Tuesday, April 03, 2007

Capitalism won

After we visited Tito's grave, we went to McDonald's. It is fair to say that Capitalism won, even in Belgrade. The West won.

At the end of my stay here, it is time for some trips. Together with My Friend Elias and Ian the Monitor i went to Belgrade last weekend, leaving Thomas the Viking behind in Sarajevo.
My Friend Elias and I went to a conference, titled 'a Soul for Europe', about the role of culture in European identity building. Although an interesting topic, we felt a bit lost. After two-and-a-half years of dealing with war crimes, in which culture was used as the big divider instead of the big equalizer or even unifier, it was a bit hard to warm up to the topic. During a break we were talking to one of the organizers of the event, who laughed at us, and said we were cynics. I guess she is right.
Indeed the West won- using culture as an equalizer is something those intellectuals from the West are doing, for instance at this conference. Maybe equalizing by imposing it, ok, but looking for common ground is better than looking for differences when finding a soul for Europe.
Yes, maybe we are cynics. So therefore My Friend Elias has gone back to Holland for good last Sunday, and am I flying out of BiH for good on the 18th of this month.

The blog will keep on existing- from September onwards I am going to study in Geneva. In the meanwhile I have a job in Holland and abroad, and will keep on working on my stories, which will be published by a Dutch publishing house. Those were the cliffhangers I promised in blogs before. They materialized.

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