Translated by: Claudia Giacobbe - claudiagiacobbe[at]englishprofessional.com.ar
This is a voluntary-based translation. Proposals, proofreading and comments about the understandability of the contents highly appreciated here
© Pablo Castiñeiras
The previous century changed Europe, land of tribes formed by aliens of themselves that go from ignoring to conquering each other, uniting from disintegrating. At the beginning, the old continent was plagued with artificial borders under the warmth of romantic nationalism. We trespassed and rebuilt these frontiers with the fire of war in almost no time.
A new millennium begins with the millionth attempt to create a union of Europes, but nowadays without the bellicose and political exaltation, under the PEACE motto and the MARKET reality. Europe union of Europes, geographical and sentimental realities among individuals apparently so much unlike, but equal regarding desires and needs, as well as regarding genetic and historical background.
The 20th century has witnessed our birth. We hardly got to know it, and now we are forgetting it in the presence of a so postmodern and globalized whirlpool.
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The curtain rises and the adventure begins.
One of our characters will come up popping its little or big head in the hat of youth, that precious treasure that looks more like a trademark than a future reality. Another character, History, comes out wearing the uniform of formal educational institutions, the perspective imposed by the winners, while we try to read in an informal way what certain, more ancient types of education, out of the system, teach. Another fundamental character is exploration, the journey to other geographical and human landscapes and population, both near and far, which modern transport systems allow us to reach like never before, despite the organized trips and cultural stereotypes constantly repeated and deformed by modern communication.
These large characters, accompanied by a marsh of lesser or secondary ones of even greater importance, will act behind the scenes of an individual experience. Six-months’ period of European Voluntary Service (EVS) in a country like Hungary, as well as that of those who have lived similar experiences, the stages of which summarize and crown the beginning of each chapter of this modest book.
Utopia, an illusion to some. That poor Thomas More! His intentions were good but, in current times, one does not live on good intentions. Social unions do not originate through constitutional decree blows, nor does peace among folks without prior peace among men.
There exist enormous utopias, built only in a few months or years, normally at a very high price for humanity, for the sake of a better future. Other utopias are dreamed for a long time, and become true after decades, even centuries, of great struggles and strives, few times with the power of sense and civil mobilization, but many times with the unjust and impatient fury of violence, turning the days that promised to be of happiness into mist of the past.
Utopias and power know not of clocks. Human life does, as it is temporary and it expires and, more often than not, it aspires to survive than to live. We are nothing but dreamy animals trying to be gods.
Perhaps it is all mere looks or, as some philosopher says, that modern invention which is the Human Being has died, and, as we find no way of resuscitating, we devote ourselves to pretending that we believe in Humankind.
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Utopia, the dawn of united peoples sharing the same land, the same planet. Hope of those who, ar and wide in this old Europe and the world, make theirs all the land that any person can dream of or tread on; all the hope that their hearts can hold.
Fifty years have gone by now, since the signing of the “Treaty of Rome”, treaty with which it was intended to guarantee PEACE in that land of old bad-tempered warriors who too often settled (will they settle?) their disputes with blows, the so-called Europe and its Union.
We have fallen into the utopia of the 21st century, which seems to be little utopian, since, so they say, the utopian revolutions of emancipation of the previous century have failed. Could it be possible that they were not really utopian but human, too human perhaps? According to some, the exceptions are human movements such as feminism, or some ethnic or sexual minorities whose struggle for equal rights have been successful; the only ones to gain victories over revolutions of the past and respectable positions within our current neoliberal society.
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In Europe, we have lived through, and also exported to the world, many utopian projects. The reason why this term is used nowadays to define any idyllic project as an idea but unrealizable will have to be found in the fact that utopian ideas have been trying to compete rather than converse with each other.
Empires have existed in Europe and the world which have made the attempt to become universal, nevertheless being aware of the apparent moral and social superiority of certain autochthonous cultures (such as the Roman Empire with regards to Greek culture). Those are the ones that have left unforgettable and inerasable marks, not only regarding peace and culture among peoples, but also regarding culture, customs and ways of doing in the cultural heritage of humanity, for hundreds of years. Many centuries later, a Spaniard and a Hungarian, apparently as distant and remote as can be regarding historical, cultural and climatic vicissitudes, may find mutual surprise, in a Mediterranian way, concerning practices and habits they would never have imagined to have in common: their fondness of wine, a good meal, emotional intensity…
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As untimely as smallpox at old age! Our elders have already been hopelessly educated in the coarse nationalism. Totems and taboos, some of them estimated very modern; others, very order-preserving and which finally exploded into violence we must avoid now if we want to “be higher, stronger and go a long way”, as the ancient Romans used to say.
The dear Gaul of the villages of Asterix and Obelix regarded those Romans as madmen, so different to them. Their conquests originated one of the first attempts of European union by assimilating the pax romana as political structure and Latin as the lingua franca, creator of new languages. Will American Spanglish also become a new, future language? The spirit of that Gaul village from the comic strip does not have anything to do with the French’s refusal of the first attempt of a European Constitution, does it? Or, should we focus the blame on a Constitution drafted behind people’s backs?
The new generations cannot be educated or consider themselves to be the death rattle in the form of a revival of a blind nationalism, nor of the twisting of a spectator’s neck during an ideological tennis match. Nowadays the big thing is table tennis matches, or the New Age type of nationalism of the global village, and the fast food service built upon the image of that Europe 2, the United States of America.
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For the young cultural and economic empire of stars and stripes (already wrinkling, clearly decaying like her father, old Europe), there are no more green enemies left to play the game of being defeated in cold wars. Not even the real aliens make allowance for the world cop to come and save us from their desire of conquering the planet, as the prodigal son it is, who preserves us from the hot World Wars. In old Europe, we also no longer accompany them in their liberation campaigns, in exchange for turning (us), the released, into future markets.
This story of rescuers and financers in exchange for the chance of being future consumers reminds us of what happens amid the engines of Europe and the new countries that they invite over to the Union club during times of peace, does it not?
I get the impression that our paternal criticism against the United States of America is sometimes founded upon jealousy. Europe broke out into two World Wars, instead of being able to develop a project of social integrity and peace: a “European dream” produced by the Enlightenment days here and developed there during the American Independence. We are dealing with the trifles of an empire sprung from a young country, with that mania of denying any value to what is new. A social project whose great mistakes and good judgment we might learn from and not only criticize, as old scholars, delivering classes on Human Rights and political etiquette. It is necessary to be alert but without forgetting that saying that goes: “in ironman’s house, wooden spoon”, or what is the same, less conceit about a Society with the Rule of Law and more concern for the rights of society, especially in countries where popular freedom is most stormed.
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A bad conscience or the keeping up of political appearances makes allowances for the appearance of quite a few politicians and utopians from the bureaucrat and technocrat peripheries of an economic European Union. They dare to develop social programs with a pyrrhic budget, compared to the huge protectionist subsidies granted to the agriculture sector that take up a great part of the total budget of the Union. They are economic sectors that are to be protected for reasons I cannot understand since, on the other hand, we so often proclaim a free market.
Many of the pages that follow will be an account, among others, of a controlled adventure (intended as the portrayal of the Welfare State), called European Voluntary Service. A Spanish female will apply for being European volunteer, facing the situation of poor employment offered in her country after having completed both her university studies and the first quarter of a century of her life… as well a Swedish girl, who has just become of age and completed high school, before beginning her vocational training… or a young man from the East tired of hearing his parents telling him the good and bad things of the old dictatorship, tired of seeing extemporal buildings belonging to a system about which he knows less than that offered him by the rich Europe … All of them will take a break from their formal lives to try to find out, in an informal way, what the hell they should do with the rest of them; unless bureaucracy, especially passport and visa, prevents it.
The programmes for creating European citizenship and cultural understanding look for young people and deposit their hope in them. The EVS tries to find a place among better-known programs involving youth mobility… like the ERASMUS programme, which, after its twentieth anniversary, has turned into a European marriage agency (note also its other officious name: orgasmus). ERASMUS is an educational programme, with the underlying objective of mutual acquaintance among young Europeans. It has been creating, with deeper intention, couples originated from the peculiarity of the ERASMUS experience, based on “you from Rotterdam, me from Tallin, we go to live in Turin”, facilitating that strange thing called European citizenship and which will come true in the children they have now or in the ones they will have in the future.
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Some of what has been written should provide inspiration as the civil and social references of the new Europe, which emerged with the need for PEACE in the old, worn-out continent and the reality of capital MARKET. History also provides other references such as the above-mentioned Roman Empire or similar ones that emerged from the different Caesars’ desire for power and expansion, and also that of their citizens and followers, concluding with a historical and cultural stereotype that proved inerasable. The opportunity of repeating feats has been granted us because history tells us it is possible, but, if we carefully rummage in it, we will now be able to do it patiently, without impositions and without making the mistakes of the past. Goal which is neither too obvious nor simple, despite the great knowledge we treasure about the world and ourselves, taking into account that a Europe of the peoples, under construction, cannot be isolated and has to be carried out in the real world.
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In the great systems of the past century, heirs of the Age of Enlightenment (called the century of “lights”, but full of dragons, followers of ideas and not of the will of the people, and not to mention the will of individuals), the youngsters, as in Dawkins’ nightmare in which we, humans, are no more than carriers of selfish genes that use us in order to perpetuate themselves, were the fundamental pillar to enable that selfish, ideological gene to perpetuate itself. Some ideologies took the right to educate them in abilities and attitudes away from their mothers and religions. Some ideologies took them by force, some through pacts of collaboration between ideology and religion in exchange for sharing power, while others simply took away from them the right to take part in what today we know as the public sphere. Thus, we have had the Hitler youth, the Soviet ones and the like, even within societies that are free and secular, in which, by borrowing strategies from the military and religious disciplines; they were able to adapt all these classic educational techniques to a more general civil society.
In the diversity of this experiment called Europe, the young sector is peculiar: less White and less Christian each time, but more consuming, dubitative, Protestant (but less protesting, though), and globalized, still with class and tribes distinctions. Along with this sector, there exist some utopians trying to turn them into people who can make a difference. Others, maybe more realistic ones, trying to turn them into the eminent women and men of tomorrow, who will preserve the status quo. In conclusion, youth workers and formal and non-formal educators.
Some believe that, in order to be future citizens, it is not enough to know the list of the Gothic kings. It is necessary to educate ourselves, make ourselves visible and allow ourselves to learn, and not only accumulate events, ideologies, persistent theories... for which Wikipedia and similar initiatives can be more useful, flexible and factual. It is necessary to learn personal and social skills. Education and learning, not academic but the non-formal type (which is not the same as informal learning), since it was thought and planned. Learners are not expected to pass an exam and reach exactly a practical, measurable result, as if two and two were four, but try to imitate the informal learning opportunities offered by life.
The important thing is to learn what is really useful to us, both for living and sharing life, trying to let epiphanies bloom without expecting them to do so spontaneously. Ever since immemorial times, this task is being carried out by institutions of almost all world religions having social cohesion as their objective.
The industrial revolution changed everything. Thousands of young people had to leave their well-known rural environments, their contact with nature, towards the unknown urban spaces built with cement and mechanization. They found themselves lost and excluded before a new World in which the vital and religious coordinates and the support from their parents and grandparents no longer worked. These Victorian conditions allowed new civil groups to emerge, for instance, the YMCA, to support and bring youngsters together or the Scouts to educate future citizens by means of outdoor activities, to point out just two classical examples.
Therefore, we must be grateful to those utopians who, after the unsuccessful Greek Sophists, tried to carry out a respectable task (“let us be realistic, let us ask for the impossible”). To view the young as the men and women of tomorrow, not to be used as lambs nor regarded as daddy’s immature boys and girls who speak nonsense only and whose opinion is never to be heard. So-called non-formal education was started in this way along with youth work.
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In Germany, work with youngsters was based on activities and games, several dynamics that took up their leisure time in an informal way and which, if they were fortunate enough, allowed them to learn about themselves and life. After the Second World War, the victorious Americans arrived and so they thought: <<since they have been hitting each other, they will have to be taught what democracy is, no matter how much they believe themselves to have invented it>>. Who were they going to count on for this task? On the old survivors of/participants in the War? Or… on the young! In the same way the young were educated in the teachings of the Reich with the regime on duty. So Americans brought over a whole series of teaching methods and techniques, most of them originated in Europe but already proved within a multicultural and multiethnic society like the United States, created exclusively from emigrants (it is better not to remember what happened to the natives in order to achieve this American utopia).
One of the actions created to carry out the above-mentioned objectives was bilateral exchanges, which still exist today, between young people of French and German origin, so they could see the ones did not actually have horns nor were the others such snobs. Besides, a lot of activities outside school hours and integrating ideas such as Civil Service at national or international level to try to obtain the miracle of understanding in the new generations with regards to what the old ones could not stand about themselves.
There is no exact translation in Poland for the term non-formal education, for reasons I ignore. I suppose that there, as in Spain, non-formal education has not been removed from the sphere of institutions linked to religious beliefs, or to Soviet ones during the Russian occupation that took over at that time. In countries with a wide influence of a concrete religion like Spain, Italy, Greece… they are now starting to speak of non-formal education at civil level in line with the European standard and demanding the acknowledgement that should be given to it by society. It has been acknowledged only in specific areas every now and then, as in language teaching, since language learning cannot easily be achieved by studying from grammar books, for it requires abilities and attitudes which are not obtained from books.
In the United Kingdom and Ireland, those terms, techniques and teaching methods sound more familiar. They are more developed and are understood as a means of integration in the adult and working life of young people in general and, in particular, of those with hardship: the ones who, in search of that teenage sense of identity, gather in hardly recommendable youth gangs, as a consequence of a local environment that does not integrate them and an educational system that expulses them. This being so, some youth workers try to reconcile them with the world through outdoor sports, the promotion of team work and creativity as well as other resources so as to make them aware of having abilities far beyond what they have been told or believed themselves to have.
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Diversity, the treasured and inevitable milestone of a social European Union. The need to defeat both the issues and mutual ignorance among Europeans, led authentic civil and political activists to search again in their local youth policies to experience them at European level. Experiencing diversity!
Around the 90s, the program “Youth for Europe” was implanted, somewhat inspired by the bilateral youth exchanges between France and Germany. It looked forward to reaching the same objective: personal acquaintance among different young people of different European nationalities; in spite of language and time restraints involved in this type of exchanges, this would sow the seed in the future promise of a European Union, socially and not only economically conceived.
A few years later, following the examples provided by the International Civil Service in some countries, a more complex pilot project was established. The one would allow to live a longer season, up to a whole year, in another country different to one’s own, with all expenses paid! The only requirement was being young and a legal resident of the Union, regardless the social, cultural, economic or educational status of the privileged (that is how many of us have felt it, as fortunate participants). In exchange, one had to do a volunteer service for a hosting organization that accepted the program, also benefiting from an economic aid from the EU Commission, apart from the European/international contribution that each young person from another adhered country brought along.
The pilot project did well and, a few years later, both actions were integrated into a more ambitious and ample program that would turn out to be the first for young people at European Union level in 2000 -only yesterday!-. It became a group of actions that provided grants to the participants at quite higher levels than those better-known grants for higher or vocational education mobility in that period, despite of which most of the young people did not know about it. There even exists the paradox that many young people do not believe a program such as EVS to be possible, through which, despite its voluntary nature, you go with all the expenses paid and even receive some pocket money for you to carry out your task; the fact that the whole process is managed by associations, without you having to look for lodging yourself, being helped in your integration and understanding in your new culture of reception, thanks to a great cultural, human and educational support. In the end, a program in which you are treated with extreme care in theory, if it were not for the fact that lack of information and the easy money provided by grants sometimes pervert the objectives and the good deeds of some projects…
I do not think it is outrageous to claim that the European YOUTH programme was special, due to its mere utopian existence and for the experience it has made those of us who participated in it, gain and lived intensively. Recently, it has been revised, expanded and given the more proactive name: “Youth in Action”. It tries to develop the needs set forth by the European “White Paper on Youth”, and emphasize the interest that exists among European institutions for young people “to move our asses” and not aspire just to live fast and leave a nice corpse. If we complain about all the bad things there may be in it (beyond what is right to complain about, like the misuse of funds by unscrupulous people, due to the bureaucratic flexibility and simplification such a program for young people entails and makes difficult to avoid), we complain as children of Welfare States.
Europe is rich and not exactly the young in need are who benefit from a program like “Youth in Action”. Nevertheless, the most fortunate ones, nowadays, are used to living on the profits coming from their family resources. Although if you are lucky enough to live in a “Welfare State”, being a citizen, the government will have to try to assure you civil rights, such as dignified housing, employment for everyone, free access to higher education, and even support you for studying away from home...
As the social programme it is, the European one referring to young people has taken a lot of time to become a reality within the framework of the European Union born as an economic unit. The critical infrastructures of the new countries are developed through cohesion funds which, further good development, will allow better deals to be made by the old members of the club. On the other hand, a social programme like this, supposes the hope of pressure for the sake of those national realities that do not even have youth policies nor give a cent’s worth for their youngsters.
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What is the European Voluntary Service (EVS)? Why is it supposed to be so important for European construction on behalf of young people? What it comes to historically we have already explained above; to browse the official websites of the European Commission will fill the history with figures and decisions, very useful to experts in the matter. Definitely, deciding to take the risk for EVS or ERASMUS or any other grant or internships in another country, is, like Europe, a marsh of diversity of individual intentions.
First step: one finds out that there exists such a thing named EVS, which very often it is something that, existing the opportunity, has been found intentionally. Second step: you decide to “wrap up” and dive into the mess of leaving the temporal planet from the rest of humans and travel to another more-or-less known reality, depending on the country and the project you finally devote yourself to during the next months of your life. Third step: you are setting out on the greatest controlled adventure of your young life. Fourth step: you will wait to have grandchildren to be able to tell them about the little battles of that time. Arcadia that was paradise to some and hell to others, neither thing to others, but if you all remember it is thanks to the great impact at personal level; a turning point in the life of many, of individual knowledge, of opening up horizons or staying in the same place you came from to find something that was not as far as you expected to find it.
Whoever has not lived similar experiences will not understand the emotional, or even intellectual, effect that many retell, impressed by the experience, thinking they are exaggerations by people with little personality. One of the reasons the word ‘utopia’ is mentioned so many times here is thanks to an experience through which we were able to, for better or for worse, move away from the well-known path and see other horizons. Now that is something that can be found deep within the human being ever since he decided to set out from mother Africa to conquer lands, dreams and visions. A dream from which we would never want to wake up, as it is wonderful or hopeful.
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It is worth pointing out that, having lived the experience of EVS, I do not consider it as something positive in itself, contrasting the concrete experience between the expectations and the final reality; but positive indeed because of the hardship, difficulties and discoveries I have been able to value from life. To emphasize the fact that I do not wish to talk about individual experiences and perceptions alone but summarize briefly, after the experiences and talks regarding what I shared with some fellows from the same or from different places, some of whom I have never met; others, I had the fortune of meeting later on. We all believe to carry out and live the European utopia towards democracy, diversity and union. From all this, the reader may conclude why this adventure is important or not for the construction of Europe. Perhaps, similar adventures, other institutional educational and cultural programmes, or the experiences that anyone can form out of living, studying and working in other countries and places are of importance.
Looking back, what I dislike most is not having been fortunate enough, to have known what awaited me to live if I had started to walk earlier the path that leads to seeing and living other cultures… How short life is! So it is better to dare when you are young and able to do so.
Every system of transport which is not our two legs has a special value, since it is a human invention that facilitates our discovering new realities, places and peoples. New human gardens, built in search of new paradises that are very idealistic in the imagination of individuals, in order to escape from others already built but where one is not at ease.
Every time a means of transport which allows us to travel farther and faster becomes popular, some might think: <<those machines are more the work of the devil than of humans, with their rattling and their automatisms, from the old caravan to the modern car, they isolate people from their fellowmen and from nature>>. The fact that man decided to isolate from nature as a means of self-protection is understandable; ultimately bucolic Mother Nature greatly tends to engulf her creatures through an excess of love...
Human beings use fire to care themselves, build cities and erect cathedrals to other worlds where there are no diseases. Another issue is that spiral of nature that we, rational animals, are. Such a little bomb clock! How to become “a wolf for man” (as the ancient Romans, experts on citizenship and politics used to say) and at the same time preserve the state of law, either natural or normative…
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Let us consider the train, indisputable king of travel during the past century, filling the worlds of travelling novelists with distant lands or saturated metropolis. The train, decorated with its human fauna, which could be seen through the corner of an eye or scrutinized under the cigar smoke (in times when tobacco was considered healthy). The train was king because it contained a long city of citizens, positioned to stand jailed on the compartment or being able to get closer, even to get to know each other, promoted by the relaxing effect of the rattling, the succession of landscapes and other things. The train stations were like the former sea harbours, especial places from where to set out on journeys towards new worlds, promises, hopes, farewells, possibilities, dreams…
The train, until not long ago, was the jewel for cultural knowledge of unknown paradises, for the youngsters belonging to this diverse and exotic Europe, supported by initiatives like the one called Interrail.
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Many weekends, I took the Soviet era train to Budapest, so to visit the wonderful EVS fellows that I knew there, most of whom lived in a large house which was de facto the EVS one in Hungary those days. I will not ever forget the dignified and naked oldness of coaches that, if they were to be built these days would not last on duty a quarter of the time they used to. I cannot forget the intimacy that the typical old central European train compartments meant, instead of long rows of seats giving accommodation to more anonymous travellers, making it more difficult to communicate with each other and see faces and situations I observed and lived in those compartments.
Many times I wished to have carried a camera to be able to shoot beautiful daily portraits of train travellers, along with the exultant landscapes of plains and forests on the borders of the railway. These are bad times for poetry, forgotten under the visual impact pursued by the comic style called manga; created by the Japanese of the rising sun that go through all the postmodern experiments that all the rest of humanity will later adopt as a way of life.
It is surprising how the artificial frontiers can change the countries. At "Keleti pu.", the Budapest Eastern Railway Station, we stepped aboard a European transnational train which was both prettily designed and efficient, to visit the neighbouring Vienna, a European and modern capital in its own right… We ended up with a smell of something burning, left some kilometres away from our destination, waiting for hours for some buses to transfer us like cattle to nearby Vienna. I am used (as a helpless customer from the market where the client “is always right”) to this sort of treatment towards people. On the other hand, the old, almost tattered but efficient trains from a past system had their deserved reward in their dignity on the single day I remember the train in Hungary being on a greater delay. I was surprised that the railway connection I was to take and feared to have missed was still waiting at the station for the train full of people with which it was connected.
One has already forgotten the years past when need or sense forced us to take people into account and to build things in order to last. We have acquired, as good adaptable animals we are, the bad habit of irrational squandering that the Earth has too often proved not to be willing to allow us because of the madness and selfishness of an absurd system.
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Now the reign seems to be changing head towards the visual power of airplanes (those machines weighing tons and working on kerosene), competing with the romantic trains.
Airplane travelling is changing and democratizing many things, thanks to the Europe under construction and initiatives from new capitalists. We have, at last, affordable flight tickets which will contribute so much to mobility in Europe, at a higher price for environmental pollution. The so-called low cost flight companies have taken on the ideas of the old saviours of capitalism like Henry Ford, the one of the cars, to relive ideas by which if workers did not consume the products or services that they themselves manufactured, without a powerful middle class, no aliens were going to come with their pockets full of dollars to consume what capital inheritance helped to produce in factories and risk at the stock exchange. Following Ford’s trail and the reality of “capitalism for all” or “capitalism for none” in its aeronautic version, some creative entrepreneurs have decided to sell airplane tickets at a cent, and earn money thanks to more customers with which to charter a plane full of passengers to whom they can sell all the extras, even lottery, instead of grouping in tens the few who can afford business class at a high price.
A curious majority minority of young people belonging to a rich Europe, sick and tired of going on tourism to the Spanish, Greek or Croatian resort with their mom and dad. Or, from the less rich Europe, the fearless young people, who want to come out to the promises that overfly the old Union... Both embark with determination by the initiative that this continent needs and, flying from one corner to another in only two or three hours’ time, reach dreamed destinations or travel to explore. Some of us take less time to get to the other end of Europe than to the other end of our own country, proving that more and more people start to understand that many things, even time and space, are relative and multidimensional. Now, as it used to happen with the Interrail, just the lack of time and money determine the itinerary and the end of the adventure.
Clouds are now full of company with the airbuses offered by new and aseptic aircrafts. The ones on which we are all very noisy and well squeezed in order to compensate for the discount on the ticket price. The plane is not as poetic as the train, but it is more exciting, though, since it allows the ordinary citizen to use such a modern means of transport. In the past, this fine engineering was only available to the privileged, on very special occasions or on ones of great necessity due to its high price. We now move to distant parts of Europe without frontiers in an affordable way, without having to be an executive in order to be allowed in on business, grants or subsidies, or having to spend all your winter savings to get to know other places that are far away.
Flying over clouds, without “rattling” caused by turbulences, can produce the same hypnotic effect as that of the shaking of rail wagons. The great difference is that you cannot view the change of landscapes that leads you into curiosity about different human beings yet to discover, different because of the different landscapes that surround them. All who share an airplane usually also share the desire of reaching destination and getting off that cavern that holds them too close together. What great courage have those who seek to find others and, at the same time, what great danger, defiance, and need, perhaps! We are animals both with instincts and the misfortune of having reason for justifying them.
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Europe can be a madhouse or an international airport, in constant expansion and movement <<How cold it is at this distant airport! When I got on the plane the warmth of what is known did not make me think about what to expect. How could anyone ever live with this cold?>>. Typical questions of an adventurer, traveller or explorer, like someone who wants to learn a new language, a brand new life…
In any case, for many embarked on a programme like EVS, the true experience (after all the decisions, papers, the waiting hours and uncertainties), the adventure for those of us who travel far and wide, even to the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, it usually begins at one of the many airport terminals that already exist in the world; some of which are still under construction or have not been constructed yet.