The inclement weather has descended across Amsterdam. During the past four days (and allegedly many more — “it’s always cold and rainy in Amsterdam” told me one fellow breakfast-eater yesterday), the sun had shined only during the lunch time on Friday, after which it freed the sky for another batch of suspiciously dark clouds which sometimes refreshed us with a few drops of rain, sometimes wet us to the marrow of our bones. Should our stay be judged solely by the objective meteorological data, we would ruminate at large about accepting any future invitations to visit the city. Thankfully we came here with no great expectations of the weather, because most of the day-time we were supposed to spend under the roofs of halls in Amsterdam expo center. From that point of view, the past four days appeared to suffer from bi-polar disorder. Mania phases of great fun and energy would transform into depressive times of feelings of boredom and emptiness, as though the event’s program was purposely copying a sinusoid. When in exulting mood after a well done work, I’d talk incessantly, laugh, and drink; in mourning times I’d engage in soliloquies whether staying at home and working wouldn’t be a better option, and even a glass of Pitbull Bite, a powerful mixture of red vodka and a Redbull-clone, wouldn’t help me.
I initially planned to sit down every evening and share with my fellow readers what had been keeping us busy that day. Unfortunately for you, my plans had always been adjusted to maximize my utility, sometimes to your expense. So what was the Stranger Festival all about?
Faithful to Forrest Gump Jr.’s famous talk with a new bus driver, the 200+ participants were working on acquainting each other through their involvements in various workshops that were connected either to video-making or debate, and some made reconsider their aging mantras in socializing. When compared with the time allocated to video-making, the debate workshop seemed evanescent; in fact, there was only one three hours long segment devoted to this activity. Firstly we were introduced to the fundamentals of debating, for instance the purpose and efficient structure of an argument, or an introduction to methods of non-verbal communication. Later the twenty or so fellow participants constructed their first persuasive speech, and, after lunch, the group broke into three and each one prepared a “public debate” on topics ranging from the EU threatening independent governance of its members to the role and perspectives of the generation of current young people. The whole debating part was supposed to end with a real public debate where the members of a forum would be addressed to deliver their thoughts about controversial and philosophical subjects. The relatively numerous audience decided to the evolutionary stable strategy of general audiences and therefore – with the exception of a handful of passionate and proud people (especially me) who couldn’t concur with the vision of a charming and eloquent middle-aged woman that was bashing me and my friends (you) for being detrimental to today’s climate, social, and technical changes – remained deadly silent throughout the session. Apparently, the workshop wasn’t designed for experienced veterans who know every issue of The Economist by heart, but even though the majority of participants were beginners, I can’t say I was ever on the verge of drowsing. The only trouble arose when cooperation was expected from everyone in the after-lunch exercise- some people just didn’t posses a remarkably deep knowledge of the current issues in the EU (yet compensated it with a striking self-confidence in conjuring up of solutions to problems that were, euphemistically speaking, rather distant to them), and although I had meticulously explained the particulars of each area we were to touch in our speeches, the final product definitely didn’t reflect it. Listening to the speeches in our debate sank my mood next to the wrack of Titanic. After that we were loaded into busses and, uneconomically or even lavishly, sent to Rotterdam where we all ate at a sushi restaurant and later witnessed a supposedly spectacular performance of a presumably famous Dutch rap trio no one, including the Dutch, had ever heard of, and that had forgotten a significant part of its magnificence at home. While the sushi was delicious (and ice-cold sake no less), the undercover economist (me) was unhappy about the wasteful management of public funds, and later about the growing detachment he was unconsciously building towards the majority of other participants. In conclusion, Friday wasn’t breathtaking.
Saturday, on contrary, was not bound by great expectations as her younger sibling. My interest in video making could have been compared to my affections for cross-country running and Tajikistani geography; in short, because I had previous experience in working with this kind of digital media, my feelings the workshops were indifferent. The indifference is gone now. When working on an animated movie (about a vicious Dutch cyclist, Butterfly Doe, who finds herself being kidnapped and taken to Lithuania (I was collaborating on this video with a young Lithuanian) where an obscure sect believes she’s their messiah, this young woman decides listen to the sect’s prophet and start a career as a pop singer. Butterfly’s rise to fame is quick and she quickly realizes that she attained a leverage with which she can indeed become sort of a messiah. Her songs will from now on carry powerful message addressed to totalitarian leaders, urging them to abolish communism. Later she becomes the first victim of kidnapping that has both a star on the Hollywood pavement and a Nobel Peace Prize.) I was overwhelmed by the capabilities of something as simple as a digital camera and video-processing software.
The workshop after lunch was great too. Although it focused primarily on video as a carrier of the message, its main topic concerned citizen journalism. We were shown several videos that urged its audience to take steps in fighting the portrayed phenomena, ranging from industrial farming (The Meatrix) to the human rights abuses in China to the opposition towards the privatization of malfunctioning water management in the slums of Bombay. Being an aging debater and a firm supporter of private ownership, I started a discussion immediately after being shown the last clip, posing questions whether the modern technologies are helpful or detrimental for fighting for causes. Blindly bashing private ownership, being oblivious to historical success of this idea, only because it initially lacks the idea of social welfare, is short-sighted and should rather be forgotten. I went to question the effectiveness of current causes, because their overabundance, originating from the simplicity of their creation, creates bubbles that transitorily enjoy a wide-spread popularity among public, only to be deposed from the throne by another fast-expiring cause. Although the discussion was not thought to play a major role in the workshop (as a matter of fact, such discussion was not even supposed to happen, had it not been for an overly-inquisitive Andy), for me and several other participants who had their voices heard it was the most valuable part of the workshop.
And that was the last substantive part of the festival. What followed was a tasty dinner and an award show where my friends took off their coats of ordinariness and turned out to be movie-making superstars – one pocketed a price for the best video the festival, the other even a for the best video of all year! It might seem redundant to add, but both really were fabulous and had my deep respect.
Just one last flashback to that dinner – I joined fellow debaters around the table where also four older people were seated. Nothing extraordinary happened until they started conversing with us and reviling their names and jobs. We learned that we were dining with Gottfried Wagner, the chairman of the European Cultural Foundation and, as I later learned on Wikipedia, a renowned writer and grand-son Richard Wagner, who was responsible for organizing of the festival, and also by three other members of the executive board of the foundation. At the end of the evening I was given a business card which I was advised to use whenever money was an issue in an interesting international project for youth. Heart of Europe, anyone?
So that’s how it ended. Then on Sunday I sat down (and later walked around Amsterdam) with Elwyn, my Dutch friend and British minister of foreign affairs with whom I was shaping the hypothetical future of Europe in the council of ministers at Model EU in Strasbourg last year. Then me and my brother took a train to Schiphol, had a strong coffee, boarded a delayed plane to Prague, had a strong coffee, slept in the armchairs in front of the café at Prague airport, and at the end of this remarkably time-inefficient journey took a train back home, desperately trying not to spill the hot espressos on ourselves. To give the final evaluation from behind my desk at home: the atmosphere of Amsterdam and the some of the people I met certainly offset the negative features the event suffered from. After all, the Law of international get-togethers (derived from the Law of large numbers) tells us on average, the unpleasant moments always comprise less of the experience than the pleasant ones, therefore making everyone claim the trip was awesome…
