Liberating Spaces

Right, tomorrow I am off to Poland again. It seems a country that won’t be leaving my life for a while. As I wrote in a previous post, I’ll be training Polish officials on negotiation in the European Union for a while (until January 2010).

My life has been a strange ride in the last 3 months. Full of serendipity and “coincidences” of all kinds, many related to Poland. The last one is related with my next trip. A bit than less 3 months ago, I had a great dinner in a restaurant in Warsaw called U Kucharzy. Then a friend of mine who has visited me in London this week, mentioned it by chance the same day that another friend in Warsaw sent me an email saying that he had reserved in that restaurant for Saturday! The first and the second friend don’t know each other at all. It’s either the only restaurant in Warsaw worth going or another “coincidence” of the many and many happening around me? The funny thing is that I knew I was going to end up going back to this restaurant way before my friend’s booking. I just can say one thing: curious.

Walking around the MGIMO in a sunny day, one can appreciate the virtues of Russian beauty. Just doing that today, a very warm and sunny day, a Polish friend of mine who works in the European Institute said to me something I found very interesting. He told me that a friend of his from Saint Petersburg had told him once that he preferred Polish girls because they had limits. Russian girls, he argued, like to explore, they don’t have limits, even the most perilous experiences enter into their range of future possibilities. This, he said, was the recipe for disaster, a very dangerous attitude. My Polish friend called this l’abîme (the abyss).

L’abîme is a very attractive place. (more…)

A couple of weeks ago, I was told that the College of Europe won the bid for the training of the Polish Presidency (July-December 2011). I am part of this bid for the development of EU negotiation seminars. This was very good news. Besides other activities, I’ve been lecturing on EU negotiations and organizing simulations for nearly ten years. Sometimes I wonder whether I’ve done it for too long. These news are always a very good motivation to keep doing it, for it is a challenging training that pushes me to innovate. This is what I like.

The curiosity in all this is my relation with Poland. The first time I went to Poland, it was before its accession to the EU. I think it was 2003, I am not sure. I organized a simulation for civil servants as part of their pre-accession training. It was an interesting experience that I remember very well (except when it was). Then last year, I started teaching a compact seminar in the Natolin (Warsaw) campus of the College of Europe. And from this year, I teach the Crisis Management simulation of the International Relations and Diplomacy programme of the College of Europe, which is held in the same Natolin campus, though the programme is mainly based in Brugge.

This year has been really a special one in this relation with the country. The IRD simulation was a very nice experience students, according to the evaluation forms, loved. Then the spring compact seminar was very special for many reasons. Originally, I planned to go to Krakow and Auschwitz during the free weekend I had there, but eventually I stayed in campus because I encountered what I never imagined I could encounter. I had very good conversations with the current students of Natolin. And I could share the feelings of sorrow and mourning among Poles caused by the death of their president in a plane crash in Russia on Saturday morning. It was overall, a very human and emotional experience for me. It has left many good memories, and a couple of scars.

By coincidence, I am in Poland this weekend. I went to the centre of Warsaw to see and feel the mourning Polish citizens are demonstrating for those killed in this morning’s plane accident, including the Polish President Lech Kaczynski. I have videos and pictures I will post tomorrow.

The emotions one can feel in front of the Presidential palace are overwhelming…