© Minsk Cafe Babel, text and photos Orangell

I don't know why, but I missed the information about Day of Minsk in 2009. So, when I walked in the Maxim Gorki park, I was very surprised with what I saw there. I saw there a splendid bicycle lane. This spring and summer I enjoyed bicycle lanes in Vilnius and suffered much in Minsk when I returned with my iron horse. Minsk Cafe Babel team rushed to explore the new route immediately.

Venom, Daiver, Orangell

© Mila, Minsk Cafe Babel

"Angel"

Nowadays the image of the country is mainly formed by politicians. In case of Belarus it is formed mainly in an inappropriate manner. That is why Belarusian men of culture and art, science and sports (classical representatives of a nation) bear additional responsibility for the promotion of the positive image of the country. This fact can encourage scientists and sportsmen but that is hardly a motivation for artists.

An artist is to embody his own ideas in creative works and to be determined to that no matter what he is expected to do. That is the opinion of Ruslan Vashkevich who is on of the most successful painters in Belarus. “Ideasness” in modern art becomes as important as aesthetics of the work and technically professional execution.

© Minsk Cafe Babel

On July 17th, the Café Babel project in Belarus hosted a discussion on whether Belarusians are Europeans. Aleksei Bratochkin, a historian from the Belarusian National Technical University (BNTU) and Tatyana Vodolazhskaya – a Ph.D in Sociology, representing the Agency for Humanitarian Technologies took part in the discussion.
The discussion topic turned out to be broad, multi-faceted and controversial. It was initially planned to solely refer to the cultural aspects of Belarus-Europe interrelations; however “culture” is tightly related to the many political aspects, which ultimately reveal a number of issues within the subject discussed. The discussion gave birth to informed and competent accentuation of the definite hardships emerging when discussing the subject of Belarus’ belonging to the European space. 

© Grundig, Minsk Cafe Babel

It’s been eight years since Sweden’s last EU Presidency in 2001. Many things have happened over this time: EU eastwards enlargement, the Constitutional Treaty (Lisbon treaty) was rejected twice, EU plunged into a serious institutional crisis coping along with the ongoing financial crisis. These issues, among others, are the ones that are tackled by the Swedish Presidency from July 1 to December 31, 2009.

Ambitions of the Swedish EU Presidency largely reflect the ambitions of Sweden itself – to consolidate and enhance the role of Sweden as a European and global leader. No doubt, internal EU problems are far more important than external policy investment with, often, unpredictable result. It is therefore that the Swedish presidency places its attention on fighting unemployment, creating favourable conditions for small and medium enterprises, resolving the institutional stalemate, developing intellectual and effective approaches to climate and coping with other challenges of the nowadays Europe. It is because of these issues that the presidency’s slogan became “taking on the challenges”.

On the foreign policy field, however, the Swedish EU Presidency has clear ambitions. The way to fulfill these ambitions is starting discussion on the Baltic Sea Strategy, Eastern Partnership implementation process, future cooperation on the issues of EU justice and home affairs (such as immigration, border security, asylum, etc.) as well as further enlargement negotiations with candidate countries.

© Grundig, Minsk Cafe Babel

Vitebsk

Belarusian town of Vitebsk is just 60 kilometers west of the Russian border and around 280 kilometers east of the nearest border with the European Union (EU) member state – Latvia. This, formerly, Russian municipal town has close historical ties with both, Russia, which it was a part of until 1924 (hence, Marc Chagall, who left the town in 1922 is normally attributed to as being either the Russian or the French painter) and the nowadays EU, whose western provinces used to belong to Poland and Latvia at the dawn of the last century. The territory of Vitebsk is larger than the size of Albania, Salvador, Moldova and Armenia. Just like for other large Belarusian cities such as Homel, Brest or Minsk, the economy of Vitebsk and the Vitebsk region is seriously dependent on the trade with the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and the EU, while the largest regional trade partners have traditionally been Russia, Germany, Poland, Latvia, Lithuania and Moldova. According to the official statistics, 75% of all production is exported to Russia, while only 21.4% is exported to the ‘far abroad’(1). Besides that, Vitebsk hosts important transport arteries linking Russia with Central ( Moscow- Minsk – Warsaw- Berlin) and Western Europe (Helsinki-Vitebsk-Kiev-Plovdiv). Historically determined linguo-cultural and trade connections with Russia as well as the present eurointegrationist realities of Belarus make us look at the mediator role and bargaining options for Belarus in the light of new strategic partnerships with the EU and Russia. In these integrationist realities it is Vitebsk that becomes the litmus paper for the Belarus- European and Belarus-Russian relations.

On the 4th of June Vladimir Fours dropped dead from heart attack. He was 45 years old.

© Mila, Minsk Cafe Babel

“This is our victory!” these are the words which were chosen by the Belarusian commentators of the Eurovision 2009 contest that took place in Moscow to accompany the scenes of Alexander Rybak’s victory, a Norwegian of Belarusian origin. This opinion is shared by many people from Belarusians where this contest is very popular. Now when ballyhoo about “our victory” slightly decreased we can try to give the answer to the question “Is it really ours?” Can Belarusians and Belarus be proud of long-awaiting first award at the Eurovision? It’s worth mentioning that even Russian commentator of the contest used the word “our” in relation to the win of the Norwegian of Belarusian origin. So whom does this victory belong to? Is it Belarusian, Russian, Norwegian or it nevertheless belongs to nomadic tribes of Mongolia?

© Novaja Europa magazine

In the course of the meeting, Minister stated that Lithuania is in favour of Belarus having its place in Europe and stressed the importance of dialogue between Belarus and the European Union. "Belarus needs changes and the EHU community needs to inact these changes", - said Kubilius.

Prime minister replied to a number of questions from students, attended a student contemporary art exhibition. Regarding the issue of whether Belarus is ready to host EHU in Minsk, minister said " in the title of your university there is a name "European", so far only Lithuania is a part of Europe. We'll not give it (EHU) away!"