Impressions

Liveliness sourrounded the air of the debates

Report by Edon Vrenezi, Kosova-Albanian student at the Amercican University in Blagoevgrad, Bulgaria

When I first read about the conference I was more than happy that I will have the chance to meet many different people from different places talking about something that shaped and continues to shape my life path. I was used to tell a joke (rather a black humor) to my friends that as I was born (1980) the conflict in Kosova began to escalate and the quality of life went down and down every year. In a way I consider(ed) myself to be a "bad luck" for my country.

So, after all those "troubled" years coming to a student conference and discussing that problem calmly, "quietly" and "neutrally" was a very hard task, rather an impossible one. We heard a lot of "biased opinions", biased history, biased political theory,biased sociology... I don't know if this has to go into the group of good or bad impressions, but I know that this was one of the main features of the conference.

The liveliness that sourrounded the air of the debates showed many things. It proved the strong connection of both Albanian and Serbian participants to the conflict in Kosova, commitment of international students and scholars to understand the causes of those connections and generally represented once again the importance of finding the solution to that problem.

Even before arriving to Budapest I had a strong dissatisfaction with conference's logo.In the main title in the web page the word KOSOVO stands as province's name. The word KOSOVA stands as the shade behind KOSOVO. As all we know Albanians call the province (or rather their "state"): KOSOVA.I know that the "official" name ends with O,but putting KOSOVA in shade can give many misleading and unwanted interpretations. I hope that you will take this into account and change the "word style" in the web page and elsewhere.