay and even unreasonably suspicious. The truth
could be very different. Because we have learned to hold during the last 15 years. In every way.
Let’s take the boy next to me for example, he is holding a small wallet in his sweaty hand, from the ones
you can hang from your waist. Every once in a while, he opens it and counts the banknotes. He is carrying
a lot of money, I start understanding why he sweats. He is probably on his way to buy a European car.
Everybody knows that the old cars of Europe are new cars at home. If we were friends, I would have told
him that no matter what car he gets, if he drives it on the Bulgarian roads, it will break down the same way
as the Soviet cars. I know, because there is hardly a month when I don’t take my Citroen to be repaired and
it seems as if the sole purpose of every Bulgarian mechanic is to turn every European car into its respective
Soviet model. Only then can he feel his power over the automobile. “I've not left anything French in this
car,” said my car service guy boastingly. And he was right. So, whatever car you buy, you poor boy, you will
still be riding a Moskvich. I have suspicions that city mayors have some Mephistophelian-like contract with
car service guys. However I can’t tell this to the boy. So I let him count his money and keep on dreaming.
I watch the Serbian highways outside. They don’t provoke trust. Tolls are collected but the roads are still
bumpy. Their road police are like ours – sit in ambush and wait for some foreigner to pay big fines. For good
or bad we turn out to be brothers – the Serbs and us. In the toilet of a gas station the lady in front asks me
for one lev or 50 cents. You have raised the prices, a regular passenger who knows about prices, complains.
Ya, well, the petrol has gone up, everything goes up, the lady of the toilet explains. Logical, if the price of
petrol goes up, why should other liquids be cheaper?
I was warned not to pass through Slovenia on my way to Austria under any circumstances. As soon as they
became Europeans, Slovenians turned mean. They are right. They got the honey jar and would like to keep
it. One day, when we become Europeans we will turn mean as well. We are capable of that if nothing else.
On the other hand, Hungarians are no more big-hearted either. They point out the only gypsy boy in the bus
and take him out. He should go back. But why? Nobody is telling you. The small dark-skinned boy does not
even try to protest. He obviously knows why. We are being criticized in European monitoring reports for not
being able to cope with the Roma problem but at the same time they probably trust us very much since we
are left to cope with it on our own. In other words – do-it-yourself Roma approach.
11
I finally arrive at my destination. Vienna. The Institute for Human Sciences. I am being introduced to the
others as a new addition to the fellowship of grant-winners. Every one of them has a spacious room,
a leather chair and a desk with a fast computer. I notice that most have taken off their shoes and stay in
socks – it is so clean in this Institute. Ah, I say to myself, when we become a full-fledged member of EU, we
will also be only in socks in our working places. Naturally, my first job after sitting in front of my desktop is to
take off my shoes. But suddenly there is a problem. My chair is too high and my feet are helplessly hanging
in the air. The other possible position of the chair is down. But then it is so low that my chin hits the desk.
I am following the directions of friendly E-mails coming from Bulgaria to pull this or that handle. I pull. It does
not help. It is either up or down. I begin to realize the weaknesses of the EU. Were I in Sofia at that moment,
the “handy man” would have appeared by now, equipped with the eternal instrument – the phrase “go to
hell” in hand – and would have fixed it. But this is Vienna, a high-class approach is needed …
At our first get-together, the Danish lady presents her subject. “The political murders in Eastern Europe”.
The Danish lady cannot comprehend how the Romanians executed Ceausescu on one hand and miss him, on
the other. She showed us pictures of his grave where there were always fresh flowers. She told us how on
St. Nicolas Day there were delegations from North Korea and China. In addition, she says, the Serbians, for
example, are perplexed as to who is the real hero – Zoran Djindjic or Arkan. She mentions that Djindjic was
a scholarship student at the very same Institute and sitting at the very same hall. Weird things happen in
Eastern Europe, the Danish lady concludes. Questions? Was Ceausescu Dracula, the Polish man asks.
As most of his fellow countrymen he has an opinion on everything. And questions. He speaks scientifically
stressing the word “basically”. Because of this ambitiousness the Polish caught the first wave of accession.
I have a lot to say about political murders in Bulgaria, but “basically” keep quiet. We only have the status of
observers in Brussels anyway. We keep quiet, observe and make notes in a fat book. Not that anyone in
Sofia will see the notes, because Bulgarians know it all, but still – just in case …
A little while later I talk to a Belgian who lives in a room next to mine. I am trying to explain how important
Brussels is for us. “Complete boredom,” she says. “I ran away from there.” That’s it, nobody appreciates
what they have. “Do you want me to tell you the funniest story of this summer?” I agree. So, her Latin
teacher had never been to Rome. This summer she had finally saved money and realized her dream at last.
The minute she got off the bus, she headed to the Gucci store. Because to go to Rome and not shop at
Gucci equals to go to Rome and not see the Pope. She bought an expensive sweater. All of a sudden she
felt a sharp pain in her stomach and the urgent need to empty it. But there were only ancient stones around
and no WC. After the group moved forward, she stayed behind, waited in a corner and … took out the
sweater from the Gucci bag … and filled it. She caught up with the rest of the group on the street and was
trying to keep the bag somehow aside. While she was wondering where to get rid of it, suddenly a Vespa
rushed by, as in the films, and the motorist snatched the bag with the snobbish label and the priceless
content. “Bella Italia,” exclaimed the Belgian. This story reminds me of the “hell of a stink” of our bus, but
I keep quiet again.
“This can only happen in Europe,” the American, who also lives with us, says. “They steal your shit, wrapped
luxuriously and then wonder why you cannot agree on the European Constitution.” The American is from
Utah and majors in international relations at the University of Vienna. If you look at it this way, he probably
knows about these things. Besides that he is a Mormon and does not drink hot beverages for breakfast. After
his extreme statement, however, the Belgian lady and myself are ready to fight and defend the honor of
Europe. I feel that I have been more offended than the girl from Brussels and God knows why Europe is
dearer to me.
“Come on now, go to bed,” the landlady calms down our argument. After that she reminds us that we need
to respect the privacy of others. This is more valid for the American, the landlady says, because the
12
Americans do not respect closed doors. Ha, imperialist, he was told straight to his face. I rub my hands
content. The American throws a tooth-whitened smile at us, snaps his suspenders over the wrinkled shirt
and bids “Good night” with dignity.
I am falling asleep. There is a dormer over my bed and the European sky by night is sneaking in, filled with
a round of stars. A real sleeping pill.
15.10.2005 www.standartnews.com
The long way between the room and the stage
“My life may seem strange at a first glance. I was born in Moscow, grew up in Sofia, studied in Vienna and
Upsala, yes, not entirely ordinary,” Stephen Kamilarov says. “But very soon this will be considered normal.
In spite of its internal misunderstandings, Europe is headed towards unification. People travel a lot and
change the country they work in a few times. This is beginning to be a routine. Especially in a profession
like mine.”
Stephen Kamilarov is a violinist and a director, violin tutor at the University for music and stage arts in
Vienna, he has his own quartet and he is a musician at the Vienna Philharmonic. Is this all genetic? For sure,
because Stephen is a son of the famous violinists Dina Schleiderman and Emil Kamilarov. He was born
during a tour his parents were making in the Soviet Union. It seems somehow normal coming from such
a family to become a violinist. He studied at the Sofia Music School. Until his mother decides to take him
“out”. And one day in 1967, still 11 years old, Stephen turns up at the Teresian Academy in Vienna. “It was
a great shock for me. My parents stayed in Sofia. I did not know the language. I needed more than two
years to begin to function. The regime at the boarding house was tough. I used to wake up in a room with
three other boys. I had to learn to share.”
Looking back today, Stephen Kamilarov says that actually things had to happen this way and he is very
grateful to his parents for showing him the way. “I was still a child and I don’t know how it was arranged.
I just remember at one point the people in power were convinced that my parents did not intend to
immigrate and were going to stay in Sofia. Then everything was up to money. Once it was decided that the
state would not be paying in foreign currency and this financial responsibility would be taken by my parents,
they allowed me to go. Of course, my parents could have spent their currency at the ‘Corecom shops’ as
most people who had this opportunity did, but they chose to invest it in my education.”
The Teresian Academy is an elitist high school established by the Austrian queen Maria Teresa. They judge
students by their results and not whose sons they are until this day. Scholarships are given to the less
wealthy. Tutors are found for the students with different talents. Stephen qualifies in “music and chess”.
Simultaneously with his studies at the academy, Stephen is a private violin student at the Vienna Music
Academy. And the vacations he spent in Sofia. He plays in the Bulgarian Chamber Orchestra together with
his parents. “This was a very valuable time because I learned how to be on stage,” remembers Kamilarov
today. “I learned the discipline of tours.”
During these travels the musician met but somehow missed the realities of communism. “My way of
thinking was formed in the West. In Bulgaria I did not ask myself how life should be. Life was what it was.
It was me in the family who was queuing for bread. But this did not seem so tragic because I was queuing
for food back at the boarding house as well. Of course my parents were arguing with me about the length of
my hair. I shaved my head just to prove my point to them. But who was not searching for their identity at
this age?” However, the misunderstandings between Stephen’s parents and the communist regime were not
that innocent. When this became unbearable, the two violinists left Bulgaria. They settled in Sweden. Later
on their son joined them. They lived together for 7 years and Stephen graduated from his violin education.
His next steps were backwards and upwards. He returned to Vienna in 1981 to study conducting. “I had no
13
means of support so I was playing music a lot and applied for work to many places.” Only after a year he
was hired by the Vienna Philharmonic after a competition. In 1988 he was awarded a teaching position.
“Actually I stayed in Austria because of the work. Today I cannot say who made the choice. But the way
I live, I could do it anywhere in the world. I don’t need much – one room to rehearse and one hall to play in.”
His first place of residence in the Austrian capital consisted of a single room and a toilet on the same floor.
From that perspective, his living standard in Sofia was higher, at least the toilet was inside the apartment.
“Vienna has been lit up and shimmering for the past 10 years. Before that it was grey and much more
depressing. But this never mattered to me,” Kamilarov says. “It seems completely idiotic to me for a person
to link his personal happiness to the brands of shoes or clothes he wears or the car that he drives. These
are not long-lasting values. If there is a financial crisis tomorrow, things will be different. Yes, it is nicer
when streets are clean, but it is not so important for me.” However, he thinks the importance of art is of
value and they pay attention to art in Vienna. “This makes me feel more secure. I get more satisfaction from
what I do. The halls are full, many of the concerts have been sold out years ahead. For example you wait
7 years for a subscription to the Vienna Philharmonic. It used to be like that in Bulgaria too, but now the
people who have money and could afford to go to concerts are not educated enough to do it, and the ones
who are interested in art don’t have the money. The people who are aware of the importance of culture
for the development of society are not in power. While here because of tradition, the people in power
understand the importance of art for the progress of society. Of course there are snobs as well, paying
200 – 300 euros for opera tickets. But this is not bad because they also help art.”
A real proof that art is appreciated in Vienna is the fact that on November 22 Stephan Kamilarov will be
awarded “The Cross of Honor” for his contribution to the Republic of Austria. The decree is signed by the
president Mr. Heinz Fischer.
The distinction is for Stephan Kamilarov’s musical activities. And for something else – he has been a part of
a project for the past several years. It brings together children from ex-Yugoslavian countries at summer
master classes. There children not only work with great teachers but participate in the unification of Europe
in practice. Their parents have been killing each other until recently in Yugoslavia’s civil wars. But during
these summer camps, the children play music together. For example a Bosnian quartet played music but by
a Montenegrin composer. In the end all of them play in one orchestra. In these classes there are also
students from the Sofia Music Academy. “At the beginning they looked at each other with suspicion. But
eventually they became inseparable. Music can do what politics cannot. These children overcame their
parents’ political mistakes.”
Besides that Stephen Kamilarov is active in charity concerts to raise money for hospitals in Serbia as well
as scholarships for young talents. “If there is something wrong with the world today, it is the growing
nationalism, he says. Nationalism closes people’s hearts and limits their mind. Otherwise we should never
forget where we started from and should not deny our roots.”
And Stephen Kamilarov started his journey from Sofia and claims that he still likes crammed trams because
he recognizes familiar smells and behavior patterns in Bulgaria. “When you are in a different cultural
environment, you should try and learn its signs. Your fatherland is where you can understand people without
words.” However, in order to return, you should leave first. This is the life of a musician – a constant
journey between the room and the stage. No matter where. Somewhere around the world.
14
The camp. 15 years later
The people, whose stories I will tell below, do not know each other. They let me know that they would not
like to meet. The fewer Bulgarians around, the better, they think. They run away from Bulgaria, why am
I trying to take it back to them? They chose the path of immigration and do not intend to give it up. It is
a lonely road, depending on oneself only, the road of no return, when a single look back could ruin the shiny
towers of the world ahead. The conversations of the past annoy them. But is it past already? Even though
they try very hard to be different and independent, there all have something in common – they stayed in
Traiskirchen refugee camp.
The small town of Traiskirchen is situated 25 km south of Vienna, on a once important Roman road. It is
famous for its wine production. And of course for the refugee camp for politically persecuted immigrants.
At the beginning of the 90’s, it was the road to freedom for South East Europe. The camp was opened in
1956 in an old military building. The first refugees from communist countries were mainly Hungarians, in the
60’s Czechs prevailed and Poles flooded in during the 80’s, around 89 and later it was Bulgarians and
Romanians. As it seems in this case we were also together in the queue. When the first democratically
elected government of Philip Dimitrov settled in Bulgaria, the procedure for accepting Bulgarians was
terminated. It was considered that our country stopped the persecution for political reasons. There are no
statistics of how many Bulgarians passed through Traiskirchen and how many stayed in the West because
this was a transit camp and a large part of the arrivals asked for political asylum in America and got it.
The camp is still functioning and accepts refugees from Africa and Asia. Now it is more crowded than ever.
The human rights organizations protest that the management of the camp fails to create normal living
conditions for the refugees. The citizens of Traiskirchen on the other hand make demonstrations claiming
that the government is more attentive to refugees than to their problems. The conflict rises but has not
reached the Parisian ghetto levels.
What happened to the Bulgarians from Traiskirchen? How did they manage their lives 15 years after the
escape from Bulgaria?
Galia came to Vienna on an excursion in 1990. She met some people by chance and they told her about the
camp. When she left for Austria, Galia did not intend to immigrate. But there she was facing a tempting
opportunity. Why not try? She was a graduate of the Arts Academy in Sofia and also civil engineering. But
gave up both professions and opened a clothes shop in Rousse. “I was 28 and said to myself that if I had
made it in a country like Bulgaria, I could make it anywhere.” And bravely marched to Traiskirchen. “At that
time the Lukanov government was in power in Bulgaria which was a good enough argument to give me
political asylum.” They kept her in the camp for a week. Then she was sent to a boarding house, 5 km away,
surrounded by a forest. Galia spent 6 months learning the language. When she felt more confident, she
approached the Vienna labor market. After a while she opened a gallery in the centre of the city. “Well, in
Austria as well as Bulgaria you need connections, money to start your own business. But it is faster in
Vienna. If they see you can do it and work hard, they trust you.” At the same time Galia tried to get her
8-year-old daughter to Vienna. “The formalities and the waiting seemed endless, so I decided to sneak her
in.” They traveled by car, arrived at the Austrian-Hungarian border just when the shifts were changing and
Galia told her daughter just to keep walking ahead. So the child passed through the border without even
knowing it. The patrol did not notice. “When we went to the police in Vienna to legalize her entry they knew
I had done it illegally. The only thing they asked me was if it was hard. I said ’no’ and they laughed and
made out her papers.”
Victor had a little less luck with transporting his family. Victor arrived in Vienna in the spring of 1991. “I took
off as a joke, helping a friend to buy a car. And it so happened that I stayed.” They both had Bulgarian
passports but did not show them at the camp. They claimed to have been transported with a TIR through
Yugoslavia. At that time it was already difficult to allow Bulgarians asylum, but they had developed
15
a system. “I was told by friends to say that I was a supporter of the ERA 3 organization and that we
regularly get beaten during demonstrations. That’s what I did, not knowing what ERA 3 was. But they
bought it and I was allowed to stay. At that time the Austrians were naive. They believed everything you
say. Let alone documents.” After the camp and the boarding house, Victor set off on a job hunt as well. He
ended up in a glass workshop. They asked him if he had a diploma to work with glass. He said that he had.
He wrote it himself, put some sort of a stamp on and they believed it. The difficult times arrived when he
tried to get his wife and daughter to Vienna. They attempted to pass the border 6 times and they got caught
6 times. It was one and the same border policeman who finally took pity on them and told them to go to
another border control area where the control was less strict. Victor thanked him and headed there. His
wife in the trunk of the car and his child asleep on the back seat. “I pretended to be a businessman and told
them that there was a truck with tiles waiting for me in Austria and they let me go quickly. They did not
even open the trunk.” The seventh time was lucky.
Petre also passed through Traiskirchen, catching the last of the “political” trains. He arrived in Austria in the
winter of 1990 as an international football referee. And stayed. He found a job in Baden as a coach for
children. The local mayor himself proposed that a work permit was given to him. But it did not happen. The
answer was: first try and accommodate the unemployed Austrians and then think of the rest. He tried five
times to obtain a work permit and was refused. Finally they used a trick and wrote in the job description
that for this particular job it was a prerequisite to speak Serbian and Russian and no Austrian had these
qualities. In this way Petre became an employee of a supermarket owned by a Russian. At that time his
name was still Peter Ivanov. “But this ‘ov’ in the family name would not get you anywhere”. So later on he
took his wife’s family name. She was Polish. So he became Petre Heilman. You won't think this is a
Bulgarian.
Galia abandoned the gallery and leased a restaurant. “I always wanted to have my own place. So I did it.
I am a person who sets up goals and achieves them. I am staying in Austria because here everybody
pursues his own well being. In Bulgaria people are disoriented. They don’t know what they want and how
to get it. We are more intelligent than the Austrians but we lack discipline.”
Petre found a job as a barman. “At the beginning I thought things in Bulgaria would get better. But they did
not. On the contrary – got worse. For the past years here just with my salary, I paid off my own apartment,
my car, I go on vacations in the summer, ski in the winter. Had I stayed in Bulgaria, I would not have been
able to afford any of this. Why should Austrians do it and I shouldn’t? The only possible way is to become
Austrian”.
“In the first years I was saying to myself, two more years and I will return to Bulgaria. 15 years passed.
Now I don’t think of going back,” says Victor who now works in building construction. “Besides, all of my
friends now are Austrians. I have been fired two times because of other Bulgarians. They were jealous that
I was making more money and ruined me in front of the bosses. We are a dirty tribe and you could easily
spot it in three days or after the first drunken night. So it is best that one forgets the Bulgarian element in
oneself and does not associate with other Bulgarians.”
Ok, I know that, but after all you all have sort of common memories, I am trying to contradict the logic of the
three people. Being in Traiskirchen is sort of having gone to the same school. Isn’t there any emotion that
connects you? “No”, the three of them answer. “I only turn to a Bulgarian if I need to exchange information.
Feelings have no importance when the world is governed by money. I have come to this country to make
money. I do it. The rest is a waste of time. Many could not make it and went back. It is their own business.
My choice is this,” says Petre Heilman, once Peter Ivanov.
16
My heart is at home, my reason – in Austria
Minutes before I meet Yana Jeliazkova, I received one of those e-mails that imperatively tell you to send
them to a bunch of other people, or if you don’t do it in the next 72 hours, happiness will be terminated in
your life. In other words – don’t even think about the misfortunes that might come to you … I open the
attached file and it reads that with money you can buy medicine but not health, you can buy a bed but not
sleep, you can buy a prostitute but not love and so on and so forth … An ancient Chinese proverb. Oh,
I don’t buy this bullshit, not now, in our money-driven world. I don’t care about the misfortunes that await
me and will delete the e-mail without passing it on. I almost forgot what it said until I met Yana. She was
born in Varna. At the beginning of the 90’s she studied at the Economic Institute of Svishtov. She was close
to graduation when one of her professors told her to apply for post-graduate studies in one of the German
institutes. “Why would they accept me?”, Yana wondered. But she applied and was first to get in. After that
she received a letter that she could not go. “But if I don’t go, who will?” was her next question. Yana was
very ambitious and in 1992 she was already in Vienna. “Not everyone could live abroad,” she says today.
“My first months were a nightmare. Education in Austria is organized in a totally different way. It makes you
an individualist. There is no group, no colleagues. You make your own program, you compete with yourself
and the others. It is not by chance that only one fourth finish their studies. In the end you take the initiative,
become a fighter, pushy, assertive, but mostly lonely. Only the most ruthless succeed and make really good
money.”
Yana’s scholarship ends and she decides to return to Bulgaria. “I was very optimistic. I was saying to myself
– well, I am a young specialist, studied in the West, I know two foreign languages. I prepared my dossier
the way they taught me in Vienna and went to a Sofia bank. This is the so-called self-initiated search for
a job which according to my Vienna professors should have been highly appreciated. I asked to meet the
Human Resources manager. So I enter the room and start with what I have studied and what I know, what
I can do … He stayed silent and listened and in the end he asked me: ”Can you fuck well?”
It was 1995, I was in a bank in Sofia, i.e. the economic elite of Bulgaria and I suddenly realized that I did
not fit in this country. So I started thinking about the pros and cons of life in Bulgaria and in Austria. It is
hard in both places, you had to compromise, but you had to think long-term and see where the benefits lay
and it was worth the sacrifice. In those years a woman alone could not achieve anything without the right
connections. It could be different today but then it was like that. So I went back to Austria and started
everything from scratch.
The fact that she was a foreigner, was it a hindrance? “It was easier to find a job ten years ago. Besides
I learned how to use disadvantages and turn them to advantage. When they were asking me where I was
from, I used to say: “I come from the dark Balkans, but I have been educated here and speak Slavonic
languages, I am very communicative and like to talk to people in coffee breaks and in corridors. It brought
results.” So Yana became a bank employee. “Austrian banks were enlarging their operations abroad.
Whoever wanted to have a career, should have started in Eastern Europe. For me Bulgaria was abroad.
I was offered a job at a branch office in Bulgaria but I declined. The situation is this – there are Bulgarians
who go back to work in Sofia with Austrian passports. They make a lot of money but for a short time. The
company policy changes and they get fired. The company could not take them back in the same position and
they stay on the street. This is why I preferred less money but a more secure position for a longer time.”
Obviously the luck that once sent her the professor from Svishtov worked. “Good luck comes to those who
work for it,” Yana says. “All my friends say I have a very good life, have more money, could travel and see
the world … Yes, this is all true, but nobody asks what it costs. And how much I really work. They squeeze
all the energy from us. I work until 10, 11 pm. Companies choose to hire fewer people and pay a salary and
a half. We have contracts for 38.5 hours per week but we really work 72. It is perfectly legal because
overtime is paid well. So it turns out you live to work. If you get in this system there is no turning back.
17
You get to a financial level that you would like to keep. Of course you can work less and get paid less. But
no-one who has tried the sweetness of money wants to give it up. So it is like a vicious circle, if you want
a career you have no time for personal life, family, friends. This is why there are more and more lonely
people in the West, depression increases, suicides are on the rise, relationships between people are settled
with money.”
At this point I remember the e-mail with the old Chinese proverb. “The fact that I am Bulgarian sort of helps
me in this environment of heartlessness and money-making.”, Yana says. And sighs: “If there was any way
to live in Varna and work there and take the plane to Vienna for an opera weekend … and go back home.”
Where is home? “I don’t know. I have two countries at the moment. My heart is in Bulgaria and my
reasoning in Austria. If the microeconomic framework was a little bit better, I would have returned. Many of
my friends would, too. But now we know what it is like to make good money in a country where people
could afford to pay 200 euros for a concert, we know what the cultural climate means and is missing in
Bulgaria. It is terrible to work hard for a salary and a half. But the misery in Sofia is worse. In the old times
my grandma and grandpa were a cult for me. I would go for a visit during the holidays, kiss their hand and
always get little something. And in the last years I was paying from Vienna for both my grandmothers’
operations, hospitalizations, medicine. Is it normal for people who have worked all their lives for a certain
country to be left out? No! Here in Austria they say it is best to be retired. The country is grateful to the
people who worked for it. How can I return to a place like Bulgaria which does not respect its people?
Otherwise I feel homesick for the sea breeze, for the friends, the spirit there, but …”
If you have piles of money can you buy a fatherland? Probably only the ancient Chinese know the answer to
this one.
If only the European comes …
Four of the Christmas lights of the Christmas star have burned out. The others twinkle as their color
changes from yellow to green and then red and yellow again but the black hole in the middle creates the
feeling of something ominous and ugly.
“C’mon, let’s change these lights,” Sasho says.
“Do you know how much time I spent this afternoon fixing them. Nothing happens. They keep burning out,”
Vesso replies. “There is no point. There is no point in anything anymore.”
We are sitting in a coffee shop called “Plovdiv” in Vienna. Our conversation has long finished. We met only
3 hours ago but we know everything about each other. We only sit now and if our eyes meet we smile and
silently look at something else.
“Guys, we have to celebrate! Christmas is coming!” – Sasho yells at one point. Then he jumps to the music
box and kicks it strongly.
The music box, obviously having been used to such manners, does not protest, moves into action and
immediately the voice of a popular song comes out from its metal corpse. “The town at night, the sleepy
streets …”
“C’mon, get up,” says Sasho and pulls on Vesso’s hand.
Both of them swirl to the rhythm. Their movements seem rehearsed and there is no sign of the expected
shame of two men dancing together.
“There, you wanted to see how we live?” Sasho turns to me. “This is how we live and we don’t complain.
Like in the military films my mom used to watch on the telly, ha-ha.”
18
“The pavement quietly rings below us, and we keep walking, headed nowhere.” They sing.
My cassette has long finished. My sheets of paper too. I try to gather my journalistic ammunition.
“Look now, we believed you were not from the police. Because, we, Bulgarians, are like that. The person
you were having a drink with the previous night fights with you and then goes to the police. You be careful
what you are going to write about us – jokingly yet threateningly Vesso looks at me. Then almost cries with
the song “I am crazy, I am crazy about you!”
What am I going to write? I don’t know, guys. Something like: Vesso and Sasho arrived in Vienna 3 years
ago. As tourists. Their purpose, though, was not to visit the Hundertwasser house or Klimt’s drawings but to
make some money. Clear, exact and understandable. “I have done all kinds of odd jobs in Bulgaria, Sasho
tells his story: “I have driven a taxi, I have been a security guard, I have built houses. But Bulgaria is …
Bulgaria. Whatever you do, it is the same. There is no money left. One day I got sick of it and said to myself,
if the others can do it, so can I. The fact that I am in Vienna is purely coincidental. When I went to buy
tickets to go abroad, there were none left for Spain. So I decided to try somewhere nearer.”
“I came the same way. I had some money saved but I spent it on a hotel for 2 nights. It was supposed to be
a cheap hotel but when you add up the traveling expenses, the food and this and that, for two days I spent
what I had saved for a year in Haskovo. I was lucky because I met friends who helped me with a job and
accommodation. So things started happening. If they hadn’t, I would have gone back”.
Sasho and Vesso have been illegal immigrants in Vienna for three years. According to them this type of
existence has its advantages. For example, if the police give you a speeding ticket you just tear it up. Let
them find you afterwards. You don’t pay TV tax or any tax for that matter …“Austria closes its eyes when
“black” workers are concerned because they do the dirty work,” Sasho explains. “It is more profitable for
the employers as well because they don’t pay social security benefits.” When he arrived, the Danube had
just flooded. He was helping clear the mud next to a policeman. So what? Nothing. The policeman did not
bother him. “When they need you, they don’t ask who you are and where you come from, it is important for
the job to be done. If there is an accident, then there is a problem. Then they remember you are a foreigner
and they don’t need you any more.”
Ok, but what about health insurance, pension, social benefits – how do you boys get these contemporary
achievements of the Western world? “My father worked all his life,” Sasho says, “and what does he get,
80 leva pension. If I don’t do anything, I will still make this amount in a day in Austria. If you want to work
there is always something to do. You will move three cupboards but you will not be hungry. I am 32 now …
I want to live until I reach pension age. I want to live, understand, not get 200 leva. If I need to go to a
hospital in Bulgaria, who pays for it? Me, again. I pay everywhere anyway. The difference is, here I make
the money, back home – I don’t.”
There were months, Vesso remembers, when he used to eat only three spoons of margarine every day. He
had money for nothing else. Sometimes at night he used to go to Westbahnhof where they gave food to the
poor. He would queue and get a warm soup. Offended? “Austria is a social country. They have built
communism here a long time ago. You just need to find the ropes … and you’ll be fine.” “Well, the lodging
is nothing special – a room where you reach the walls if you stretch your arms. A shower cabin. The toilet is
in the corridor, but you can get by if you are not too picky.” The important thing is that they save money and
even send some to their relatives back home. Sasho and Vesso work in a car repair shop, whose owners are
Kurds. They say their employers are nice people. “I learned to work 7 hours full speed out of 8 working
hours,” Vesso says. “Every day you have to work as if it is your first day. Otherwise the unemployed
foreigners are waiting for your place.”
The song finishes, the music box goes silent. Sasho approaches and gives it another kick. “I am crazy, I am
crazy about you,” the song starts again having missed its beginning. “Don’t you feel lonely sometimes,
19
abandoned?” I ask. “Lonely, yes,” Sasho answers. “Sometimes. But I try to suppress these feelings.
I haven’t come here to suffer. I will have to pack my things for Bulgaria. Abandoned, no. I have chosen my
way, I walk it and don’t whine.”
“The evening town, the sleepy streets,” the music box sings. “I had a girlfriend in Haskovo. She did not
want to come with me. Now the only thing she wants is to send her money. I do. Women don’t want
anything else but money. So I have to make it to be a real man, don’t I? You could ask her …” Sasho is
pointing to the door which opens. A middle-aged woman walks in. Obviously a friend of theirs. “Daniela,”
she introduces herself. The boys treat her as “Mommy”. I find out she is from Parvomaizi and has been
working illegally in Vienna for almost two years. As a cleaning lady. Daniela overheard Sasho’s last words
and jumps into the argument: “What about men? What do they want? Don’t they ask for money? Why am
I here? Because of my husband.” Daniela tells me she has a husband with a serious heart condition, retired,
a first-degree invalid. She also has a daughter who is graduating from high school and a son who is two
years younger. She used to work in a kindergarten but they closed it down when the number of children
drastically dropped. Then started work in a sweet shop. “12 hours per day for 240 leva and no social
security or insurance. How can you make it with that?” So one day she decided to try her luck in Austria.
But visas unfortunately were only for three months. “But if you find work there is no way to give it up and
go back to Bulgaria for renewal and then come back. We are all people, everything is settled with money.”
20 euros to the customs officer in Bulgaria, 20 euros for the customs officer in Hungary and the vigilant
officers pretend they don’t see the difference in my passport. “I work for my husband’s medicine and for the
future of my children. I cannot leave an inheritance to them but I can make the money for their education.
I invest in my children.”
So it is clear, man or woman, everyone wants money. This is why we have come here to work, to feed our
relatives. Take out the verse, the boys urge her. She does not wait for long and takes out a writing pad
whose pages are filled with a childish handwriting tilted to the left. “This is me, in here, looking for
myself,” she says. She started writing poems when she came to Vienna. “I like to be on the edge, to twist
and turn, to walk with my eyes closed.” I write down one of her verses. “Why do we need God since we are
angels on this Earth?” the lines of the writing pad ask.
“Hey, people, Christmas is coming! – Vesso shouts. – Get up and dance!” “I came in the summer and I said
to myself ’I will go back for Christmas’,” Sasho begins. In the next summer I said – I will go back for
Christmas. Three years passed. It is always next Christmas I plan to return. And I always stay. Do you know
why? Because I think to myself that every next Christmas we will enter the European Union and there will
be no here and there, black and white. It is like believing in Santa Claus. Sweet belief. I lie to myself even
now. I don’t know much about politics but you asked me what I dream of. I will tell you. I cannot build
a house. Cars, phones – not real dreams. I want to be legal here, understand, to have papers. If you have
papers in the European Union, you have everything. This is how I understand Santa Claus – not to work like
this. To be legal!”
“And it will happen. If not this Christmas, then the next,” Sasho goes on. “We might not live well here but
we hope it will get better. Step by step life gets better. In Bulgaria time passes and nothing good happens.”
“And if we get caught, they will not send us further than Bulgaria,” Daniela concludes.
“We are walking, going nowhere” – the music box keeps playing.
The lamps of the Christmas star twinkle playfully and skilfully jum the burnt bulbs.
20
Everything is Mozart this year
“Mozart, madam, Mozart,” – an inviting voice whispers in my ear and a hand lightly pulls my sleeve.
“The great composer,” – the voice continues, when he meets my indifferent look. “English, German, French?
Concert, madam, concert!”
This is the third lad who tries to sell me concert tickets in the short distance between the Vienna opera and
the St. Stephen’s cathedral. No day off for these people. The wind blows in their faces, the snowflakes hit
and melt on their necks, their hands tremble from the cold, but they don’t stop. Mozart, Mozart it is. They
sell tickets for all kinds of concerts everywhere in Vienna. They are dressed in red or dark blue cloaks with
golden braid, almost all of them wear broad-rimmed hats. A pack of hungry Eastern Europeans on the hunt
for tourists. The boys, dressed à la Mozart are among the attractions of the Austrian capital. Usually this is
a job paid by the hour so mostly students do it. But unlike the coachman business, a trademark of Vienna as
well, business with the tickets has mostly gone into the hands of foreigners. I asked the coachmen if there
is a Bulgarian among them. “Somebody who is not from Vienna?”, they were surprised. “Impossible. There
is a boy from Poland at the stables. But we haven’t heard about anybody from Bulgaria.” To drive a carriage
on the cobbled streets of Vienna and make from tourists for half an hour as much as a monthly ticket for the
public transport costs is a typically Viennese occupation. Outsiders are not allowed there.
While with Mozart the situation is completely different. Vienna was just one of the stops in the composer’s
life. He, admittedly, is among the first great Europeans. What is great about Europe without its eastern
parts? Complete boredom. This is why nowadays Mozarts are our boys. I look for a Bulgarian among them.
“I come from Kosovo,” one red-cloaked ticket vendor tells me. “But there was an Ivan somewhere here.
Maybe he has taken a day off.” “I am a neighbor,” another one tells me. “I come from Belgrade. I know one
Iordan from your people.” “I am from Bucharest. I work together with a guy from Sofia, Assen is his name,”
a third vendor is ready to help me. Later I found out once the word got around that I am looking for a
compatriot, all Bulgarians took a hiding. Only Valeri decided to talk to me about his life. His one condition
was not to take his picture. “My mother does not know what I do in Vienna for a living,” he says. I accept
that because in most cases, mothers do not even suspect what their children do abroad.”
Valeri is from Bourgas. He graduated from the German language high school a few years ago. Most of his
classmates are scattered around the world. Most of them went to Germany, to the US and only a few went
to study in Austria. His girlfriend Gergana belonged to the last group. Being admitted to Sofia University,
one day she decided to apply to the University of Vienna. “I did not want her to go. But I couldn’t stop her.
I did not have the means to study abroad. My parents did not have the money to send me and some of my
friends told me that the combination of work and studying is not good. You end up doing neither one, nor
the other. I told Gergana this but she did not believe me and left. She started working as a bar waitress in
the second month of her arrival. For the second year she has not left that place. She managed to get
a student visa somehow but never has time to study. She works all night anyway. Last year, it was Easter,
she sent me an e-mail. She was sick of it all, missed me and wanted to come back. But something was
telling her not to do it. So she organized an experiment. She got her stuff, stood on the Graz highway and
said to herself – if somebody going outside the country takes her, she goes back to Bulgaria. If an Austrian
stops, she stays. She wrote to me: ‘At Easter, God makes the decisions.’ Ok, ya, but our God is not their God
and even Easter is not at the same time. She shivered with cold for a while, cried as the cars were passing
by and was ready to get the train to Vienna when an Austrian stopped in front of her. He was kind, smiling
and middle class. Gergana assumed this was God’s intervention and got in his car. They went to Baden,
then came back to Vienna together and still live together. However, I do not want to accept this divine
intervention and came here to take her back. Nothing came out of her studying anyway. I gathered some
money, took the bus … and you have to live somehow here. I couldn’t go to the Austrian guy’s apartment.
Some people I knew told me about the Mozart job. So I have been Mozart for four months now. She does
21
not want to see me. God decided, she says. I make a living … a little … with the tickets. I share a room
with a Croatian guy. I am waiting for Gergana to come to her senses.”
I listen to Valeri and sigh: ”This is like a film story ’Kidnapping from heaven’. It only seems this way. Life is
different. At the end of ’Kidnapping …’ the pasha lets the two lovers free. He lets them go. I don’t even
know if we are in love. Gergana does not want to see me any more … I really don’t know what she sees in
that Austrian pasha? I don’t know about myself either. How long will I stay here? How long could I be
Mozart? They say: ‘Everything is Mozart’. So if this is true this year, why shouldn’t I be! Until recently
I believed it was all so romantic, but then I read that Mozart was not poor at all like me. He was more like
Robin Williams nowadays. He loved luxury and lived it. What I do is freeze here for a couple of euros and
wait for Gergana and I don’t even know why I do it. I decided to come here at once. Now I cannot decide to
go back. I got used to the situation – neither here nor there. But if I have to be honest, I don’t know how it
used to be but now it is very difficult to be Mozart.”
“Mozart, madam, Mozart,” I hear a voice behind me. “Concert, madam, concert. The great European
composer!”
“And what is worst,” Valeri mumbles, “that Austrian guy from the highway will probably never take
Gergana to listen to Mozart. This is what I regret the most! But what can I do? – on the other hand, it is
Freud’s year, too. Here, I made my confessions to you and whatever will be, will be.”
A bed on your shoulder
I received an e-mail recently from an acquaintance of mine who is German and lives in New York and is
a correspondent for “Der Spiegel”. We decided to sell my son’s bed, he said, it was too small for him
already and we posted it on the Internet. Almost immediately after we did that a boy called, saying he was
from Bulgaria and without bargaining about the price said he was coming to pick up the bed. It was almost
midnight, freezing cold outside but nevertheless he was coming. He lived in a far away neighborhood and
we suggested that he waited till the next morning but he insisted on coming because otherwise he had
nowhere to sleep. And he came, indeed, the same night, said he was in New York for a short while, wanted
to study something, but had to make some money first. He had been working at different kind of odd jobs
but hoped to find a better paid job soon. He did not regret leaving Bulgaria because he saw no future there,
missed his friends though he had met some in New York. He carried the bed away all by himself and
disappeared into the cold night. When I was watching this boy, I remembered you, my acquaintance wrote,
because the whole story seemed very Bulgarian to me.
What is so Bulgarian is going to pick up a bed in the middle of a very cold night, I asked myself? Two days
later I tell the story to some friends in Vienna. And I ask them the same question.
The fact that we are afraid of the future, Ani says. That we are in a hurry to live as if we are racing with life
itself.
The fact that we do not trust anybody but ourselves, Koko jumps into the conversation. We constantly think
that the others will cheat us so we pick up the bed and leave, no matter how cold it is outside.
Oh, this guy couldn’t have been Bulgarian, Angel joins the conversation as well. If he were Bulgarian, he
would have bargained for the price of the bed – just for the hell of it. He gave what he was asked. No way
he was Bulgarian.
But he was in need, Ani says. Actually, we Bulgarians are always in need. And this is why he did not
bargain, his time was precious. When we realized the time was not ours, but God knows whose, we started
creating our own time. This, on the one hand, is a valuable understanding, but on the other, makes us want
22
to rung try this or that, because we believe our own time slips away and we don’t feel secure that we can
hold on to something forever.
Well, the boy was most probably Bulgarian, because he left Bulgaria, Koko adds. Only real Bulgarians do
that, the silly ones stay where they are. You cannot be a real patriot in Bulgaria because everything is ugly
and filthy around you. But if you get distanced it all changes. Now, you tell me, the ones that go back to
Bulgaria, do you cry? Of course you do! The block of flats you live in is rotten and falling apart, the staircase
is dark and dirty, the lights don’t work. If you have rented your apartment the phone bill is huge and the
Landlord is nowhere to be found, the boiler does not work, the toilet leaks and what do you do … cry …
You feel nostalgic, don’t you? You stay here for a while, the administration kicks you around a little bit, your
relatives want you and you go back. I tell you, the guy with the bed was Bulgarian. If you are ready to carry
a bed on your shoulders in the darkest night and that’s all you have but at the same time hope you’ll be a
Hilton owner one day, this is very Bulgarian.
No, no, Angel insisted on his point of view. It is good now to present yourself as Bulgarian. You wave
NATO’s flag, you are one of the few that actually supported the US in Iraq, and at the same time no matter
how you help world democracy, you are still a victim. This guy was something else but presented himself as
Bulgarian for the benefits of it.
If it is the case, Ani elaborated, this only proves that he was Bulgarian. Only a Bulgarian will look for
advantage everywhere.
Ya, always looks but never finds, Koko says.
And if he finds it by chance does not know what to do with it, Angel agrees.
A Bulgarian is never satisfied with anything. If he gets lucky, he would not even know and will keep
complaining.
Oh, it is a very complicated thing to be a Bulgarian, Ani summarized the conversation. And if this guy, your
German friend, thinks he knows what it is like to be a Bulgarian, tell him that he is wrong. I hate people like
that, who come to Bulgaria for a day or two and then decide they know all about it and write. Understood it
all! Never!
This is not how our conversation ended, actually it never ended. Bulgarian conversations usually fade away
as the bottle of brandy finishes but start again with the opening of a new one. But one way or the other,
I end it here. A few days later, in Berlin where I was for an international meeting of translators from
German, we sit having lunch and I am seated next to the Romanian. The table of the 100-year old villa by
Wannsee shakes unsteadily. Everything is so grand, emitting respectfulness, but the table is shaky.
Just like in Romania, the Romanian says.
Just like in Bulgaria, I correct him.
No, no, Romania, he is almost mad at me.
So what about this is Romanian?, I ask.
We are like that, crooked people. They place us somewhere to stand upright and we are shaky. We are
afraid of the past, do not trust the future because we have been lied to, but we do not stop with the lies.
We pretend to be very smart but always get duped. This is why we trust ourselves only and at the same
time do not believe we have enough strength to get out of the mud. The real Romanians have gone to
America and the ones who did not, hope for the European Union.
Do you think they will accept us in 2007?
23
Maybe they will take you, but because I know Romanians too well, I don’t believe they will want us …
Oh, I know Bulgarians too well and I think we will not make it either.
At that point I notice the white and red string on the Romanian’s wrist. I show him mine. “Martishor,” he
smiles. We will wait for the spring, I say …
I look outside. Wannsee is covered with ice. The pine trees are heavy with snow. No spring is visible
anywhere near. Probably in an icy night like this the unknown Bulgarian carried away the bed from my
acquaintance. He wanted it to happen now, immediately, no delays because who knows what could happen
in a winter like this? And what if the Bulgarian was actually a Romanian, eh?
Janina Dragostinova was born 1962 in Varna (Bulgaria). Today she works as a free lance journalist, writer and translator.
Some of her translations from German are: „Die Logik der Bilder” by Wim Wenders, “Anarchie der Phantasie” by Rainer Werner
Fassbinder, “Die Reise nach Trulala” by Wladimir Kaminer, „Die Schattenboxerin“ by Inka Parei, „Adler und Engel“ by Juli Zeh
and „Die Vermessung der Welt“ by Daniel Kehlmann. Janina Dragostinova obtained a number of awards and scholarships.
24
Weekly Magazine “Die Furche”, Vienna, June 8, 2006
The centre is in the East
About 80 communities claim to be at the centre of Europe.
Wolfgang Bahr has been to three of them.
By Wolfgang Bahr
It is amazing how many states, regions and municipalities use the term “centre” for their websites.
www.poland.gov.pl, for example, states in its “Facts” file that “Poland lies in the central part of the
European continent, the geometric centre of which is near Warsaw.” A certain naivety is evident in the
claims made by Potsdam, and its Lord Mayor’s bland assertion that “it just so happens that our city is
geographically in the middle of the continent”; on the other hand the more combative Piedmont informs
us that it “has chosen to play an increasingly central role in the European Union – and that means
geographically too.” Centrality has been claimed for places as far apart as Northern Ireland and the
Székely region of Rumania.
In view of all this, Austria now puts surprisingly little emphasis on its position at the heart of Europe. Even
during its EU presidency, rhetorical exploitation of the country’s geopolitical location has been remarkably
restrained; apparently being at the centre has become so natural that it no longer needs to be stressed. This
is markedly different from the period just after World War II, when Austria’s national anthem stressed the
country’s “strong heart,” in the wake of an episode when this heart had stopped beating completely for
some years. Today the federal capital has been emboldened to plan a railway station that was originally to
be called “Vienna – Centre of Europe” and to devise for itself a leading role in a region named “Centrope”,
together with the cities of Bratislava, Brno and Győr. Apart from Vienna, a specific Austrian tradition of
claiming to be at the centre seems to have survived only in Braunau, apparently based on a statement made
by Napoleon. But there again, Waldsassen in Bavaria likewise calls upon the Corsican’s geopolitical point of
view to help make a similar claim …
Bernotai – Lithuania
Much more solidly based are the claims of Lithuania, which has defeated all its competitors in the struggle
to claim Europe’s geographical middle point. They rest on calculations made by the National Geographical
Institute in Paris, which in 1989 detected the centre of Europe 26 kilometres north of Vilnius. First the
Lithuanian independence movement, and then the tourist industry, picked up on the annoyance factor of
fixing the centre so far to the east and used it to generate publicity. But it was an artist’s private enterprise
that first made the theory of Lithuanian centrality a live issue.
“Europos Centras” at Purnuškės, more precisely at nearby Bernotai, celebrates Lithuania’s accession to the
European Union – and also to NATO, albeit in a somewhat obscure manner, by means of a compass dug into
the ground. The Republic has invested quite a substantial sum in building a festival square displaying the
flags of the EU member states and a granite column with a gilded wreath of stars. A friendly clerk supplies
you with a visitor’s certificate. A golf course is currently under construction in the monument’s well-caredfor grounds.
The “Europos Parkas”, several kilometres away, is quite different, an imposing open-air museum of
contemporary art and one of Lithuania’s main tourist attractions. Its creator, 38-year old Gintaras Karosas,
has not only succeeded in persuading world-renowned artists, such as Dennis Oppenheim and Sol LeWitt,
to supply designs, but has also got sponsorship for realization of the objects, some of which are of colossal
dimensions. His own Monument of the Centre of Europe is comparatively restrained: stone slabs indicating
the distances to all the European capitals are arranged on the lawn, forming a vast circle around a pyramid.
Cognoscenti of historical ironies will note that Minsk is portrayed as the closest city in geographical terms –
and the most distant in terms of ideology.
25
For artist and landscape designer Karosas, whose grandfather was forced to emigrate, and whose father
was deported to Siberia at the age of 14, Europe is an affair of the heart, but more importantly a symbol of
creativity and a challenge to the individual. In the vast park, a balance is struck between nature and art,
likewise between the individual, nationalism and the community of nations: “Nationalism, when it takes the
form of regarding oneself as better than everybody else, is absurd, but a clearly defined national identity is
a progressive influence on those who share it.”
Kremnické Bane – Slovakia
While Gintaras Karosas is acidly critical of an administration perpetuating the mannerisms, if not the
methods, of the ancien regime, and of careerists addicted to fashionable neo-liberalism, Ján Priwitzer, the
mayor of Kremnické Bane in central Slovakia, is even more disillusioned. When Vladimír Mečiar led his
country towards independence, a great future seemed to emerge for the village. A memorial stone was
erected close to the old church of Saint John which, according to legend, had been built on the present site
at the command of angels in order to be “closer to the centre”. Like the column in Lithuania, it stresses
national identity. A platform made out of natural stone was built, from where a “Message from the Centre
of Europe” was proclaimed annually by the “Matica Slovenská” cultural organization. On May 1st, 2004, ten
lime trees were planted on a nearby hill, one for every state joining the European Union on that day.
But the foundation stone for a Park of Slovak Emigration is still lying in the mayor’s office and no funds have
been raised so far for improving the infrastructure – there is only a modest “Hotel Stred Evropy” in nearby
Krahule. Oddly enough, it seems to have been the change of government, to one led by Europhile Mikuláš
Dzurinda, that has caused the project to be put on ice. At the same time, the Catholic authorities show little
interest in the construction of a masonic “Temple of Europe”, whose presumed site is marked by a white
stone. On the other hand, a Capuchin monastery was actually built near the church in the 1990s, with
Austrian support.
In conversation, open-minded Father Guardian traces the stormy course of Slovakian history, from the Tartar
invasions to entry into the EU, and offers a rather prosaic explanation for the centre of Europe being sited
here: apparently it is all down to Italian land surveyors, who had come to the “Slovakian Semmering” to
build the local railway. He also stresses the area’s traditionally peaceful cohabitation of Germans and
Slovaks – to this day German hymns are sung at Sunday service and Mayor Priwitzer, himself one of the last
surviving ethnic Germans, serves as sacristan.
Havlíčkův Brod – Bohemia
There is also a German past in Havlíčkův Brod in Bohemia. This year the former Deutsch Brod celebrates the
150th anniversary of the death of Karel Havlíček-Borovský, the founder of Czech journalism, who was to lend
his name to the city after World War II. The flat overlooking the Town Square, from where he was deported
to Brixen one night by Austrian police, can still be seen, and Havlíček’s “Tyrolean Elegies” are still part of
the Czech literary canon.
There are indeed literary indications of such a provincial centre of Europe, and the city’s spokeswoman
remarks that a “sense of humour” is inseparable from local geopolitical ambitions. Since it proved difficult
to find evidence of an earlier tradition of Brod as the centre of Europe, recourse was made to “the last
remaining instance, the legacy of Jára Cimrman”. In Prague’s Cimrman Theatre the executors of this
fictitious poet’s fictive legacy confirmed that such a place was to be found “near Brod”. As Brod means
“ford”, the search continued along the banks of the River Sázava and there, wonder of wonders, a glass ball
was found …
26
The ball was incorporated into a wooden maquette and is now being kept by the Mayor to be displayed on
special occasions. However there is free access to a monument in the middle of a small maze near the
coffee house called “At the Notary”; it consists of a huge funnel through which occasional rain water may
flow towards the alleged centre of Europe. A rolling ball, a maze, a funnel: these are symbols of a Europe
that can hardly be forced into sterile geographical co-ordinates. According to the title of a sculpture in the
Europos Parkas by Magdalena Abakanowicz, the continent should rather be seen as a “space of unknown
growth”.
Wolfgang Bahr, born Vienna-Mödling, 1950. Journalist, writer, and translator, concentrating on Central European and church
affairs. Studied Austrian History and German Language at Vienna University, Doctor of Philosophy 1978. Contributor to
periodicals “Die Furche”, “Kirche In”, “Österreichische Osthefte”, Kathpress Austrian Catholic News Agency co-worker. Editorin-Chief, “memo – Ecumenical Manuscript Service of Religious Broadcasts on ORF Radio” 2000 to 2005. Books: “Graz – Our
Town”, “God in the Alps”, “Travels of the Dead”. Presently researching Josef Hlávka for the “Middle Class in the Hapsburg
Monarchy” project group, Institute of Economic and Social History, Vienna University.
27
“Welt am Sonntag”, May 7, 2006
Departure Germany, arrival Europe
By Antonia Beckermann
The day after tomorrow the European Union is celebrating its “Annual Day of Europe”; however, not many
people know even in theory what this day is really about. Though in practice the European Community is
quite alive – last but not least thanks to the low cost carriers. How they promote the European identity can
be gauged during a round trip: Five flights, five countries, 7,346 kilometres in three days for less than
300 euros.
Yesterday Berlin, today Tallinn, tomorrow Helsinki – altogether for 90 euros. Initially, Christiane Schreireis
has been planning to fly directly from Stuttgart to Finland. The 26-year old student wants to start her
internship at the institute for molecular genetics in Helsinki. For this flight to Finland she would have had to
pay double as much as she is now paying for all the three flights. “I would have had to do the internship at
home, the direct flight was too expensive”, says Christiane.
Thanks to the low cost carrier EasyJet she was able to sit in the beer garden in Berlin yesterday, to visit the
cathedral of Tallinn today and work in the lab in Helsinki tomorrow. Three countries, three cultures in three
days for a ridiculous price and without pass or custom control. Only Europe provides such an opportunity
for its people. Most of the Europeans do not notice the impact of the European Union in their daily lives.
By flying they are crossing borders both geographically and in their minds and automatically are getting
closer to each other.
By offering services Ryanair, EasyJet&Co have revolutionised the life of the Europeans. In a very short time
they have succeeded in something politicians and diplomats have been working for for years: a European
feeling of community.
Flight EZY 4605 from Berlin to Tallinn
“Don’t ever use the toilet” is the first thing Nathaniel says. “As soon as you go, you’ve lost” – lost your
sleeping space. The 24-year old from Chicago has spent the night at the Berlin-Schoenefeld airport. With
hundreds of others the student has been scrambling for the few chairs and a few hours of sleep.
Nathanial is on a trip through Europe: Madrid, Berlin, Tallinn, Helsinki, Rom and the Canary Islands. Europe
in four weeks all with low-cost carriers. “I wouldn’t have come without the opportunity of such cheap
flights. For us Americans this is special. You pay 20 euros and you can fly from one country to another.”
Germanwings, HLX or EasyJet: There are about 50 low-cost carriers in Europe. In 2005 they carried 135
million passengers. And the market is still growing. “Over the last few years our annual growth rate was
between 20 and 25 percent”, says Roland Keppler, chairman of HLX. And there seems to be no end to the
boom. In the coming years experts expect growth rates of around 20 percent. They are certain: Without lowcost carriers, the mobility of the Europeans could not have developed so fast. One could even say that the
European identity wouldn’t have developed.
Nathanial is one his way to Tallinn, the capital of Estonia. EasyJet was one of the first low-cost carriers
to offer flights to the Baltic States, which joined the EU in 2004. The fight is fully booked. One of the
passengers is Robert Busching. The 23-year old student from Berlin is flying to a concert with Dianne
Reeves. The jazz singer is also singing in Berlin. But for Robert it is cheaper to fly to Tallinn and go to the
concert than to buy a concert ticket for Berlin. “70 euro would have been the ticket price for Berlin. Now I’m
paying the same price for Tallinn and the concert.” Opinion polls show that 60 percent of the passengers
wouldn’t have made the trip without the cheap fare.
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Flight EZY 3446 from Tallinn to London
Eastern Europe is a growth market for low-cost carriers. More and more western Europeans want to get to
know their “new” neighbours. David Ledward, former Royal-Air-Force-Pilot came to Tallinn in 2004 to spend
a weekend with friends. “I was curious. In the military I wasn’t allowed to fly that far east,” he says. The
Brit liked the city with its hanseatic style so much that he came back again and again – altogether twelve
times. On this trip he is finally buying a flat in Tallinn. In terms of flight passengers Estonia is – after
Slovakia – the country where the air traffic has grown most.
Even the locals use the airplane more often. Marju Henre is one of them. How often she has been waiting
for her plane to depart from Tallinn she cannot count. But it has been very often. The 27-year old Estonian
spent parts of her studies in Great Britain. Thanks to the cheap flights she can visit her family and friends
more often.
Hundreds are waiting for their departure at the airport London Stansted. They are sitting on plastic chairs,
on suitcases or on the floor: soccer fans, who are following their team through Europe, couples on a short
trip or retirees who use their free time to see Europe. Nowhere else the EU is that noticeable and alive.
By looking for the right counter people overcome their language problems. Waiting for the security checks
British tourists and Spanish business people exchange their city tips. At the airport everyone strives for a
common language.
Flight FR 9808 from London to Girona/Barcelona
The most popular destinations in Europe are between Great Britain and Spain. Most of the passengers are
tourists. One can notice it because their short t-shirts and sun glasses do not fit with the cloudy London
weather. But also many companies use the low-cost carriers. Two to three times a month Karl Richards is
flying to Spain. The 32-year old is working in the film business and spends a lot of time in an airplane. Even
more so since the introduction of the cheap offers. As many of his fellow countrymen he doesn’t think very
high of the EU: “Europe doesn’t give me anything, apart from a quicker check-in.”
Only few people really connect their freedom of travel to the EU. Most of the passengers don’t even know
what the EU is doing, not to mention that it has been the agreement of Schengen that made the easy travel
possible. Most notably the older people still have the feeling for borders. “In the past we had to stop with
our car at each border. Today we just drive through”, remembers Monika Weiss. She and her husband have
a flat in Barcelona. For 30 years they’ve been driving to Spain. Since a couple of years they are flying
because it is faster and cheaper.
Flight FR 6901 from Girona/Barcelona to Brussels
Daniela Mojos and Humberto Carmona show a healthy tan. They are sitting at the airport Girona waiting for
their departure to Brussels. The two Chileans are on their honeymoon. Daniela’s sister told her about the
cheap flights in Europe. “All four flights together are cheaper than one flight to Chile”, says the 30-year old.
Less tanned are the business people with ties and briefcases that are sitting in the same hall. They work in
Brussels or Barcelona, they live in Frankfurt or London. No problem with low-cost carriers.
In addition to other business people mainly lobbyists are flying fly to the “capital of Europe”. A bus brings
them directly from the airport to the Place Schumann in the European quarter in Brussels. On the day after
tomorrow, the day of Europe, people will remember one of the founding fathers of the EU. On the 9th of
May Robert Schumann, the former French foreign minister, for the first time presented his idea of a common
Europe. Today, around the Place Schumann, the European Commission and the European Council of
Ministers have their offices. This is the place where the European Union is filled with substance, this is
where the heart of the EU beats.
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Flight TV 166 from Brussels to Berlin
In the modern airport in Brussels passengers are waiting for their Virgin-Express-flight to Berlin. The plane is
delayed for three hours. One of the passengers is Carl Wagner. The 55-year old German is working for the
TÜV. Every two weeks he is flying through Europe, mainly to Belgium, Great Britain or Scandinavia. “Thanks
to the low-cost carriers it is easier to service a client in London or Madrid, than to drive 200 kilometres in
Germany.”
Many companies use the cheap air connections to open local branches in other European countries. “The
amount of business trips has grown by 30 percent,” says Christoph Burmann who is researching the impact
of the low-cost carriers at the Bremen University.
Spanish business people, German tourists, Estonian students: the low-cost carriers attract all people and
nationalities. For cheap money everyone has the opportunity to get to know their neighbouring countries and
people. This brings the EU together more than any European regulation and it is more important than the day
of Europe that not many people know about. The Europeans want to use their freedom, in business and
privately. Thanks to the low-cost carriers they can do just that. Plentifully and without borders.
Antonia Beckermann, born 1979 in Frankfurt am Main/ Germany. Since 2005 junior editor, politics department, “Welt am
Sonntag”, Axel-Springer journalism school. 2003 – 2004 freelancer for the Second German Television (ZDF) editorial department
for foreign policy. 2000 – 2001 freelancer for the “Neue Osnabruecker Zeitung”. Education: Master of Arts “Contemporary
European Studies” at the University of Bath/Great Britain; Bachelor of Arts ”European Studies” at the University of
Osnabrueck/Germany.
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Obiectiv, Vocea Brailei (http://www.obiectivbr.ro), February 6, 2006
Berlescu – The Village of the Old People
By Cati Lupascu
When you reach Berlescu, the first thought that comes into your mind is that you are in the middle of
nowhere. Somewhere a dog barks sadly, a flock of turkeys scratches persistently for an earthworm. You are
overwhelmed by sadness because everything around you is silent and ancient. The houses and the yards,
even if they are clean, crave a young woman’s touch, the strength of a strong man. The school or the church
are no different – the walls are dusty, the roofs are rusty, the fences lean.
Half of rural Romanians trust the EU, but 85 % still have an outside lavatory, 65 % bring water from a well
and only 9 % have a domestic gas supply. The rural Romanians are satisfied with their social life, with their
own safety and their own houses, but they are not too happy with the way they live. On the other hand,
even if people consider that they are poor, they succeed in providing for their basic needs. Anyway, most of
them expect that their lives will be better after accession to the EU, but only in two or three years. Many
people from the countryside have heard about the SAPARD Program (58 %), but not about the Romanian
Social Development Fund, or the World Bank Rural Development Program. In general, villagers have less
awareness of the implications of integration. 77 % of villagers are convinced that after EU accession their
chances of selling their farm produce will increase. Also they believe there will be increased subsidies for
farmers, opportunities for young people to find a job, personal and farm incomes. These are some of the
results from a poll published last week by the Open Society Foundation (OSF). The study’s aim was to
investigate rural populations’ perceptions of European values and the rate of accession. No matter how
relevant this is, in Romania there are communities with special features, where the subject of accession is
not so important. These things are happening in forgotten communities where the only preoccupation is
living from day to day. The members of these parishes are living after peculiar patterns; they have another
rhythm, another aspiration. But above all they always have character, for everything, good or bad, that
happens around them, they are the guilty ones, not those from outside. These days we met this kind of
communion.
Remote from the world
Many kilometres away from Ianca town, in the middle of the countryside, there is a place with almost
150 houses and less than 400 souls. This was nothing out of the ordinary until now. In Romania there are
hundreds of villages, far away from peoples’ eyes, isolated in a huge plain of silence, places where only the
wind passes unhindered from one side to the other, spreading around the dust from the dirty alleyways.
When you reach Berlescu, because this is the village we are talking about, the first thought that comes into
your head is that you are in the middle of nowhere. Somewhere a dog barks sadly, a flock of turkeys
scratches persistently for an earthworm. You are overwhelmed by sadness because everything around you is
silent and ancient. The houses and the yards, even if they are clean, crave a young woman’s touch, the
strength of a strong man. The school or the church are no different – the walls are dusty, the roofs are rusty,
the fences lean. In the centre of the village, the sight is distressing. We can see buildings that once housed
public services (community medical service, kindergartens, and a cultural centre) and now these are lying in
ruins, forgotten, with pulled-down walls, broken windows and doors without hinges. Maybe, in a way, these
things are normal. Trying to understand why Berlescu is different from other villages, the conclusion is
simple – the inhabitants. In this area it is wrong to talk about the village’s old people, because Berlescu is
the old people’s village. This can be seen from statistics. There are 147 farms and 389 people; more than
31
half are old people. In the kindergarten there are only 19 children, at the elementary school there are 26,
and at the middle school and high school there are 32. For the latter a school bus runs to Ianca every day.
These 32 commuter kids are the only ones who bring news to Berlescu, because not many people from
outside come here. Not even the doctor or the priest, because the doctor is from Ianca and the priest is from
Batogu village. That is why people used to doctor themselves. In addition, the villagers seldom leave their
place. This is why the transport companies stopped buses to Berlescu, because of the lack of passengers.
The villagers are happy with the school bus because at the Chiritas’ house they can always find a car to
take them to Ianca in emergencies. Those who have children in other areas keep in touch with them by
phone. In Berlescu there are only 80 phones. Because everybody is related to everyone else they share the
phones.
“Too many of us are too old”
Last week, at a leaseholder’s invitation, a team from our newspaper and representatives of Farmers
Associated from Braila went to Berlescu. The lease agreements were due for renewal, and the leaseholder
thought that before signing it would be better for “someone from outside to inform the people about
different changes in legislation, especially those concerning life annuities“. I stopped the car at the edge of
the village, at the Chiritas’ farm – the only farmer from the area, one of the few connections between
people from Berlescu and the rest of the world. There I met the tenant, Tudorache Chirita and his son,
Adrian. The two of them work 960 hectares. Of these, 60 hectares are owned and 900 hectares are leased.
They have 300 contracts, most of them with old people who are able to benefit from life annuity. After
a short tour of the farm we went to the old school to meet the villagers. “It is an old village but we are
lucky because we have good land and we have this “boy” who is working seriously. I heard many bad things
about other places but this kind of situation does not exist in our village. He is a son of this village, he is
related to many of us, and we get good help if we ask him. He has a good life here with us and we get
along. Too many of us are too old. I don’t know what is going to happen to the village when we die in turn.
Maybe a few young people will remain” said a shy old woman.
The place where nobody asks and nobody receives anything
After we avoided some ruined buildings, we entered an over-crowded classroom, where, unbelievably, it
was an oppressive serenity. When we entered everybody stood up, the men took off their hats respectfully,
showing their grey heads. Over 60 people were in the classroom, and among them I picked out just 7 young
people. Most of them are familiar with the legislation’s changes to agriculture, but they are not very
interested. They do not receive subsidies for vegetable crops because the entire village leases the land.
They are satisfied with what they receive. They do not have the right to subsidies for livestock farming,
their cows like fated, cannot have calves artificial freshening, and, for the calves obtained with natural
freshening with an unauthorized bull, the state does not give anything. Because of this they never receive
milk or meat subsidies, so they use the milk for their own consumption and for “some little green cheese for
children”. Also, they sold the animals to the middlemen because “these are the only people who know the
way to Berlescu”. Not even for pigs they are not interested in the new strategy. The villagers only raise
a pig for themselves and one for their children. Also, nobody from the village has more than 50 sheep so the
state will not help anybody. The only subject that concerns them is the life annuity. At this chapter, the
discussions were for long, not because the people do not understand what this is, but, unfortunately,
because there are only a few who finished their successions or their detaching from in division and they can
not benefit their money until they will not solve this.
32
“The young people deserve a better life”
After almost 2 hours during which we heard their story, the old people asked for only one thing – a notary
who could come to solve their problems with their properties, because they are too old to go to Braila.
It is useless to tell you that SAPARD Programs and Farmer Programs do not interest Berlescu village, the
old people told us that “If their leaseholder wants and he is capable – God bless him – he is the best to
start and to finish this action. If he is OK, we are OK too.” They know a little about the EU and Romania’s
accession, but each person comments upon the situation according to their own principles. Some of them
are worried and believe that “It will be worse compared with Ceaucescu’s time” and others welcomed
our accession, especially because they were thinking about young people. “The young people deserve
a better life.”
Cati Lupascu, born 1969. June 2002 to present – journalist with “Obiectiv Vocea Brailei”; from 2004 local correspondent
for “Profitul Agricol”; 2003 – 2005 local correspondent for “Agromagazin” and “Agricultura Romaniei”. Education: investigative
journalism classes, Introduction to European Union Politics classes, Engineering Faculty Braila, “Dunarea de Jos” Galati
University, Panait Cerna” High School.
33
Bucharest Daily News, October 13, 2005
Deaf Romanians don’t know about the EU,
but the EU is not deaf to them
By Denisa Maruntoiu
The EU is a community. And in this community, minority is the same as majority, according to the EU Green
Paper. But at the heart of all the worries haunting each Romanian politician, farmer, or barber, is a secluded
community of souls, now feeling more neglected than ever. The deaf and mute people of Romania don’t
know the meaning of ’EU’ or ’integration’, as sign language has no such words.
Sanda Burcea is deaf. And mute. And young and vital. She watches me innocently. I can feel she’s frustrated
because she can’t use words. I can’t understand her, but she tries once again: one finger to her temple,
one finger towards me and a negative shake of the head. “She says she doesn’t understand what that is,”
a clumsy voice behind enlightens me. Her translator is Iosif Comsa, the president of the Bucharest Deaf
Association and Burcea’s only connection with the “hearing world”.
Burcea cannot give me her opinion on Romania’s accession to the EU. She carefully reads my lips, but my
words make no sense to her.
Burcea doesn’t know the word ’accession’. Or ’integration’, or ’EU’. And neither do the other dozens of deaf
and mute people gathered around me in the old, rickety yard that houses the Bucharest Deaf Association.
“They don’t understand the words you are using. They don’t know what the EU is,” says Comsa, who is also
deaf, but has struggled to learn how to talk. Finally, he has managed to use words in the same way as
a child uses a computer.
“The majority of deaf and mute Romanians have a very limited vocabulary. Their cultural level is very low
and they know only simple words. Their intellectual potential is similar to that of an unimpaired person, but
because in Romania there are no special universities for them, they cannot develop their vocabulary,”
explains Comsa.
Burcea does not fully understand what Comsa is saying, but seems to agree and starts to wave her hands.
“She says she is happy anyway and that EU integration must be a good thing if your eyes shine when you
talk about it,” translates Comsa.
The group around me begins to rustle. They make lots of gestures, touch each other, smile and frown at the
same time. Burcea grabs my hand and points to her lips. “I am happy because I have a normal child. He is
five. He can hear and he will know all the words you know.”
What Burcea does not know is that in many EU countries the sign languages of deaf people are recognized as
minority languages and education and other information is offered both in and about sign languages.
Moreover, countries like the Netherlands and Finland give full rights to sign language interpretation at
university or college. And most importantly, what Burcea does not know is that a European Union of the Deaf
exists to protect her rights and fight for sign language to be acknowledged as an international language.
In Romania, no education is provided for the 200,000 deaf and mute people. “Only wealthy families can
afford to hire teachers to train their deaf children, only wealthy families can afford to buy a hearing aid that
could help their children hear and understand what normal people say. But the reality is that most deaf
people are poor and will never become rich. So if the government does not decide to found special schools
and universities for them, their life will never improve,” says Comsa.
34
Comsa wishes that Romania would join the EU, as he wants deaf children to go to college together with
Burcea’s son, and be catered for according to their needs: sign language transliteration, speech-to-text
technology, tutoring and academic counselling. He knows that according to Art. 149 of the Treaty of
Amsterdam, the European Community “shall contribute to the development of quality education by
encouraging cooperation between Member States.”
Vasile Ghetu agrees with Comsa. And because he agrees, so do the others.
Ghetu is greatly appreciated by the other members of the community. He is a dental technician and even
drives his own car. He is deaf and he is mute. But he is one of the informal leaders of the community, as he
earns lots of money by deaf peoples’ standards, and he knows many things. He even knows what the EU is,
if on a simple level.
“It would be good for us to join the EU. I heard we would be able to travel and see how other deaf people
live. And we could even buy the special equipment from other countries that deaf people need to
communicate and live a normal life,” says Ghetu.
He has never left Romania, but Comsa has told him stories about deaf people in Germany and Finland who
have videophones and teletypewriters, sound detectors and vibrating alarm clocks.
Ghetu was amazed that such devices exist. “Those people do not burn to death because they cannot call
the firefighters and they are not dismissed for being late for work. In those fortunate countries, deaf
mothers can soothe their babies whenever they cry, as sensors are used in babies’ cots to alert them,”
he says.
Once again, Burcea grabs me and says “b-a-b-y”. She understood the word and she can even pronounce it.
It is one of the few words she has managed to learn. “My baby cried a lot and I was very upset that
I couldn’t hear him. I wanted to, but I couldn’t…” says Burcea, wobbling her entire body as if she wants to
cast out all her bitterness.
In Romania, deaf mothers as yet have no chance of hearing their babies. There is not a single store in the
entire country selling specialized devices for deaf and mute people.
“How could they sell such equipment if they don’t know we exist?” wonders Comsa.
“And even if we could find the devices, where would we find the money to buy them?” he adds.
Only five percent of deaf and mute Romanians have a job. The rest of them know only the most dreadful
poverty. No one wants to hire deaf-mute people. “They are afraid we could jeopardize their business, that
we are not capable of making the right choices. Besides, who needs a deaf employee who doesn’t even
know how to use the computer?” says Comsa.
In Romania, deaf people can only go to vocational schools, where they learn to sew, to work as tailors or to
upholster sofas. But nowadays such skills are old and useless. “Before the anti-communist revolution it was
better for us. We were forbidden to have contact with democratic countries, but at least we had a place to
work and some food to put on the table,” adds Comsa.
The men and women around him agree. “Maybe the EU will bring some more food to the table,” says
69 year-old Dorel Amzaroiu. He also knows something about the EU, as his son has explained the meaning
of it to him. “My son can hear and he told me that the EU will bring us much joy. I trust him, as he watches
TV and knows everything,” explains Amzaroiu.
35
His biggest desire is to understand what the beautiful ladies on the screen say, but in Romania no television
station broadcasts shows in sign language.
“Deaf people’s access to the media is ignored in Romania. When politicians and state officials talk about
accessibility, they mean physical access. They never think about access to communications and information
which is of vital importance for us,” says Comsa.
He knows that in many countries, including the Czech Republic and Slovakia, sign language has been
recognized on a constitutional level, so compelling public institutions and television stations to use it.
He has tried to explain the situation to members of the Bucharest Deaf Association, to make them
understand that those countries are better because they are part of the EU.
“I try to explain to them twice a week the major political or economic changes that are taking place in
Romania. I have many times struggled to make them understand what the EU means. But after every
discussion we have, they end up asking me ’Will we receive more money?’, ’Will we find a place to work?’
’Will we have money to buy a hearing aid for our deaf children?’ ” recounts Comsa.
“I need more money. I have worked for 35 years but my pension is so small. I only receive 3.4 million lei
(95 euros) per month,” chimes in Valerica Ionita. Her gestures are soft and her eyes look down. She is shy
and ashamed to talk about her needs. But the old jacket covering her thin body speaks for itself. She is
66 years old and all her life she has worked at the Mecanica Fina Plant in Bucharest. Now, she only wants
a decent life. For her and for her deaf friends.
“I have many friends in the associations, but they are often sad because they feel humiliated and poor,”
confesses Ionita.
The problem of money illustrates an unkind reality. Even if Romania possesses an elaborate legal framework
for combating discrimination, which complies with EU employment equality directives, disabled people are
often excluded and discriminated against.
“Disabled people have been discriminated against for ages, especially in the field of employment. Although
the 2002 Labour Code forbids discrimination on grounds of disability, Romanian companies still refuse to
hire deaf people,” says Comsa.
He believes that information campaigns similar to those in EU Member States are needed to make
Romanians understand the necessity for public policy to address the roots of discrimination.
Comsa wishes he could make his deaf friends understand how many great things EU accession will bring
them. He wishes he could afford to buy everyone a hearing aid, so they could hear the world and feel the
joy of change. But he does not know where to start preparing for the numerous promises EU accession could
bring.
And neither do the others gathered in that stale yard, surrounded by ramshackle walls, where deaf and
mute people meet twice a week to talk with their hands and hear with their eyes.
36
European Union of the Deaf fights for the well-being of all deaf people
From being a stranger in his own land to full citizenship through sign language. This is what each deaf
person wants and this is what the European Union of the Deaf (EUD) is fighting for.
Established in 1985, EUD is a non-profit making organization whose membership comprises National
Associations of Deaf People in Europe and is the only forum representing the interests of deaf Europeans at
EU level.
EUD’s mission statement is to promote, advance and protect rights and opportunities for deaf people in the
EU. Emancipation and equal opportunities are key philosophies in EUD’s work towards achieving an equal
position in society with recognition of deaf people as full citizens. This vision translates into four specific
EUD aims:
Recognition of the right to use an indigenous sign language
This is a core tenet of EUD’s working objectives and significant change has occurred over the past few
years. Successes include the European Parliament’s resolutions on the recognition of sign languages in 1988
and again in 1998 and the European Commission (EC) – sponsored Sign Languages Project (1996 –1997)
carried out by EUD.
In 2003 a new milestone was reached when the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (CE)
adopted Recommendation 1598 (2003) on the Protection of Sign Languages in the Member States of the EC.
This is an important achievement since this will also benefit deaf people living in European countries which
are not (yet) members of the EU.
Empowerment through communication and information
EUD is struggling to eliminate communication barriers encountered by deaf people and acts in an advisory
capacity to the European Disability Forum (EDF) and the CE over EU policy in this field. Together with other
similar organizations, EUD has also lobbied for changes in European directives relevant to this issue
(e.g. the EU Telecommunications Directives and the EU Television without Frontiers Directive).
Equality in education and employment
EUD has consistently implemented the belief that training and education is a successful route to selfadvocacy for deaf citizens. Gaining equality in education and training entails accessibility of information,
often presented in an indigenous sign language or via sign language interpretation.
A main theme for EUD is non-discrimination in employment. EUD contributes to the EU-wide process of
implementing European Directive 2000/78/EC, establishing a general framework for equal treatment in
employment and occupations at national level.
Co-ordination activities
EUD provides feedback to the EC, the CE and EDF on policy matters that are relevant to deaf people.
Furthermore, in 2003 EUD was granted participatory status within the CE.
With EU enlargement on the horizon, EUD has been seeking contacts with National Deaf Associations in
Central and Eastern Europe since 2000. Some National Deaf Associations from Central Europe have already
submitted applications for EUD membership and it is hoped that EUD membership will in the short term
mirror that of the EU.
Denisa Maruntoiu, born 1982 in Romania. July 2005 to present: News and features reporter, Bucharest Daily News (English
language daily); June 2003 to May 2005 Editor of Tranzit Magazine (transportation and logistic monthly national magazine).
Education: Bachelor’s Degree in Journalism, University of Bucharest; High School Diploma, Tulcea.
37
Westdeutscher Rundfunk, Cologne, April 26, 2006
Return to Smokovich
By Carolin Pirich and Nikolai Fichtner
Introduction by the presenter:
Croatia is seeking admission to the European Union. Negotiations are currently ongoing. One important
prerequisite is the protection of minorities. More than 250,000 Croatian Serbs fled Croatia during the civil
war in the 1990s. To date, more than 100,000 of them have returned: for example to the small town of
Smokovic in North Dalmatia. Only ten kilometers from the Adriatic coastline, Smokovic is the place that
sparked the civil war between Croats and Serbs in 1990. Only Serbs inhabited this village before the
Croatian re-invasion of the region in “Operation Storm” in 1995. Carolin Pirich and Nikolai Fichtner have
travelled to Smokovic where they met with a couple who recently returned to the village.
Author:
The village of Smokovic lies in midst of the rugged Velebit Mountains and the coastline so popular with
tourists. Eleven years ago, the village consisted of 450 houses. Today, after the Croatian offensive, these
are merely ruins. Parts of the exterior walls are still standing. Grass grows over the debris and shards of
red-brick. Road signs warn of mines. Meanwhile, more than 100 houses have been rebuilt. One small new
building belongs to Milan and Milica Prostran. Lilac is blooming in the garden behind the house, where
Milan and Milica also grow onions, potatoes and tomatoes.
Milica Prostran:
It is wonderful to be back and in our own home. The best thing that happened in our life is our return.
Author:
Milica Prostran is 63 years old. Just like her husband Milan, she was born and raised here in Smokovic. This
is the place, where the two fell in love and it is the place where they want to die. When the Croatian army
recaptured the region in “Operation Storm” eleven years ago, the entire village had to flee. Milan and
Milica found refuge in Bosnia, in the town of Banja Luca. After nine years in exile they returned to
Smokovic. They remember the exact day of their return. It was the 13th of August 2004. A Friday.
Milica Prostran:
When the reconstruction of the village started, we immediately came back. For the first three months we
lived in our garage. We were so happy, happy to be back, it didn’t matter that we were living in a garage.
Author:
The small house, which Milan and Milica moved into one and a half years ago, is built on the land where
the house of Milan’s parents once stood. The ruins of the latter are still there. Today, grass grows over what
used to be the living room. Milica’s sheep are grazing between the walls and stone piles.
It is thanks to a law of the Croatian government that Milan and Milica were able to come back here. With
only Milica’s small pension, they could never have afforded to return. The government now pays for housing
reconstruction. This law would probably not have been passed without the pressure associated with the
negotiations relating to EU-admission.
Milica Prostran:
Based on the law of reconstruction, people are entitled to have a certain number of square meters rebuilt
according to the number of family members. Since it is just the two of us, we got this house.
38
Author:
Today, the Prostrans live in a house that is 50 square meters big. Before the war, their house was twice as large.
But nevertheless, Milan and Milica are satisfied with their lifes. They eat vegetables, figs, fresh eggs from their
own hens and they drink the milk from their sheep. And living together with the Croats works really well, says
Milica.
Milica Prostran:
Since we came back, we haven’t had any problems with anybody. Nobody has bothered us, nobody has touched
us, nobody has provoked us. We go to the shop in Simunik and whatever we order from the owner of the shop
he brings here to our house. And when we came back, all our Croat friends from before the war gave us
something to help us to restart our lives.
Author:
Milica doesn’t want to talk of problems. She chooses to ignore that somebody has recently pulled up and stolen
the Smokovic-signpost. The second signpost at the other side of town is painted over. And the Croatian
government has still not managed to connect the village to the electricity network.
Milica Prostran:
Life is slowly coming back but the only thing that we miss here is electricity and many people don’t come back
because of this. But electricity is a vital resource. The people are deciding not to come back because of electricity.
Author:
What Milan and Milica want most, is for more friends to come back to Smokovic. However, the young refugees
especially prefer to stay in the countries they fled to. There, they have found work and a new home. In the
region of Smokovic, however, there are hardly any jobs.
Milica Prostran:
And the old people who joined their children who left to go to Australia, Canada and Italy, they are not happy.
They are just sitting there, they don’t know the language, they don’t know where to go. They are just suffering
and want to come back to their own country.
Author:
Another great wish could soon come true for Milan and Milica. There are rumours that electricity is coming in
June, says Milan. Then he can finally connect up the TV. He wants to watch the football World Cup in Germany
– and cheer on Croatia.
Carolin Pirich, born on 19 October 1977 in Leonberg, is currently studying journalism at the Deutsche Journalistenschule in Munich.
She previously studied musicology, history of art and German philology (M.A.) at university in Karlsruhe, Cologne and Florence. After
her studies, she was the PR manager for the renowned Landesensemble für Neue Musik, “musikFabrik”. As a scholar of the German
Historical Institute, Pirich carried out research on an Italian composer during the Mussolini dictatorship. She is a regular contributor to
the German dailies Süddeutsche Zeitung and Rheinische Post as well as the public radio stations Deutschlandradio Kultur and WDR.
Nikolai Fichtner, born on 25 June 1979 in Hanover, is currently studying journalism at the Deutsche Journalistenschule in Munich.
He previously studied International Relations (B.A.) at the University of Dresden and International Economic Law at Warwick
University (LL.M.). As a scholar of the Studienstiftung he took part in an internship programme working for the Enlargement section
of the European Commission in Brussels. His main areas of specialisation are globalisation and European integration. Fichtner’s
journalistic experience includes his regular work for the German dailies Süddeutsche Zeitung and tageszeitung. In January 2006 he
was awarded a journalism prize sponsored by the FilmFernsehFonds Bayern.
39
Radio Devin – Slovak Radio 2, July 2006
A Brief Discourse On Race, Countries
Getting Nearer, Killers and Ecology
By Vladimír Puchala
“If a Negro hits you, until the end of your life you’ll have a dark stain in the place where he touched you,”
my friend Marcel told me when we were kids. I was five back then and could already play football fairly
well, but with the exception of the local Romanies I hadn’t seen people with different coloured skin with my
own eyes. Though I had, actually – two. The two brothers who lived in our town with their mother, and
whose father was from Bolivia. They had such football names – the Riveras. The dark stain from their touch
scared me stiff, I tell you, and for a time I used to run away from those two small boys as I did from
spinach.
When I view this childhood anecdote against the broader background, it displays at least one characteristic
feature of the former Eastern Bloc: racial isolation. Isolation meant anxiety about the unknown, which gave
rise to fear, because as a rule we fear what we don’t know. It’s surprising how, being young boys, we
combined the unknown with conflict – with fighting. Even though among boys fighting is a commonplace,
it is surprising as a primary association in the context of interracial contacts.
Tolerance is related to knowledge. I’m not saying anything new or original. Important things, however, need
to be repeated. My anxiety about the dark stains dissolved empirically: we often played football with the
Riveras and, in addition, I shared a desk with one of them for four years at the secondary school. We were
best friends. I admired how he resisted occasional insults or sneers from people around him. Occasional
derision didn’t put him down. At least he never showed it. His mother brought him up to be a proud and free
man. And girls liked him. Girls’ emotions and sympathies are stronger than prejudice. Anticipation is over
knowledge. And love? It sticks like a glue from the TV adverts. Doesn’t require arguments.
Insensitivite surroundings made the Riveras more perceptive towards things and people. Pain expands the
world. Yet, a more bearable way of expanding the world is knowledge. First I thought the most important
was justice and I struggled to stick up for him whenever I could. But then I understood – compassion is
more important than justice. One needs to listen to other people and understand their pains and
motivations. So we talked a lot. He had never been to Bolivia. But he stuck up for Russians when everybody
insulted them. Not because he was a follower of their ideology. He had a different threshold of sensitivity
to injustice.
These days a number of people from different worlds live in this small town of mine: doctors from
Afghanistan, traders from China, lecturers from Austria and the USA. Some of them arrived equipped as if
they were travelling to the Borneo rainforests. They brought toilet paper and cutlery with them. Well, what
to do … They too lived in ignorance and prejudice. But they got rid of those through empirical experience.
And our children were delighted when Americans finally stopped presenting them with their hard chewing
gums that nobody really wanted.
After a short time most newcomers claimed that slivovits was a strong drink, that people here were very
well educated, friendly and that this was a beautiful country. We’ve been discovering each other. Like new
lovers. He finds out that under the blouse she is even prettier than he expected, she finds out that the car
in which he arrived is his father’s, it’s second hand, but she loves him so much no matter what. Knowledge
and emotions. Two fundamental challenges for the new Europe. To live in it with self-respect, still
preserving in ourselves this folklore gesture when a dancer in a folklore dance pushes his hat slightly to his
forehead. In this gesture there is pain and joy. Destiny of the country. Of the old and of the new one.
40
On the movement towards Europe
My neighbour in the block of flats was a driver by profession. He used to work for the director of the local
foundry. He drove a Tatra 613, which he liked to wash in his free time, and often made business trips to
Bratislava. For us, boys, it was a mysterious big world – a big car and journeys somewhere far away, to the
Ministry. From East Slovakia they always travelled to Prague or Bratislava. The opposite direction was quite
an exception. Nowadays they quite often go in the opposite direction, especially before elections. The
second attraction, a symbol of motion and a sign of the big world, for us boys, was an escalator – the
escalator in the department store in the district capital of Košice. Technology, motion, big world … People
used to move from East Slovakia where I grew up, and they still keep moving, to Prague and Bratislava. First
to ministries and then jobs. There was even a time when they used to say that “Easterners” had long necks
in order to see whenever there was a free position in Prague or Bratislava.
The eastern part of Slovakia always felt closer to Prague. Why? Bratislava lay away from the main railroad,
by which people generally understood the road from Košice to Prague. Several generations of young men
went through their obligatory military service in Czech lands. For many of them it remained the most
exciting experience of their lives and of the big world. And what about women? Karel Gott lived in Prague
… But seriously, while men were in motion, women represented a fixed point in the universe. They went
for trips organized by their employers, they travelled in their talk, in their dreams, and a sometimes in their
lives they travelled to Yugoslavia for holidays. Usually they travelled in pursuit of a pleasant experience, not
of hard reality. Despite that, however, they were as emancipated as hardly anyone in the world. It was just
us, children, who didn’t particularly enjoy all this emancipation business when our mothers dragged us –
half asleep – to kindergartens before seven in the morning.
We are a nation in permanent motion. Emigration has almost become our folklore tradition. Wandering is
our destiny. We wander the world. Students in search of knowledge, without prejudice and unnecessary
fear. Men in search of work go to Prague or, more recently, to Ireland, Great Britain, Holland … In principle
they all are on their historical way to military service. Many of them race their cars each week on the
endless highway to Bratislava. They’re successful there. They’re used to work hard on themselves.
And all return home for Christmas. They turn the Internet off, put away their mobiles, and suddenly realize
that the place they tried to escape is the most important in the whole world for them. Because home must
be seen from a distance. What we miss is essential to us. Home is a relation to details. In a half-derelict
house, in the district to be pulled down, you can see decorations on the walls and you know they were
made in the 80s. The furniture too looks familiar, and you know which era it symbolizes. You know the trees
hemming the alley to the fire brigade point and you know that some things are transient, some are eternal.
Puppies from your childhood turn into blind dogs. But still you know them by name. This is home: familiar
names in both local newspapers and cemeteries.
Through a detail we enter the world. Motion is also a move in thinking. Distances open us up.
People on roads which open their eyes. This is not a move into the unknown. Movement towards others.
Not a mindless gallop ahead. But even stepping back inside of one’s mind. It all enriches us.
We are used to motion, to hard work promoting ourselves. We acquire new languages and the knowledge
of the way the new Europe works. I think the recent generation of teenagers will become a tiger of Europe.
In the best sense. It has the will, the education, but also motivation.
On People and Killers
“What was childhood like during the Socialist era?” an Englishman asked me some time ago. He expected
me to produce a list of horrible things; he would be saying “my God” and comparing my list to the
information he got from American films. “My childhood during the Socialist era was happy.” My subsequent
recognition of pitfalls in that treacherous system makes no difference. My parents were neither dissidents,
41
nor communists. We didn’t care about politics. And what I, as a young boy, disliked about the regime most?
I minded that Russians, who were meant to be our models, did not show such joy when they scored at
hockey as Americans did, for instance. I minded that Russian bicycles were so heavy for a boy like me.
And that the teacher at school asked what I had been doing on Sunday and I had to lie I had been on a trip
although the whole town knew that on Sunday there had been the first Holy Communion ceremony …
To sum it up from the perspective of all those years, I minded that strange melancholy of the regime.
Publicly sad people who don’t spontaneously express joy. Everybody made an effort to look like something
they weren’t. Humour was very popular; humour which spoke in hints, parallels, and images. I minded
technology because there were no digital watches here, tape recorders with red knobs from Hungary were
huge, bicycles from Russia heavy, T-shirts in shops without esprit. And the dissatisfaction grew inside of me
that I had to pretend and be somebody different to who I really was. At this point it is necessary to make
clear that in spite of my granny’s efforts I have never been a religious person. What was worst, though, was
that we couldn’t wear jeans to school.
Technology, essential for a boy, is a consumer matter in history. All of a sudden we have enough of it. Better
technology and even much cheaper than before. It’s no longer a rarity for us. Other things gain importance;
both in the positive and negative sense. The joy of freedom was replaced by the question of what to do
with it. Appeared sad eyes of boys who didn’t manage to find themselves good jobs when they finished
school, and they didn’t have the chance to learn that in the morning one has to get up, shave, get dressed,
and go to work. Keep the order, the order will keep you. Many didn’t manage that much.
Other boys with whom we used to go to dances and discos ended up in the underworld. A few of them as
real hit men. Did anybody ever wonder how they happened to get that far? They have always been harsh
but not treacherous. Sometimes you get on a train and you’re scared to jump off. So you continue to walk
through all the carriages. With the madness of a wasp in a summer apartment. Some of my childhood
friends are hit men. Should I be ashamed? I don’t know. Only my interest in psychology grew. What is a boy
capable of; one that nobody would ever guess. What does the hereditary nature of neurological diseases
cause? Why do people scream so horribly, are scared to death, but over again enter a haunted castle? And
why does a man who lets people stub cigarette butts out on his hand for 100 crowns have so many
“customers”?
On Ecology
The childhood was happy. In a small town near a foundry where they smelted copper and where the sweet
taste of sulphur in mouth was as common as barbed wire on the State borders. “They let it out again”, we
used to say during a match, when the taste of sulphur in our mouths was so intense that we felt like we
were eating candies. There was even a legend spreading among us about an old woman who lived in our
town for many years and when she moved away she suffered serious health problems because her body
was lacking arsenic. Reportedly she returned and lived happily ever after in the small town beneath the
chimney. The fact is that for long years I viewed the factory chimney as a symbol of prosperous Socialism,
and during all my childhood I longed for a bright sky without smoke. The parents of almost all my friends
worked In that factory. Only my father was a tailor. Later, after military service and before my university
studies, I worked in the factory for a year myself. I worked shifts at a blast furnace. There were two of us,
me and Bohuš, the Romany. Bohuš was my friend. If he went to the canteen to get his salary, he used to buy
me the smoked cheese I liked. He always offered it to me wrapped in paper. He was aware I might mind he
was a Romany. And I always unwrapped that cheese and we ate it together. He was often absent from
work, but he liked to invite me to his place. He wanted me to marry his sister. I didn’t want to get married
yet, though.
42
The foundry stopped smoking years later. After privatization they stole everything that was worth it, bit by
bit. Ecological thieves. After the factory went bankrupt, however, the local ski resort outside the town began
to flourish. Nowadays it is one of the best-known resorts in Slovakia. Many people earn their living there.
From the hill I often watch the town nailed down to the ground by the chimney. I feel like I’m in Pittsburgh.
Metallurgy in depression. They’re skiing down the hill. But the profits from skiing are steadily increasing.
The Socialist era is often half-jokingly called romantic. My romanticism, and one could say the romanticism
of my generation, resided in the books of Karl May. Old Shatterhand and Winnetou, they were our Socialist
heroes – embodiments of all we missed. Of courage, power, freedom and justice. Their author – German,
setting – a distant free country. Several films about the two heroes were shot in Yugoslavia at Plitvice
Lakes. This is how I united the whole world. Since then I like Germans, I’m fascinated by America along
with its problems. I consider the Plitvice Lakes to be something really close, not only linguistically but also
emotionally.
The first time I travelled to the free world, apart from the Socialist bloc, I went to America; as a member of
an official Slovak delegation immediately after the revolution. This trip was actually the very beginning and
birth of the third sector in Slovakia. We drove down the highway from New York to Washington at night.
In the car Simon and Garfunkel sang and the highway had phosphorescent stripes. On the boards I could
read the place names I knew from books. Of course, I was a naïve boy in the big world. But that special
feeling remained in my heart: the feeling of freedom, just like the one after the school-leaving exam. Since
then I visited America many times. I saw its poverty and its problems too. Nevertheless I’m still trying to
find in that country the just chieftain from my childhood. And not only in America. In Germany too. And at
the Plitvice Lakes as well.
Talking of Indians, let me tell you one more story. “Our souls did not manage to come to our bodies,” said
the chieftain after a train journey. Then he and his people sat on the ground and kept sitting in silence. This
is approximately the way we are too: politicians run ahead and become irritated when they don’t understand
that some people don’t see their point and don’t accept their visions with excitement. And because they
want it all and all at once – that is over the four years of election period, they seek strategies of making the
nation happy against its own will. Souls come more slowly than intellectuals or visionary elites would like
them to. Emotional history has its own historical time. Europe is united. But people don’t perceive it through
theses and slogans. Especially not those people who rebelled against slogans for so many years. They will
identify with it through details. It’s like a relationship with the new city to which you move. You need to
experience it by day and by night. You need to find your own shortcuts through it, your cafeteria and your
running track. Only then you can freely start your daily run; with the feeling that to overcome yourself and
any borders is always worth it.
Vladimír Puchala, born 1967, studied at Pavol Jozef Safarik Presov University, English language and literature, University of
East Anglia, Norwich; statutory deputy of Slovak radio, programme director (responsible for programming on 7 radio stations),
director of regional studio in Kosice, Eastern Slovakia; University of Presov – lectures and seminars on Slovak and world
literature; founder of the first free newspaper in Eastern Slovakia after the Velvet Revolution in 1989.
43
The Ukraine and World Today, Newspaper, April 27, 2006
Where the Heart of Europe is Beating …
By Viktor Voroniuk
The ancient architects of Strasbourg in France could not know that their city would one day attract
presidents, prime ministers, ministers of foreign affairs, politicians, junior government officials, journalists
and representatives of nongovernmental organizations from all corners of the world. Or that the “town of
roads,” as the name Strasbourg can be translated, would be the venue of discussions on the problems of
determining the supremacy of laws, protecting human rights, preserving cultural variety and on inheritance
rights. And with the creation of the Council of Europe, the Palace of Europe, the European Parliament and
the European international court, the heart of Europe began beating in Strasbourg in 1949.
Ukraine has been a member of the Council of Europe since 1995. Upon joining this international
organization, our country undertook a series of obligations including the abolition of capital punishment,
ensuring the freedom of speech, free elections, prohibitions on discrimination against national minorities,
and the development of local and regional democracy. But it is one thing to make this commitment, and
another to live up to it every day. That is why the special committee of the Council of Europe decided to
monitor Ukraine’s fulfillment of these obligations for a period of ten years.
The PACE discussed our elections…
One of the most authoritative forums is the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly (PACE), in which
representatives from 46 European states participate. In addition to the basic issues covered in the spring
session, which was held from April 10 to 13, the PACE also discussed relations between the Council of
Europe and the European Union, and also devoted much time to Ukraine.
One of the specific issues that was covered was the conduct of parliamentary elections in our country. The
speaker of the monitoring committee, Renate Volvend, remarked that the Ukrainian elections had fulfilled
the European standards and the pertinent obligations to the Council of Europe. They allowed the Ukrainian
people to honestly choose and decide of their own free will. At the same time, Renate Volvend pointed out
technical defects. For example, the ballots were over fifty centimeters in length, voting was delayed until
the morning in some Ukrainian districts, and the counting of the ballots was not finished on time.
Another representative of the monitoring committee, Hanne Severinsen, noted that an administrative body
was not involved in this round of elections, unlike previous presidential elections in Ukraine. Pluralism was
not restricted in any way during the 2006 elections, and all candidates and representatives had equal
access to the mass media.
The Ukrainian officials must also draw conclusions from these elections. There were significant changes in
many election districts, there were problems with lists and errors in the last names of electors, as well as
incidents that require investigation in a number of regions.
Hanne Severinsen did not rule out that the Ukrainian elections could be a key element in the future
conclusion of monitoring and called for the creation of a “traveling card” to strengthen relations between
the Council of Europe and Ukraine. As a matter of fact, she noted in a later interview with Deutsche Welle
that the conduct of free elections in Ukraine is an important step in ending the monitoring.
“Now monitoring must help us to verify that the constitutional court and other Ukrainian state institutions
function as intended, and that the accepted amendments are integrated into the constitution, especially
with regards to plenary powers of the general prosecution. There are many problems,” she said.
44
The PACE’s assessment was received very positively by Ukrainian minister of justice Sergey Golovaty upon
his arrival in Strasbourg. In our interview, he remarked that Ukraine “had heard good words.” He added:
“I am very pleased.” He also expressed his hope that Ukraine will achieve perfect democratic standards in
the future and join Europe very soon.
While in Strasbourg, Mr. Golovaty also signed the European agreement on matters of filiations from 1958
and the additional protocol to the convention on the protection of human rights and human dignity with
regards to the application of biology and medicine as related to the prohibition on the cloning of people,
which was ratified in 1998.
The next explosion will come very soon in Chernobyl?
A very unexpected report during the PACE session came from deputy Anatoly Rahansky. According to his
words, the French company that won a contract to build “Depository-2” in Chernobyl spent €90 million. But
the depository does not work properly because of technical errors. In addition, there has been a critical
mass of nuclear oil-fuel in “Depository-1” for a very long time. “If we have to wait another year, a
depository could trigger a new world catastrophe,” Mr. Rahansky said.
He reminded the parliament that the Ukrainian object “Ukrytie” is in an emergency state, and stated that is
also “creates the real threat of a new nuclear explosion in Chernobyl.”
Bomb from the European Union
Unfortunately, these statements from Mr. Rahansky did not cause an immediate reaction from the Ukrainian
government. The words of the president of the council of the European Union and European Commission
president José Manuel Barroso had a real bombshell effect. He declared that he couldn’t offer any
prospects for the rapid entry of Ukraine into the European Union. The Ministry of Foreign affairs of Ukraine
declared that the mass media misunderstood the meaning of Mr. Barroso’s statement. According to
Ukrainian ministry, Mr. Barroso said that Ukraine’s membership in the European Union depended on the
domestic “policy situation” in other European countries. “Ukraine takes the statements of the European
politician at face value, but they are actually dictated by the domestic policy situation in the European
Union, and he has not ruled out prospects of European Union membership for Ukraine in the future».
Human rights are a weak point
The general secretary of the Council of Europe Terry Devis declared that “flights took place for the
transportation of prisoners” in Europe. In states that are members of the Council of Europe, protecting
private individuals against violations of their human rights is associated with major problems.
Answering our questions about the existence of a “list of countries which provided land for secret CIA
prisons,” Parliamentary Assembly president René van der Linden remarked that the Council of Europe did
not have a blacklist of this kind. At the same time, he voiced the hope that questions connected with the
reporting of human rights violations will be expressly regulated by law in the future, including at a national
level. In addition, the parliaments of the European countries obliged to not only monitor work for reporting
violations of human rights, but to also closely coordinate this work with the Council of Europe.
The resolution concerning “the rights of servicemen” was given special attention by the European
representatives. The Council of Europe has acknowledged that the status of soldiers in a number of
countries does not correspond to European conventions. For this reason, the Parliamentary Assembly
45
requested that member countries (including Ukraine in particular) allow servicemen to form professional
associations or to create trade unions, and also to join rightful political parties. In addition, it was
recommended that an “independent civil institute of military ombudsmen” be created “to which servicemen
could turn under the condition of anonymity.” The members of parliament also spoke out on the necessity
of “putting an end to hazing and violent practices in the armed forces, and also of putting an end to the wall
of silence surrounding such incidents that allows the perpetrators to act with impunity.”
Recommendations were accepted after the discussion that specified “unacceptable traditions for the
initiation of recruits which remain ordinary practice in some countries of the former Soviet Union.” One
document relating to Ukraine noted the lack of laws that protect the rights of draftees and the fact that
there are often hard life terms and acts of cruelty. Draftees are always compelled by force to work in
subsidiary economies, building private houses for military and governmental officials.
The members of parliament also expressed no-less-disturbing concerns about the football championships
that will be held in Germany from June 9 to July 9. Some data indicates that between 30,000 and 60,000
women will come into the country from Eastern Europe to provide intimate services. In this connection, the
Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe requested that its member countries strengthen measures
to combat the trafficking of women and forced prostitution. In spite of the fact that the members of the
Council of Europe accepted the agreement on the combating of human trafficking last year, none have
ratified it yet.
Swiss parliamentary representative Ruth-Gaby Vermot-Mangold remarked that one of the main suppliers of
victims of sexual violence here is Ukraine. “It is understandable, because Ukrainian women are very
attractive,” she stressed. At the same time, Ms. Vermot-Mangold stressed that it is very necessary today for
Europe to mount concerted action to prevent the illegal trade in people and the spread of illegal
prostitution. “The question is very important not only for Ukraine, but Switzerland, Germany and other
countries too,” she said.
Ms. Vermot-Mangold stressed that “when organizing a world cup, FIFA must fulfill its obligations and
condemn the exploitation of women.” She reiterated that the resolution of the Parliamentary Assembly
contains an appeal to the states that the “police treat the women as victims, but not as illegal migrants…”
Some conclusions
It has recently been convenient for the Ukrainian government to turn a blind eye to the problems raised in the
PACE sessions. Ukraine has over 10 years of experience in the Council of Europe, but has only ratified 40
European conventions of over 200. What will it cost to achieve the integration of Ukraine into Europe in this
way? By the way, the basic question of relations between the Council of Europe and the European Union was
decided very peacefully in this session. The European Union will join the Council of Europe in 2010.
Viktor Voroniuk was born on April 6, 1966, in Zhytomyr, Ukraine. He is editor for international affairs for the newspaper
Ukraine & World Today, editor of the Ukrainian Independent News and Information Agency; correspondent for the newspaper
the Day, the magazine Kommersant Ukraina, the radio station Avtoboss, Radio Free Europe (Prague) an the Unost (Moscow).
Education: the National University-Lvivska Politechnika, BA, journalism, Lviv, Ukraine, the University of Alabama, Open World
Leadership Program (Huntsville, USA). Married, one son.
46
Financial Times, Newspaper, February 19, 2006
Why Kosovo may hold the key to the Balkans’ future
By Stefan Wagstyl
It is midnight on the road from the Serbian town of Bujanovac to Gjilan in Kosovo and Serbian police
manning a checkpoint are examining passports by torchlight. A few hundred metres along the tarmac,
Kosovo guards are doing the same, their fingers so frozen they struggle to turn the pages.
According to the United Nations this is a “boundary” between UN-administered Kosovo and the rest of
Serbia. But it looks like an international border, it feels like an international border – and the signs are that
it could soon become an international border.
The uncertainty that has hung over the troubled province of Kosovo since NATO troops drove out the forces
of former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic six years ago is lifting. While little can be taken for
granted given the tortuous history of Balkan diplomacy, the international community is considering ending
Kosovo’s UN administration and granting some form of conditional independence by the end of the year.
Kosovo’s majority ethnic Albanians and the Serbian government in Belgrade are due to start final status
talks today. Last month foreign ministers from the US, Russia, the UK, France, Germany and Italy – the
Contact Group for Kosovo – called for “all possible efforts” to “achieve a negotiated settlement in the
course of 2006”. The ministers did not declare their preferences for Kosovo’s future status. However there
are indications the ethnic Albanians are edging closer to the independence they have long sought – to the
fury of Belgrade, which insists Kosovo remains an integral part of Serbia.
Soren Jessen-Petersen, Kosovo’s UN administrator, says: “The direction is clear… Eventually you have to
move forward in recognition of what the majority wants.” By acknowledging the strength of the ethnic
Albanian claims, the international community is taking some risks. The advance towards independence
could provoke violence in Kosovo and possibly elsewhere in the fractured states that have emerged from
the former Yugoslavia.
But these concerns have been offset by a growing sense that the status quo in Kosovo is unsustainable.
Frustration among the ethnic Albanians is undermining efforts to promote the economy, cut unemployment
and fight organised crime, rife in the western Balkans.
With the region’s political and economic outlook steadily improving, US and European diplomats have
decided there may never be a better time to deal with Kosovo. The European Union late last year started
accession talks with Croatia, recognised Macedonia as a membership candidate and opened negotiations
on stabilisation and association agreements (entry-level co-operation pacts) with Bosnia and Serbia.
Albania, once a byword for Balkan isolation, is due to complete its EU association agreement talks this
spring. Meanwhile Romania and Bulgaria, well advanced on the road to EU integration, are due to join the
union next year or in 2008 at the latest. The international community finally has something to show for the
estimated $ 35 bn that has been spent in the former Yugoslavia in the past 15 years.
It will not pull out. Most of the 23,000 peace-keeping troops still deployed in Kosovo and Bosnia will stay.
Economic aid will continue to flow. But, with the US and the EU increasingly absorbed in the fight against
terrorism, there is a new urgency about stabilising the Balkans.
47
Ursula Plassnik, the Austrian foreign minister, says: “For me, this is the European peace project of my
generation…This is about stability and security in Europe.” It is all a far cry from 1999, when the UN took
over a battle-scarred province. To avoid renewed violence, it postponed consideration of Kosovo’s status and
urged ethnic Albanians to focus on building institutions, including effective relations with the remaining
Serbs, who now make up less than 10 percent of the population.
But in March 2004 ethnic Albanian frustrations erupted in riots. The UN condemned the violence but
recognised time was running out and late last year opened the way for status talks.
Ethnic Albanians envisage only one outcome – independence. Bajram Kosumi, the prime minister, says:
“A small country like Kosovo would feel insecure if it didn’t have a UN seat.” However, for Belgrade
independence is anathema. The Serbs who are entering the talks with the slogan “More than autonomy,
less than independence”, are ready to concede de facto self-government as long as they retain sovereignty
de jure. Kosovo remains historic Serb territory that no politician can give away. Boris Tadic, the president
says: “For Serbia it’s unacceptable to see Kosovo with a seat in the UN.”
The Contact Group has so far avoided taking sides. Last year it set out its principles – no partition of
Kosovo, no union with a neighbouring state and no return to pre-1999 conditions. But the US and the UK are
increasingly leaning towards independence for Kosovo. Nicholas Burns, the US undersecretary of state,
spoke recently of the ethnic Albanians having to prove they were worthy of independence by protecting
minority rights. British officials have talked of “some form of independence”.
Other EU states are more cautious, concerned that early discussion of independence could take the pressure
off Pristina to negotiate. One EU diplomat says: “There is concern that if we talk about independence too
early, the Serbs will just walk away.” There is much debate about what form independence might take. But
the Contact Group agrees minority rights must be guaranteed, peace-keeping troops must stay and an
international civilian mission – probably EU-run – put in place.
Russia, which has traditionally backed Belgrade, supports the search for a negotiated settlement. Moscow
is worried about setting dangerous precedents for Chechens and other separatists in the former Soviet
Union. But it may decide that conditional independence for Kosovo is better than provoking ethnic Albanians
radicals.
If the Contact Group pushes for independence, it could face a Serb walk-out and will then have to decide
whether to impose a settlement. Such a scenario might even suit Vojislav Kostunica, the Serb prime
minister. He will be able to claim he fought as hard as he could, then retreated without surrendering.
With the no-compromise Radical party riding high in polls, Mr Kostunica has little negotiating space. Braca
Grubacic, a Belgrade commentator, says: “Kosovo is still a taboo subject.” Complicating the Kosovo
question is Montenegro, the last remaining republic of the former Yugoslavia that is still linked to Serbia in
the joint state of Serbia and Montenegro. However, under an EU-brokered agreement in 2003, Montenegro
was promised an independence referendum after three years and the pro-independence Montenegran
government is now preparing for a plebiscite in April. Belgrade says reluctantly that it will abide by a fair
result but wants a high threshold for a valid Yes vote. The EU, trying to calm tensions, last week proposed a
55 percent minimum, which pro-independence Montenegrans say is too high.
The atmosphere in Montenegro is tense, but the issue does not generate the same passion as Kosovo
because Serbs and Montenegrans share a Slav background and Orthodox faith. Serbs believe they would
not be “losing” Montenegro in the sense that they face “losing” Kosovo to the Muslim ethnic Albanians.
The EU blocked Montenegro’s independence drive three years ago for fear it would set precedents for
separatists elsewhere. Today officials are more concerned about the instability created by keeping Kosovo
in limbo.
48
The dangers of fragmentation have not disappeared. In Bosnia, Lord Ashdown pushed the leaders of the
two “entities” – Republika Srpska and the Muslim/Croat federation – to establish national institutions
including joint military and police forces. The next stage is for the new high representative to give up his
vice-regal powers and return full sovereignty to the Bosnian government. But the country is still far from
functioning as a unified state.
In Macedonia, tensions between the ethnic Albanian minority concentrated in the west of the country and
the ethnic Macedonian majority have eased since the country came to the brink of civil war in 2001. The
implementation of the power-sharing Ohrid agreement has gone some way to bringing the two communities
together. But Macedonia remains vulnerable to instability emanating from neighbouring Kosovo.
Lurking under the surface is radical ethnic Albanian talk of “Greater Albania” – uniting Albania, Kosovo and
the ethnic Albanian areas of Macedonia, southern Serbia and southern Montenegro. The discussion is
generally limited to political extremists but has qualified support from Arben Xhaferi, a mainstream veteran
leader in Macedonia.
Contributing to insecurity in the Balkans is the failure to capture alleged war criminals, particularly Radovan
Karadzic, the Bosnian Serb leader, and Ratko Mladic, his military commander. Widespread unemployment
also casts a long shadow. The transition from central planning to the market, long delayed by war, is
gathering pace. But renewed investment is creating few jobs for the growing numbers of young people,
especially among ethnic Albanians where birth rates are high.
The jobless are prey for the recruiting sergeants of organised crime. Balkan gangs have access to weapons
and money generated from trafficking guns, drugs and women to western Europe.
For Balkan leaders, the only answer to these problems is what Mr Tadic, the Serbian president, calls “the
debalkanisation of the Balkans” through integration with the EU. Balkan politicians worry about growing
enlargement fatigue, especially in France where last year’s No in the EU constitutional treaty referendum
was widely interpreted as a vote against further expansion. French doubts extend even to Croatia, the most
advanced of the western Balkan states.
However, for now, the EU remains committed to integration. The union backs promises of eventual
membership, with practical assistance ranging from opening markets to visa facilitation. It is by far the
largest aid donor with € 5.3 bn pledged in the past six years. EU officials play vital roles in Bosnia,
Macedonia and Kosovo. And drawing on its experience in former Communist Eastern Europe, the union is
pushing economic reform.
As Ms Plassnik, the Austrian foreign minister, says: “The union has enormous transformational experience.”
None of this guarantees success. Another round of inter-ethnic violence could undermine the progress of
the last few years. That is why diplomats are keen to reach a final settlement for Kosovo. For without
stability in Kosovo, there can be no real stability in the Balkans.
Stefan Wagstyl, born UK, 29th May 1957, married with three children, Financial Times Central and East Europe editor (1998
to date), Industrial editor (1995 – 98), International news editor (1995), New Delhi bureau chief (1992 – 95), Tokyo correspondent
and bureau chief (1987 – 92), Mining and metals correspondent (1985 – 87), Financial reporter, (1983 – 85); Universal News
Services – editor business news 1982 – 83; Coventry Evening Telegraph – reporter 1979 – 82. Education: Clare College,
Cambridge, BA History 1976 –79; King Edward’s School, Birmingham 1968 –75.
49
Financial Times, Newspaper, February 20, 2006
Business people wary of a troubled region
By Stefan Wagstyl
Kasabank, the largest locally-owned bank in Kosovo, is going from strength to strength in what is probably
the most difficult business environment in Europe.
Founded shortly after the 1999 war, it started with one branch in the main city of Pristina, inconspicuous
amid an untidy row of run-down shops. Today it is expanding rapidly with 66 branches, 460 staff,
120 m euros in assets and high hopes that resolving Kosovo’s final status will stimulate further growth.
Milazim Abazi, a 50-year-old veteran of Balkan banking, established the bank with a group of Kosovan and
Slovenian investors, notably Slovenia’s Factor Banka. Now Kasabank is looking for new partners as it eyes
further growth in Kosovo and possible new ventures in Macedonia and Albania. “We want to make the
most of our position,” says Mr Abazi.
Kasabank’s progress is rare in a region where many local businesses are either small family-controlled
firms or big groups profiting from political connections. Kasabank proves that in the unpromising
conditions of the former Yugoslavia, with its corruption, crime and lack of transparency, it is possible to
establish a solid enterprise.
Since the end of the Kosovo war, south-east Europe – including Romania and Bulgaria – has seen a steady
economic recovery, with gross domestic product growing at 5 percent a year and a similar increase in prospect
for 2006. However, the region has yet to make up for the lost decade of the 1990s. Only in Albania have living
standards risen markedly above 1990 levels. In Serbia and Montenegro they stand at only 60 percent.
Foreign investment has also leapt, with about 12 bn dollars flowing into south-east Europe last year, up
from 3.6 bn dollars in 1999, says the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. But again the
figures for the 1990s were miserably low. Money is now going into privatisations, especially in
banking. Austrian banks, including Raiffeisen International, Erste and Bank Austria (now a subsidiary of
Italy’s Unicredit) have led the way. US Steel has invested in Serbia’s largest mill and Mittal Steel has done
the same in Bosnia. However, greenfield investments are rare.
Without such projects, the region cannot generate badly-needed jobs. Unemployment rates are among
Europe’s highest – over 30 percent in Serbia, 40 percent in Bosnia and 50 percent in Kosovo. Most countries
have achieved macroeconomic stability but conditions remain fragile with sizeable current account deficits,
notably in Bosnia where foreign aid helps cover a current account gap of 20 percent of GDP. Inflation is
generally under control but remains high in Serbia at 15 percent.
Yet the biggest issue for business is political stability. Business people all say a Kosovo settlement would
mark a new phase in Balkan economic development. Konrad Reuss, a managing director at Standard &
Poor’s, the credit rating agency, says: “If political stability comes it will be positive for the region. If it does
not it will impact quite negatively. There’s no middle ground. It’s either/or.”
Stefan Wagstyl, born UK, 29th May 1957, married with three children, Financial Times Central and East Europe editor (1998 to
date), Industrial editor (1995 – 98), International news editor (1995), New Delhi bureau chief (1992 – 95), Tokyo correspondent
and bureau chief (1987– 92), Mining and metals correspondent (1985 – 87), Financial reporter, (1983 – 85); Universal News
Services – editor business news 1982 – 83; Coventry Evening Telegraph – reporter 1979 – 82. Education: Clare College,
Cambridge, BA History 1976 –79; King Edward’s School, Birmingham 1968 –75.
50
Bank Austria Creditanstalt in Central and Eastern Europe
Bank Austria Creditanstalt (BA-CA) was the first Western bank to start business activities in a former
COMECON country. Since 1975, when BA-CA opened a representative office in Budapest, and especially
since the political and economic changes in 1989/90, the bank has pursued a targeted expansion
strategy in Central and Eastern Europe. Since November 2005, BA-CA is a member of UniCredit Group.
BA-CA functions as CEE holding of UniCredit Group and manages the business in this region.
UniCredit Group operates the largest international banking network in CEE with about 3,700 offices
in 20 countries and 27 million customers.
For further information please visit our website at www.ba-ca.com
UniCredit Group: The largest banking network in CEE
Russia
€ 7,829 m
55 branches
Baltic Countries
(Estonia, Latvia,
Lithuania)
€ 900 m
4 branches
Poland
€ 35,062 m
1,290 branches
Czech Rep.
€ 9,683 m
76 branches
Ukraine1
€ 4,187 m
528 branches
Slovakia
€ 4,245 m
84 branches
Kazakstan2
(Kyrgyzstan,
Tajikistan)
€ 6,300 m
110 branches
Hungary
€ 5,742 m
80 branches
Slovenia
€ 1,920 m
14 branches
Croatia
€ 10,933 m
127 branches
Romania
€ 3,846 m
136 branches
Bulgaria
€ 3,991 m
300 branches
Bosnia
€ 1,967 m
170 branches
Azerbaijan
€ 52 m
Serbia
€ 840 m
46 branches
Turkey
€ 30,463 m
684 branches
1) including Ukrsotsbank, subject to approval
2) subject to approval
Total assets and number of branches of UniCredit Group as of 30 June 2007
51
The APA as a CEE Agency
Because of its geopolitical position at the centre of Europe, Austria ranks as one of the most important
information “hubs” between Western and Eastern Europe. As the Austrian news agency, the APA – Austria
Presse Agentur plays a key role in this. In recent years, the APA has succeeded in continuously expanding
its reporting about Central, Eastern and Southern Europe.
In addition to exchanging information with national news agencies the APA has put together a network of
correspondents. Competent journalists report in accordance with the APA quality criteria, namely speed,
independence and balance, on events in the Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia,
Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia, Bulgaria as well as Romania and provide reliable information from this
economically and politically important part of Europe.
52

Writing for CEE 2006

Transcription

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