Next week Susanne’s language workshop will take place every day on Facebook and Instagram. For this we will show great post with exciting infos on language topics.Stay tuned!Looking back at almost 30 years of the history of the workshop “Europäisches Gespräch”The aim of the European Youth Weeks is to promote the understanding and cooperation of the European youth and the cultivation of the cultural values of the people of Europe, independent from political, ethnical, religious and ideological affiliation. The association pursues this aim for instance by offering various workshops to the participants of the festival where they may mingle with members of the other dance groups.As you may recall, one of the many workshops offered by the organizers of the European Youth Week to the participants has been a “discussion workshop”.Some 30 years ago, when I took part in a European Youth Week for the first time, this workshop was called “Europäisches Gespräch” (European Talks) and was headed by our Dutch member Mr. Edmond Hosselet. During these European Talks, various social, historical, and political issues were discussed, and the participants learned many interesting things about the other participants’ countries. Later Edmond’s son Guy took over the moderation of this workshop and for some years introduced his own version of the European Talks.Another version was introduced by Nicole and Meike who arranged and conducted the workshop ”German for Beginners” for some years. In this workshop, the participants had lots of fun training basic German, for instance though small theatrical performances which were then presented to the other participants at the Eurokirmes.When I took over the workshop some years ago, I changed it into “European for Beginners”. Over the years, the participants have tried to explain to their fellow workshop participants some of the special structures of their own language, we have made a couple of Ludwigstein board games and have collected words and phrases relevant to the European Youth Week for a “European Youth Week Dictionary” containing gradually very many languages. We also compared sayings, listened to tongue twisters, learned nursery rhymes from many countries, discussed various cultural issues and of course enjoyed getting to know each other better, thus together fulfilling the aim of our festival.
Viva Europa – Viva Burg Ludwigstein!
