I spent the last 10 days in Stockholm; Alby – a suburb in Botkyrka Municipality within Stockholm- and Falun, a city 3 hours away from Stockholm, best known for its copper mining. The reason was a Business in Residence programme, enabled by the European Cultural Foundation (ECF) and organized by KLUMP Subtopia, an incubator for cultural and social initiatives.
Here's what I learned.
While you are out of your comfort zone and everything you know, you need to practice understanding, you need to be able to carry your roots with you while the new you is taking over. You need to understand who you are and where you're coming from. Otherwise "you" becomes <me> and "they" become <they> and in between is just hate and anger.
I arrived in Austria in the summer of 2007. Not on January 1st like many European countries feared, even 7 years later. No, on January 1st, 2007 I was in Piata Universitatii in Bucharest (University Square) and celebrated what the Romanian newspapers at the time called "The New Year's Eve of Integration". Alongside French friends and other thousands of Romanians, I was taking part in a historic moment for Romania: its accession to the European Union 18 years after the fall of Communism.
