At the end of misty November, 23 participants, four workshop leaders and countless organizers from 16 countries (of those 8 Slavic speaking) came together to talk about countries united by the Slavic heritage and to get to know more about each other.
AEGEE people celebrated the International Day of Students and commemorated the 71th anniversary of Prague events leading to its declaration, as well as the day of restoration of Czechoslovak democracy, and remembered the autumn's Eurupean Day of Languages.
During the workshops participants found out, that it is very hard to define Slavic identity, as it has many aspects, such as genetic, linguistic, cultural, territorial and others. There are rather no typical looks either.
On the other hand, it was a big surprise that the languages are much more similar than one would think before. Native speakers got confidence to use the mother tongue abroad more and participants from other countries lost their prejudices about difficulty of the Slavic languages got encouraged to become polyglotic.
An important conclusion was, that culturally are the Slavic countries very different and various, and instead of having much in common, they are more similar to their respective neighbours in Central and Southern Europe and the Balkans. There has been and interesting deep-going case study research performed as well (www.aegee-praha.cz/slavicworld).
From the political point of view, the participants agreed on a fact that the countries have a lot to learn from each other about both good and bad experiences, because the story of building and falling of the common states is actually a paraphrase of European integration in general, and therefore an important source to learn.
Event was full of positive energy and people enjoyed the time in Czech capital a lot, and in the end it was topped with a glamorous AEGEE-25 birthday party – with streams of champagne and unforgettable moments, celebrating the new age of the organisation.
The general conclusion of the event was, that being Slavic is not a nationality, but a lifestyle!
The organizers hope that this topic about an unique European phenomenon will continue within following projects and events of AEGEE and are ready to pass on the good experience.
Jan Halamíček
Main Coordinator
jan.halamicek@aegee-praha.cz
