W E E K Lthe

c e n t r a l e u r o p e a n u n i v e r s i t y

YAn independent newspaper by CEU students and alumni May 20, 2015, Year 5, Issue 60

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To Be or Not to be a Half-marathon Runner?

A Nation in Shock: Help Re-covery, Relief and Rebuild-ing Efforts in Nepal

Cartoon by Eriksson

A Year of Studies and Travel after CEU

Conference Report from Pittsburgh

A Love Letter to MOL Bubi Bike no. 078982

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“I’m kin

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“The B

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“I really

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“I wish I c

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Quotes from

Spring Ball night

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THE CEU WEEKLY

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Life at CEU

To be or noT To be a half-maraThon runner?

Now that the annual Budapest Spring Half-marathon is over I have a great experience to share with the rest

of CEU Community. The question is: would you recom-mend a half marathon to your friends?First, it is important to mention that there were a total

of twenty-two CEU Running Club members who signed up for various races being held as a part of the Budapest Spring Half-marathon event: 19 for the half-marathon race (21km), one for the 10km race and two for the 7km race. Now, what about the BIG day—how is it? For most runners, April 19 started with a cruel 6AM wake

up alarm. You feel tired, your legs are heavy, but there is no time to think about that. You have a quick light break-fast and head off to Margit Island where the starting place of the half-marathon is found. Next comes a swift morn-ing meeting with all the club members you can spot in the pre-start chaos of nearly 5000 people who are all changing, stretching, jogging and eating in a mass. And then all of a sudden you find yourself at the start. Crowds of exciting runners around you completely energize the whole area as the commentator does the countdown: harom, kettő, egy and off you go! The first three kilometres are great, you feel the excitement

as you pass the buildings and crowds cheering along the way. You look around and then suddenly there is a guy in a Spiderman costume running next to you! As you warm up, running becomes the most natural thing in the world. Ev-erybody around you is enjoying these unique moments of running singularity and all of a sudden it feels like you are

in a different, frankly speaking better, universe that is filled with a 100% pure positive energy. Any notion of time van-ishes and you are free to enjoy the purity of the moment....Then you spot the 10km mark. On the one hand you

are happy because it means that you are almost halfway through—you are doing well! On the other hand you realise that this wonderful experience is also halfway through. You start thinking about the best way to enjoy this moment. Should I run faster, slower, with someone else or alone? On the 12km mark your thoughts are interrupted as you

realise that you’re hungry and thirsty. You grab a piece of banana, some glucose candy and an isotonic drink from one of the refreshment stations. But no stopping though! You eat and drink while you run. You don’t want to spoil these precious moments. After the 15km mark you start feeling the distance in your legs. You are becoming tired and yet you know that now is the time to accelerate! Do it! Finish strong! Your heart rate skyrockets....165, 170, 177....189!!! FINISH! Exhausted but overjoyed! The eupho-ria is everywhere. You’ve made it! Your first half-marathon that you’ve been training for is completed!So what to do now? Why don’t we have a look at the next

MARATHON event.... :)My recommendation to you: join the CEU Running Club

to experience your own half-marathon! It’s definitely worth it....

~ Matej Turjanik, Legal Studies, Slovakia

ISSUE 60

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Op-Ed

Aggtelek nAtionAl pArk turnS 30, CelebrAteS 20 YeArS AS A World heritAge Site

Aggtelek National Park (ANP) was established in 1985 to protect

the uniquely rich natural and cultural heritage of the region, in particular the Gömör-Torna karst aquifer and geologic formations. This year ANP celebrates its 30 birthday. The first of Hungary's national parks, it later added equestrian tourism and envi-ronmental education programmes to its already popular cave and surface tours. In 2007, the ANP Directorate became responsible for the Zemplén Nature Reserve and the Tokaj-Bo-drogzug Nature Reserve as well. The current area of the national park cov-ers about 20,700 hectares. The karst cavern systems of Aggtelek in Hungary, which also stretches into Slovakia, were awarded UNESCO World Heritage status in 1995. Until 1995, only two of the many amazing caves around the world were listed as World Heritage sites - the Mammoth

Cave (Kentucky, USA), the world's largest network of natural caves at 570 km; and the Skocjani Cave (Slovenia), home of the world's longest under-ground riverbed. The geographically connected Aggtelek and Slovak karst consists of 1200 known caves, 280 of which are open to the public in Hun-gary. Daily and special adventure tours (advanced booking only) are led through 5 ANP caves: Baradla, the Rákóczi, Imre Vass, Meteor and Kos-suth. Other events this year include the VII. Annual Jósvafő International Hucul Horse Races and IV. Annual In-ternational Farrier Competition, Fire-fly Tour, Orchid Tour, Rutting Deer Tour, Nature Photography Tour, Bara-dla Chamber Choir Festival, Dark Park Star-Gazing Tour, Saint George Day Horse Roundup, Day of Birds and Trees: Bird Songs along Forest Paths, Butterfly Watching Tour, Hot Summer

Night Sunset Tours... A variety of promotions are being held this year to commemorate these milestones, including: - 20% off adult ticket prices on all daily cave tours on the 20th of every month- XVII. Szilvásvárad-Aggtelek Bike Tour on May 23rd between the Bükk and Aggtelek National Parks Please see our webpage for details on these and other events: http://www.anp.hu/en/mainpage/site or request our free electronic monthly newslet-ter. You can also contact us with ques-tions: Tel: 06/48-503-000 or email: naturinform.anp@gmail.com

As I gaze out my window I can see you sitting there, waiting for me.

Although all your friends sit there as well, I feel as though you and I are go-ing to have a special connection today. Polyamory is the modern style when it comes to bicycles. Cheaper than the hostile bus with its suspicious agents sowing contempt on every ride, never with you my dear Bubi Bikes. So care-free I can be, and so natural becomes the routine: I bring out my card, I let your sensor register it, and off we go on an (under half hour) adventure. I would never call you cheap my dear, but I would certainly say the 12,000 ft for year of endless rides didn’t hurt my wallet. Even on an evening out when I lose myself to the euphoria of a Bu-dapest night and require an alterna-tive method to arrive to the warmth of home, I know you wont be angry with me, you will be waiting, in most loca-tions in this fabled city where I would need you.

Unfortunately, our union is not per-fect. You will not take me everywhere dear Mol Bubi Bike, you jealously deprive me of my friends who live in the residence near Örs vezér tere. In wintertime, you have a tendency to let your beauty fade. Oh Bubi bikes, it seems you don't maintain yourself so well throughout the harsh months, how your gears squeak and your brakes screech.

Do not fear my precious Bubi bikes, your flaws will not stop our glorious union, nor will it stop the zeal with which I brandish my green MOL card; surely a great provocateur of jealousy to all those around me. So I end my love letter to you bike 078780: it is you who will take me to CEU today. In my short life I will have many bikes, and you will have many riders, but I will always cherish this moment. Existence is but a fleeting sparkle in the depths of eternity. As Nabokov once put it, it is from the collision of desire and decision that the universe is born. Today I decide to ride you, my dear Mol Bubi bike 078780.

~ Jacob VerhagenNationalism Studies

Canada

A letter to Mol bubi bike 078982

~ Dan Swartz ANP Marketing Assistant

www.lendulet.hu

THE CEU WEEKLY

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Op-Ed

Shortly after graduation I embarked on a journey to fol-low my passion for Jewish Studies and to spend some

time abroad—which led me to participate in the One Year Jewish Studies Program of Paideia (“The European Insti-tute for Jewish Studies in Sweden”) in Stockholm. Many people I knew were surprised as to why would anyone study Jewish Studies in Sweden, and were especially con-cerned about how would I survive a winter there, when I find the winter too cold and too long even in Hungary. In fact I had good reasons to apply to Paideia: I wanted to fill my knowledge gaps in Jewish Studies, I was interested in the semi-academic teaching methodology of Paideia and I was interested in Sweden. A member of my family, Éva, was actually brought to Sweden upon her liberation from the concentration camp in Bergen-Belsen to recover, along with a few thousand other Holocaust survivors. She remained in Sweden until she passed away in 2012. So, through Éva, I have a family connection to the country, and have held a positive image of Sweden since childhood. The eight months that I spent in Stockholm, studying at Paideia, naturally left my image of Sweden a bit more real-istic and far less romanticized. I also learned for the ump-teenth time that there is really no such a thing as “filling the knowledge gaps”—through studies you just realize how many more questions are out there to ask in Jewish topics (or in any other field). Nevertheless, my level of Hebrew definitely improved and I now know how to start to read a Talmud tractate and which questions to ask, which is won-derful.

There is a common feature of Paideia and CEU that I really admired: their international environment. I really learned a lot about life by studying among fellows from different countries in the last few years. At Paideia I had twenty-five classmates from nineteen countries. At the same time, CEU and Paideia also share a potential drawback: both are their own bubbles, so you really have to put your mind on socializing with locals, otherwise you just forget that there is a whole other world beyond the university. I met won-derful Swedes through my relatives, through the synagogue and through my local friend, Miranda Myrberg, whom I had befriended earlier at CEU. Awhile a part of the program, I also gained a unique per-spective on the series of tragedies that struck Europe this winter. Through the Paideia program we went for a study trip to Israel and we were there when the terror attacks against Charlie Hebdo’s editorial office and against the kosher supermarket happened in Paris. My Jewish friend and colleague from France under great emotional pressure commented memorably: “For the first time I feel safer to be in Israel than in France.” I was again in Sweden when the murderous attack on the Great Synagogue of Copenha-gen took place in February. There are a lot of ties between Stockholm’s and Copenhagen’s Jewish communities, so I met people who knew the victim, Dan Uzan. Surrounded by and meeting the people that I had through the program therefore made these tragedies all the more shocking for me.

A YeAr of StudieS And trAvel After Ceu

Former CEU Weekly Editor-in-Chief and Nationalism Studies Department Alumnus Ágnes Kelemen Shares Her Experience with Paideia Program in Stockholm

ISSUE 60

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Op-Ed/ Cartoon

~ Ágnes KelemenNationalism Studies Alumnus

Hungary

After the eight months in Stockholm ten of us fellows came for another four months (some for more) to Heidelberg to study for a semester at the “Hochschule für Jüdische Studien”. Due to the presence of the University of Heidel-berg and of numerous other higher educational institu-tions (like ours) the whole life of the city seems to revolve around students. For a Hungarian it is all the more homey since the climate is just like in Hungary and the city is di-vided to two parts by a river, just like Budapest. A Hungar-ian blogger even calls the flat part “Pest” and the hilly part

“Buda”. And indeed, sitting on the riverbank with a beer while looking on the beautiful landscape of the other side brings back memories of drinking wine on the bank of the Danube while admiring the Buda Castle.

THE CEU WEEKLY

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Nepal

A nAtion in ShoCk: help reCoverY, relief And rebuilding effortS in nepAl

The recent earthquakes in Nepal have taken the lives of almost

8,500 people. So far, more than 75,000 people are injured and 500,000 people displaced. The earthquake on the 25th of April was the worst in 81 years. Following the earthquake, there have been more than 150 aftershocks. Less than three weeks later, another big-magnitude earthquake struck already devastated Nepal, costing more lives and creating more damage as houses and infrastructure weakened by the first earthquake began to collapse, especially in districts outside of the capital. Road blockages induced by landslides have also disrupted ongo-ing relief and rescue efforts. We, a group of concerned CEU stu-dents from all over the world includ-ing Nepal, want to reach out to the CEU community to support the peo-ple of Nepal who need us now more than ever. It is our hope that CEU’s diverse community of world citizens will come together to stand with Ne-pal in the aftermath of this disaster. If you would like to know more about the ongoing donation drive, please like and share our Facebook page ‘Bu-dapest for Nepal’. How You Can Help We hope the CEU community can come together in this crucial moment and show our joint support for Nepal. We would appreciate any donation.

No amount is too little. Here is how you can help. Donate online You can donate online to our fund-raising campaign at Indiegogo using your debit/credit card (no minimum amount requirement): https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/budapest-for-nepal As of May 17th, we have raised 50% of our goal of $2000 in the platform. Our supportive team at the School of Public Policy (comprising of faculty and staff) have also agreed to match donations up to $350. With your help, we will get these donations to the most vulnerable areas where help has rarely reached or is yet to reach.Donate in person You can also donate in person, you will find us at the info-table in the Ok-togon area between 12 and 3 pm every weekday. You can taste our delicious baked goods at the table while helping Nepal with your donations. Alternately, you can drop your dona-tion in the box placed in Nador 9 caf-eteria or at the CEU Residence Centre reception (look for Budapest for Ne-pal boxes). Donate your services/skills/time • Participate in our donation drive on campus• Help us design infographics/posters

• Share promotional posts via social media with your department/network• Contribute baked goods to the dona-tion drive. If you would like to help by offering your services, please write to us at bu-dapest4nepal@gmail.com.Where Will the Donations Go? After careful consideration, we have decided to raise money for the Asso-ciation of Youth Organizations Nepal (AYON), a national network of non-profit youth organizations. We know their work and leadership personally and trust them to know where the do-nations are needed most. AYON will use the money to provide immediate relief as well as to work on transitional and sustainable long-term rebuilding efforts in Nepal, a task it started less than 24 hours after the first earth-quake. Therefore, all the funds raised will be donated to AYON directly. More information on AYONhttp://act4quake.orghttps://twitter.com/ayonnepalhttps://www.facebook.com/AyonNe-palhttp://ayon.org

~ Shaileshwori Sharma School of Public Policy

Nepal

ISSUE 60

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Conference Report

PoliTics of conflicT and cooPeraTion in The eu and beyond

Starting at the beginning of the 21st century, we have been witnessing

a (re)emergence of conflicts and dis-content in different forms, from ‘more or less cold’ wars to new challenges posed by e.g. terrorism and extremism and restrictions of political liberties as response to them. At the same time, various forms of cooperation from supranational to subnational levels are being developed all over the globe.For students of political science, in-

ternational relations and related disci-plines, it is crucial to understand, un-der what conditions and through what mechanisms cooperation between the wide varieties of actors in world poli-tics can be enhanced, in order to

prevent new conflicts and weaken the existing ones. The two student con-ferences referred to here made steps towards the understanding of these dynamics.The Tenth Annual Graduate Student

Conference on the European Union held in Pittsburgh, United States at the end of March 2015, looked at the unique cooperative potential of the EU as the most visible outcome of the European integration process. This annual event, organized by the EU Center of Excellence/European Stud-ies Center at the University of Pitts-burgh, and supported by EUSA, the best known professional organization in European studies, provides oppor-tunities for graduate and postgradu-ate students to present their research to an interested and engaged audience comprised by fellow students and prominent experts in the discipline. The 2015 event, titled ‘Still United?

The EU through Enlargement, Crisis and Transformation’ comprised four student panels of 13 presenters in to-tal from the US, Germany, the UK, Canada, Italy, Israel and Hungary (CEU), an expert workshop on how a researcher can find the necessary in-formation within the enormous num-ber of databases and sources on the EU today, and a keynote speech by Uri Dadush from the Carnegie Endow-ment for International Peace on ‘The European Economy in the Changing World Order.’ The panels, with topics ranging from

democracy and legitimacy of the EU in cris(e)s, through the EU’s capacity as an internal and external actor, to

the EU’s role in areas of culture, re-search and education, demonstrated that the EU’s activities are covering far more areas of our social life than ever before. In order to ‘make sense’ out of the EU and find innovative solutions to crises that the EU is facing, research in European studies needs to ‘keep up’ with this expansion and reach out to these new areas. Fortunately, the conference in Pitts-

burgh gave justice to this requirement, given that as one of the discussants re-marked, the topics of at least some of the panels would be unimaginable to be present at a European studies con-ference ten years ago. The IAPSS World Congress 2015 on

‘Politics of Conflict and Cooperation’ took place at Birkbeck College of the University of London between April 13th-17th, and as its title suggests, covered a much wider range of politi-cal phenomena, even though the EU

remained an important actor here as well. At this four-day event, packed with a range of session formats, from keynote lectures, through expert ses-sions, to student panels, devoted to presentation of student research with student chairs and discussants as well, virtually all substantial sub-fields in studies of conflict and cooperation were addressed. The topics discussed were, among

others, the development of IR theory in context of contemporary violent conflicts, EU diplomacy, the role and future of political science as a disci-pline and the concepts of empire and imperialism today. Two CEU faculty members shared their thoughts with the participants − Robert Templer from CEU’s School of Public Policy delivered a lecture on ‘New Approach-es to Transitions and Post-Conflict Recovery’, and Ellen Hume from the Center for Media, Data and Society participated at expert panel on Media and Democracy, focusing in particular on the importance of media literacy. The closing event was an exciting Ox-ford Style Debate on whether military intervention or diplomatic negotia-tion is needed to ‘rescue the European peace in Ukraine.’ For more information on the EU Con-

ference (next one to be held in 2016), check out http://bit.ly/1PMNHy8 and https://www.ucis.pitt.edu/euce/.

~ Max Steuer, IRES, Slovakia

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The CEU Weekly is a student-alumni initiative that seeks to provide CEU with a regularly issued newspa-per. The CEU Weekly is a vehicle of expression for the diversity of the perspectives and viewpoints that in-tegrate CEU’s open society: free and respectful public debate is our aim. We offer a place in which current events and student reflections can be voiced. Plurality, respect, and freedom of speech are our guiding principles.

About the CEU Weekly

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Distribution Points: Reception Nádor 9, Nádor 11, Nádor 15; Library, Cloakroom & CEU Dorm ceuweekly.blogspot.com

Editor in Chief: Eszter Kajtár Managing Editor: Aaron KorenewskyContributors: Max Steuer, Shaileshwori Sharma, Alexandra Medzibrodszky, Jacob Verhagen, S.A. Siwiec, Daniel Hartas, Christina E. Herrmann, Ágnes Kelemen, Matej Turjanik, Dan Swartz, Erik Kotlárik.

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