breaking the ice

I am in Strasbourg – in the center again! I had 2 meetings parallel this week and no policy officer with me. First I thought I easily manage, but now it was really tiring. One meeting was the steering group meeting for the Raxi-Symposium which is going to take place here in Strasbourg by the end of the month October, the other meeting is the BBC+ study session together with some other youth councils. The Symposium steering group was at times quite intense, talking about an event for 120 people, with 348 applications and a lot of facilitators and speakers to decide on, as it is 4 days long and needs a lot of parallel working units. The Study session is much more fun and allows in-depth analysis of the situation of National Youth Councils today. I am happy that those NYCs are willing to take this challenge on board!

I will leave France today and go to Portugal – for the Council of Europe affaires commission. The Commission should be led by the steering group of the commission; but 2 out of the 3 steering group members will not be able to make it to the actual meeting. So I have the full responsibility of chairing this 3 days meeting together with Marian! I hope she will indeed arrive!

I am really wondering if I get old. Lately I find myself more and more to talk to strangers. When I arrived last Sunday night back home from Brussels and the social-inclusion working group an Australian philosophy professor with an Einstein-Hair-cut asked me for information about the way to town and we started to talk. I enjoyed it and gave him a guided tour through town and went home only with the last tramway. I did not even ask for his name in 2 hours. Today, after a very successful youth event and a minister’s conference that has all our (youth) main points in the officially adopted reports from the working groups. I arrived at the railway station and just missed my train, so I had to wait for almost 2 hours. I sat down and started to talk to a professor from Wageningen agricultural university for the next hour. So Either I just develop a severe fetish for professors or I am a really desperate lonely person. Anyway, happy that the last week went great and that another big event is over.

I arrived in Budapest today for the steering group meeting to prepare the

youth event

prior to the youth ministers conference starting tomorrow evening. Since I am here I received 5 sms of people asking me how the weather is. Now I know that weather is important and that this time of the year, actually this whole year it is quite unpredictable and it could have 24 as well as 10 degrees, but I felt like a weather man today. In addition I can not get rid of the feeling, that everyone is more concerned about clothing then about the content of the meeting. But I am confident that everything will go just fine and we will have a nice event!

Yesterday I had dinner at a wonderful Lebanese restaurant together with the youth forums social-inclusion working group. I tried to get to know the people a bit better and asked them for childhood myths. Things you were convinced about during childhood and were terribly disappointed when you found out is not how you explained everything to yourself.

To explain you what I mean, I will share mine with you. I was convinced that Daisy flowers are the children of Marguerites. It was quite obvious for me, that if a Daisy grows up, it would become a Marguerite.
Or I remember clearly that I was convinced, that when I drink coke, I will have brown pie. And I was watching myself pie but it did not get brown and I could not understand how and why this did not happen.
I was also convinced that cats are female and dogs are male. So if cat and dog marry and get children, their boys would be little puppies and their girls would be little kittens. I was waiting for the moment that Spike finally confesses his love to Tom and they finally live happily ever after - and maybe even adopt Jerry.

So I was sharing these stories at the Lebanese restaurant with the group and Natalia also shared a childhood myth with us. She was convinced that in your throat you have 2 tubes, one for liquid and one for solid stuff. She was really irritated how this works with soup, which is a mixture of solid and liquid stuff.

As we tried with the boys, no one had a myth to share with us. The explained, that they were basically thinking about things such as “how can I break this tool” and “how can I make this toy work” but not much more.

Now I am wondering, does gender specific socialisation have such enormous impacts already at the age of 3, so that little girls think different and question their environment much more then little boys ever start to? Please boys, share your childhood myths and tell me that you were questioning what is going on around you too!

I have been thinking for quite a while how to meet the request posted by Joao. So I have been looking for adequate pictures from him to introduce him to the people reading my blog. Well, and what you see here is what are the only pictures I managed to find. I was thinking for long if I should even put this, but at the end, I was asked by the person concerned to devote a blog to him and these are the only pictures I have! So Joao – I know we will be in Budapest with each other soon – so lets try to make some nice pictures of you in Budapest!

Today i had my own personal debt relief. A court decided that my father has to pay me the money that he owes me. When he left he said

now we finally do not have to meet any longer

. I have to admit this is a strange statement to say, the last time I have met him in march 2001 – so it is not like I have been visiting him in a lot of unpleasant moments. Secondly it is general a strange thing to say for a father to his daughther. I have to admit though, that I am simply reliefed that this trial is over now…

Sigi is a very impulsive friend of mine.

She will definitely never leave a doubt about what she thinks about things and be very explicit and positioned in her opinion. There is no one else where I would be so absolutely sure that she would defend me like a lion mum her kids when anyone wants to hurt me. When going out she can be a real entertainer, leading the group with her humour and assuring a good time for everyone. She is a wonderful trustworthy and reliable friend. In her blog she will mainly write about Austria, so sorry guys, the blog is in German!

sternfahrerin

Because I want to introduce you to my friends, here is the next bunch! This is my favourite Iberian Peninsula triplet. They all live in the same house and work at the same place. They are all frequent customers of the wild geese and travel a lot. I get to spend quite some time with them. They make me laugh, they make me busy and they are a good party company. They are definitely a reason why being in Brussels is nice for me! Read here about their lives

Paul Hymans gang

As I fail to properly edit my link list I have to introduce you to Clemens this way. Clemens might be one of my coolest friends. I mean cool as in trendy, smart, quick witted, outgoing, and up to date, well, simply cool and good looking and clever. The only problem is, that he likes divas. Maybe because he is a bit of a diva too, but strangely enough he does not want to be reminded that this might cross the limits to absolute trashiness. Anyways, if you want to get to know Clemens, please have a look at his blog:

Climo

I have just been at the movies watching broken flowers. Another film where Bill Murray is a old, lonely and somehow weird man, the film is slow as lost in translation has a lot of nice pictures and an unclear ending. Apart from Murray there are some other interesting actors and actresses in the cast such as Julie Deply, Sharon Stone, Chloë Sevigny and Tilda Swinton. I still have not made up my mind if I should recommend this film to you or not, but I definitely want to share the main conclusion one can make after this film with you. The past is over, the future is not there jet and all we have is this, the present. So I guess, you can make up your mind now if we are going to see the film or wait till it is on TV.

I had a visit of the states secretary of Macedonia yesterday. He was here for an OECD meeting and we spent the evening together. We know each other for a good year now and really like each other. The last 3 or 4 times we met we were both to busy to really talk with each other. So this evening was really nice and good to see that we still have things to talk about. We made a long, long walk trough the city and enjoyed Vienna by night! Something I can only recommend to every one who has not done this in a while. Mister State Secretary met someone else before we met – Mateja! She moved to Vienna last fall and I have only seen her twice since! Shame on me! But I guess before I meet Mateja again, I try to meet Sigi and Marion first! Who I have not seen in ages!

I have been in Italy for 3 days now. To be precise in Castellammare di stabia. A beautiful place close to Napoli. So I was rally looking forward to get some real Pizza – from the region where it was invented. But I can tell you I did not leave the hotel till I was heading back to the airport bus! So- no Pizza for me. Plus I had some really exiting time with Alitalia. Wounderful airline! We had a delay of more then an hour and one of the passengers, who had a 2 year old child with him and a connection to catch, asks the steward when we will finally get to go out of the plane – as no bus was coming, and if he (the steward) could do anything to make sure the bus comes any minute. Guess what this one hell of a steward said to the passenger? He said “I want to go home too, I’m late for dinner already!” Long live Alitalia!

Tomorrow the first bureau meeting is starting again. After most of us have had some holidays and were able to take a rest and refresh after a busy spring we will start working with full speed again. It seems that this bureau meeting everyone will be present, so maybe we finally manage to make a bureau picture with all of us on it!

Jules is starting to attend school again, so no more adolescent on our couch! but he'll be here during the weekends anyways.

I have been at the Dan Mladine the Croatian Youth day in Burgenland. It was a combination of sports, discussions and cultural acts in the evening. I learned a lot about the Croatian minority in Austria and had fun with the YEN people there.

I had some meetings in strasbourg and realised that it feels like coming home... It was strange, i was the first time back to the youth center after 7 weeks and it felt a bit like a family reunion...

I had to move... i will miss the pink stars :-(