I always get lots of ideas when I am out travelling, and especially when I travel by myself. I guess it is because I get so many new impressions while at the same time having plenty of time to reflect. I always thought that the main purpose of travelling for me is to never go blind. I wake up, get new impressions, learn new things, and start seeing also my every-day environment with new eyes. And while I am out travelling, suddenly ideas start popping up in my head, and I find simple solutions to problems that I have reflected on for a long time.
During this journey, in Bosnia-Herzegovina, I found a perfect topic for my PhD thesis. I have thought about this for over a year without coming up with anything that has really awoken my curiosity. (As many of you already know, I have also debated whether or not I actually was prepared to go for a PhD, but I finally decided a few weeks ago to go ahead with it. I think I would regret it if I didn’t, and if it doesn’t work out, then at least I tried.) And then, somewhere between discussions with different farmers associations, it suddenly occurred to me exactly what I want to do my research on. I can’t tell you what it is yet, more than that it will seek an alternative to the unsustainable supply-chains while meeting the need for pro-poor growth. And I think I even found a potential sample group. I am very excited!!
Looking at a monoculture field in Bosnia and Herzegovina
After Skopje, our next stop was Podgorica, and I and one of my colleagues on the team decided to drive there. Partly because I like going by car or train better than flying and I think that we all have a responsibility to help cutting greenhouse emissions by staying on the ground if possible (and yes, I am aware of that I belong to the worst emitters on this planet with all my travelling), but also because I wanted to see more of the countries and the landscape. So we drove from through Kosovo to Podgorica. Kosovo was quite different from what I had expected. I did not get to see Pristina, but the country side was beautiful and full of cultivated land. There were also a lot of traces from the war, with demolished houses and burned churches; I guess at the end, most of the Serbs were forced to leave and never came back. As for the majority of the villages that we passed, most of the house had new roofs since apparently, the Serbs burned the Albanian villages before the war turned. What does not show are all the landmines that are still buried all over both Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo.
When travelling through the region, and with the pictures that I have seen from Croatia, I can better understand the desperation that some people must have felt when seeing the grand “country”, that former Yugoslavia was, falling apart. Because it is really an amazing region, with its history, diversity, and spectacular nature! Driving through Montenegro was also fantastic, with its mountains and canyons. I can really recommend visiting this newest of European countries, along with the rest of the region.
I am now back in Stockholm after three weeks in Western Balkan. If you think I am lagging behind a bit on my blog, it is because the internet connection did not work at my hotel in Sarajevo, and after that, my work load piled up and I did not really have time to write. I also got increasingly tired. I know that I have colleagues that are out travelling for five, six weeks in a row, but I have to say that I think three weeks is quite enough for me. Perhaps I will get used to it, but I still find these trips exhausting. But interesting of course, so I would not want to change any of it! And with a way too long connection stop at Belgrade’s airport yesterday, I had time to write about my trip. So above are a few snapshots from the past three weeks.
Hey all my fellow EU citizens – you are not forgetting to vote for the Parliament, right? I voted at the Swedish embassy in the House of Sweden in Washington before I left for South East Europe. (I voted for the Greens in this election too, though I did consider voting the Pirate Party, and not for free downloads but for the question of who should control the internet.) If you think that the EU Parliament has too little influence to be bothered to vote, change will not come by itself – you have to demand it and voting is a good start. Develop lesson no 1: Institutions can only be strengthened in a sustainable manner through popular support. And if this is not enough for you to go to the polls, think of all the countries that I work in, where the one great objective is to join the EU. In three meetings out of four that I have had this week, people have expressed their hope of a future EU membership coming sooner rather than later. You owe it to them!
I hope that everyone both in and outside of Moldova understands that just because I do not write abut everything that has taken place there since the election a few weeks ago, it does not mean that I am not interested in what is happening in my almost home country. And for all of you not in the country: just because it seems to be yesterday’s news in the international media, it does not mean that the situation there is solved. But given my job, I am not the person to write about this, so instead, I encourage all of you outside Moldova to look a bit further for news and to not loose your interest. Democracy and prosperity in any given part of the world does not just happen by itself, it requires constant attention and support.
Sunflower field somewhere in Moldova
If anyone has missed it, violent protests have taken place in Moldova for the past two days. Parliamentary elections were held on Sunday and the Communist Party, which has been the governing party for the past eight years, got about 50 percent of the votes according to official results. Tuesday, the protesters (mainly students from what I understand) stormed the Parliament and the Presidential Palace. It is quite a shock for me – I never saw anything even remotely similar during my two years in Chisinau. More reading on this can be found in the New York Times, Washington Post, BBC and in Swedish DN and SvD. (I do not read Russian well enough to refer to any Russian newspapers, but for those of you who do, there might be another angle of the story there.) And Lars in Chisinau promised to post something on his blog tomorrow.
Another plane crash! And I am already afraid of flying. I know, it is a paradox: I love traveling but I am afraid of flying! I never used to be, the fear came when I started flying the small planes to and from Moldova. I had a terrible flight from Prague to Chisinau once, on a 30-passanger plane that had an interior that seem to be from the 1960s, and where my seatbelt didn’t work on my assigned seat. (I don’t want to make it seem like the flights to Moldova are old and unsafe, because it is not true. In general, these are small but modern planes. This one was an exception, and probably not as old as it seemed since it was allowed to land at an EU airport. I am quite sure that the Chisinau airport adhere to EU airport regulations.)
Actually, the fear comes and goes. This fall, it got better. But after the crash of the Continental flight earlier this month, I was very nervous on the flights last weeks. And now, another crash! And with an airline that I fly with frequently since it has good connections to Central Asia. A crash that might have been due to lack of proper maintainance. But I guess there is nothing I can do about it, it is not like I can avoid flying. So I guess I just have to get over it. Which is probably the best way to deal with your fear anyway.
