Work Meeting in Vukovar, Croatia (March 2020)

The first workshop planned to be hold in Vukovar, Croatia had to be cancelled – due to Corona that casts its shadow ahead - nobody can really assess the situation yet. Therefore, we, the German and the Croatian Steering Group, decide to use the scheduled date for a working session and to prepare the workshop and the materials to be used.

During the outbound flight via Belgrade and the car ride from Belgrade to Vukovar, there is not yet much tension about the pandemic. It still seems far away.

Lana Mayer, president of our partner institution Europe House Vukovar, welcomed at our hotel. Lana explains the political situation after the Croatian war, in which Vukovar was completely destroyed in 1991 saying: "Here in Vukovar there is a lot of talk about war... But I think the emphasis should be on peace."

A house wall with bullet holes in Vukovar.

We have an ambitious workweek ahead of us. The main topics were:

• to revise the draft program for the postponed workshop meeting.
  
• to develop observation sheets for the real classes we will be observing, which would reflect democratic structures regardless of language
  
• to consider the extent to which the questionnaire data already collected in digital form could be used to the different addressees of the schools within the workshop.
  

• to try to initiate a common understanding of meaningful democratic action by explaining key terms in a small glossary. In advance, however, a more detailed paper describing the respective educational system was also to be sent to the participants for reading as "homework".
• To focus on the future homepage, which should be exciting and presented in such a way that it offers users added value for their own work.

• to select 2 proposals from the draft logos so that the whole steering group can make a final decision.
  

After work we discovered both the beautiful and sad sides of this city at the mouth of the Vuka into the Danube.

The pandemic situation is getting worse every day and until the end of our stay, it is not clear to us whether our return trip will be successful without any problems.