The Erasmus meeting in Bolzano was a great celebration of languages. Not only did the students coming from Amsterdam, Braşov, Munich and Thessaloniki experience a 3-linguistic (German, Italian, Ladin) reality with the host students of the “Walther von der Vogelweide” High School for Classical Studies, but within the whole group everybody used/spoke and communicated in the most diverse languages. Obviously, English became our lingua franca very soon, but sometimes the students switched to other languages (Latin included!). In the teachers’ eyes, the goal of the project was reached with upmost precision. The big umbrella topic “Minorities” obviously dealt with ethnic minorities in South Tyrol. The whole management of the project was at the same time easy and complicated. It was easy, because South Tyrol hosts a lot of project partners who are always willing to be involved in those projects. And it was complicated, or better challenging, because students only had a few days to get to know an intensely varied territory where the coexistence of people coming from different cultures has become reality (a unique example in whole Europe). Politically, it was challenging to explain our students what our autonomy holds for us and which advantages it can offer us. How much history were we supposed to teach the participants? Which methods/means were we supposed to put in use? Which partners were we supposed to engage/involve? What the main topics? Which sides/aspects of our territory were we supposed to show/describe? What does South Tyrol represent today?How do many elements of the Southtyrolean autonomy work/influence one another? See autonomy, the minorities’ effective situation, the historical development and the situation today, the relations between municipalities, local government, region, state…We have given it a try – at least we wanted to…starting with a welcoming round at our “Walther von der Vogelweide” High School. During that session, students could walk around in the city interviewing the people in the streets asking about the meaning of autonomy and what it represents t them. At night the students could attend a concert during which the Choirs of our school and of the Giovanni Pascoli High School together with the Music Conservatory Orchestra played Beethoven’s music (obviously featuring the “Ode to Joy”) at the Haydn Concert Hall. On Saturday the whole group attended a meeting at the Center for Autonomy Experience of the European Academy (EURAC). Junior Researcher Jakob Volgger and Senior Researcher Georg Grote introduced the participants to the history of the Southtyrolean autonomy and to the open questions of the autonomy nowadays. In the afternoon, through a walk through our city the experts showed examples of autonomy in Bolzano. The questions and reflections the students had at the end of the tour on our Court Square pointed out how much they were interested in the topic. On Sunday, the meeting with prominent politicians as Martha Stocker (SVP), Brigitte Foppa (the Green Party) and Luca Di Biasio (Sinistra – die Linke, the Left Party) in our Aula Magna was very thrilling and exciting. In small groups the participants could discuss and ask questions to the single politicians. During the afternoon, the whole groups was guided through the streets of the Europa city quarter in Bolzano. Purposely we wanted the participants to have a taste of “real life” in a less-touristic part of the city. Using a drama-based technique, our local museum group has planned special guided tours to experience the history of the Europa and Don Bosco city quarters. On Monday, then, the group went to Ortisei in the Gardena Valley to meet the minority within the minorities, the Ladin ethnicity. The students of two schools, the Cademia High School for Art and the High School for Economy in Ortisei, took their time to explain their reality and life in a Ladin environment, even guiding the whole group on a short hike on the mountains. The days we spent together were very meaningful, not only for the foreign students attending the meeting, but also (and especially) for our local students who really said they came into contact with aspects of our identity/autonomy they had not known about. All days were so much exciting. After the many hours passed together (even during our leisure time) the meeting came to an end on Tuesday with a Writing Workshop. During this activity all participants had to express/reflect on paper one of the aspects that mostly got them interested. Their reflections have become the main content of this brochure (most of all in English and German, with single texts in Italian and Ladin).
Martina Adami, Project Manager