| contents |
| inside |
international |
| europa |
| spezial |
| cultur |
| horror vacui |
 |
INTERPRETING TULIP FACES
Preparing for eavesdropping in Brussels’ metro. By Milda Celiešiūtė (VILNIUS) & Malou Willemars, (RHENEN)
MILDA: We will never decide what it means to be European and what “European enough” means. Every city within Europe is European enough.
MALOU: Brussels should be, anyway... So maybe people here don’t speak the same language, or maybe they don’t know exactly what they have in common, but that shouldn’t matter all that much if they are able to communicate in normal, daily life — using public transport, for example.
MILDA: Are people looking at each other? How do they try to get their own space? Are they in a hurry or are they patient? By the way, in Lithuanian we have an expression “Calm like a Belgian”. Do you think it is true?
MALOU: I don’t know the expression, but it’s true in a way. When I was in the tram, I only saw people wearing their public transport faces, you know, looking at nothing in particular and being quiet.
MILDA: I read in a book called “How to be polite” that one should imagine a field of tulips while traveling in order not to stair at the neighbor. I am trying to do it as well... Unless there are 5 musicians jumping into the wagon with trumpets and accordions to wake me up.
MALOU: Sometimes it’s impossible to keep your “tulip face” on. Those boys waiting for the underground were also sitting quietly in a way. But when you tried to take a picture they suddenly started yelling at us.
MILDA: Perhaps people have photophobia here in Brussels, the great capital of the EU?
MALOU: Probably. But I never got this reaction when I accidentally took a picture of a Dutchman...
MILDA: I think that in this case Lithuanian people might not be so friendly either. Polite and impolite, normal and strange can be different in unexpected and daily situations. It would be interesting to observe it for an hour and record it.
MALOU: And maybe see how people with different backgrounds manage to communicate. Maybe it works better on the streets than in the entire European Parliament...
MILDA: ...where they need a help by hundreds of interpreters, assistants and so on. So, perhaps underground, tram or bus station experiments won’t lead us to global conclusions, but it might be fun to start here, like in any other journey.