On the other side of the forest -God knows which forest- lies the historically rich region of Transylvania. It is nestled cosily between the horseshoe-shaped Carpathians on the one side and the Apuseni Mountains on the other. This Summer, participants from all over Europe ventured there to uncover the mysteries of this amazing place.

The city of Cluj-Napoca is a combination of the old and the new. It has a beautiful Roman-Catholic church with Ottoman cannonballs, fired during an attack and still stuck in its walls, behind a grand statue of the Hungarian king, Matthias Corvinus (r. 1458-1490). Opposite the church there are buildings from the Austro-Hungarian era, and behind these there are those from the Communist one. All of this shows the history of the many nations that wanted to call Transylvania their own, and nowadays it hosts the peaceful coexistence of the many peoples who have made this region their home.

The inhabitants of Transylvania are considered to be good-humoured, kind and relaxed, which, as far as the organisers of AEGEE-Cluj-Napoca can tell -although not all of them are native to the region- is absolutely true. They were kind, looked after us, and prepared brilliant city tours, fun games and captivating workshops.

Most of ‘traditional Romania’ could be seen in the Apuseni Mountains, where most of the grass is still cut using scythes and dried in a cupcake-shaped heap, using only a couple of logs. Under these mountains there were both gold and ice. We visited an underground glacier, which was so vast that during the brief descend into the glacier’s cave, the temperature dropped radically from melting hot to wintery cold in a matter of seconds. Romania is, historically, also known for its gold, which was so numerous that a number of mountains now have a vast maze of millennia old mining tunnels running underneath them.

The European Night received some special cultural attention. Many participants from Eastern Europe decorated themselves in the Pan-Slavic colours (blue, red and white), some of the Spanish participants wore their football tunic and some of the Dutch wore orange (of course). The Germans had a pasta-cook-off with the Italians and the Romanians brought an abundance of homemade treats (which were really tasty). Another cool thing is that the Romanians wore traditional clothing, which is also intended for daily use. The idea behind this fashion trend is that tradition and modernity are not mutually exclusive: one can wear traditional clothing and still be hip and progressive.

In German, Transylvania is called Siebenbürgen (Seven Fortresses), after the seven fortified keeps of the Saxons (German speaking immigrants), the most beautiful of which being Sibiu (Hermannstadt in German). It has retained its romantic medieval city centre, including its illustrious bridge of lies -which would crumble if one would tell a lie too big. Underneath that bridge lovers would often meet… thank the heavens the people of Sibiu are fairly honest.

From this moment during the long trip, sleeping in the bus was very lovely, but one city still remained: Braşov, known for its wanna-be-Hollywood-sign. To get there, the bus first passed over the Transfǎgǎrǎşan road, which climbed like a wildly winding river alongside a waterfall that flowed from an icy glacier lake.

In Braşov everyone slept in a gym with a wooden-brick-floor that looked just like those in  old movies. From here, the group visited an adventure park, Bran castle (on which castle Dracula was based), an old Transylvanian fortress that protected against the Ottoman invasions, Peleş castle (the most beautifully decorated castle in the world), and a swimming pool (cause, after all this cultural input, it’s nice to relax a little).

After Braşov the group only halted in Sighisoara, which was quickly referred to as ‘little Sibiu’, because of the city’s beautiful, but tiny, Medieval centre. Lastly, after nearly two weeks, (almost) everyone returned back to Cluj-Napoca, where there was a final, moving closing ceremony.

The group may have lost its energy, but never its spirit. Friendships were made for life, and the organisers and the participants all were extremely sad to let it all go. What made this Summer University so special cannot be merely captured within these words. It is a feeling one can only have by joining it, which I hope many of you  do in the future.

Written by Willem Laurentzen, AEGEE-Nijmegen.

Have you ever noticed similarities between your country’s and other countries’ traditions for Christmas? There are many symbols attached to this holiday in Europe, and each country has kept its own identity and traditions, while enriching them with influences form various other sources. This diversity and richness prove the importance given by Europeans to the Christmas holiday. This year the AEGEEan asked and found out how people celebrate Christmas in Greece, Hungary, Moldova, Romania, Turkey and Ukraine.

Let’s start from the place where the festive period begins really early. In Romania, celebrations start on November 30th, the day of Saint Andrew. Customs say everyone should hang plenty of garlic and a crucifix next to all doors and windows of the house to keep evil spirits away from their home. At the beginning of December, the Christmas lights are turned on all over the streets. Moş Nicolae comes and gives children presents. Children receive their gifts early in the morning of December 6th, or late at night on December 5th; traditionally, gifts are put in their laced up boots. On December 20th, Saint Ignatius Day, Romanians start the last preparations for Christmas. On this date, they slaughter pigs for the Christmas Eve supper. “Around this date, people usually buy their Christmas trees from public markets or supermarkets.”, Ioana Nedelcu (AEGEE-Ploieşti) told us.
December 24rd it’s Noaptea de ajun, the day children usually start caroling their neighbours. Music is an important part of Christmas celebration all over Romania. There is a special genre of music, related to Christmas carols but with more traditional/Christian lyrics. These are named colindă, which are also popular in Moldova. On the same date, women bake traditional cookies to give children for their caroling. By this time, the Christmas tree must usually already be decorated. During Christmas, Romanians bake or buy various special dishes, including desserts and sweets. Romanians most usually bake cozonac, a type of sweet bread. You can fill the cozonac with walnuts, cocoa, raisins, Turkish delight and in Transylvania: poppy seed paste (cozonac cu mac). Plates heaped with small pastries and cakes (corni și baclava) are prepared to serve to carollers when they call. A boiled vegetable and chicken salad held together with mayonnaise and decorated with olives and boiled eggs is often prepared. It is called Salată de boeuf (from French), although it usually does not contain beef. Other Christmas dishes include piftie, sarmale and pork dishes.

In Moldova, although Christmas is celebrated on December 25th like in Romania, January 7th is also recognised as an official holiday. On Christmas Day, families are having breakfast and/or lunch together.

In Greece, Christmas caroling is also very popular and there are actually three official caroling days. The custom is that children go from house to house singing the carol, with the accompaniment of a triangle, and residents of the house give them a small amount of money. Greek Christmas carols (calanda) are sung on the mornings of Christmas Eve, New Year’s Eve and January 5, the Eve of the Epiphany. About thirty to twenty years ago, carolers were getting cookies for singing the calanda.

Homemade kourabiedes

Melomakarona and kourabiedes are the two varieties of Christmas and New Year’s cookies in Greece. The first are semolina, cinnamon, and clove cookies drenched in honey, while the second are fresh butter cookies sprinkled with powdered sugar that are normally served on New Year’s, but many succumb to temptation and begin consuming them earlier. Vasilopita is a cake that is eaten on New Year’s Day. Before the cake is baked, a coin covered in foil is placed in it. The person who cuts the cake makes the sign of the cross three times above it and then starts serving the pieces, one to each person, the house, Christ, The Virgin Mary and Saint Vasileios. Whoever has the coin in his piece of cake will have luck for the rest of the year.
On the 1st of January, Saint Vasileios (Saint Basil the Great) from Caesarea, Cappadocia (Turkey), brings the gifts to the children. People in Greece also celebrate Epiphany on the 6th January. In the Greek Orthodox Church, Epiphany celebrates Jesus’s baptism when he was a man. There are many events throughout the country where young men dive into really cold lakes, rivers and the sea to try to be the first to get a cross which has been blessed by a priest and thrown into the water. Whoever gets the cross first is meant to have good luck during the coming year.

“Noeliniz Ve Yeni Yiliniz Kutlu Olsun” this is how you say “Merry Christmas” in Turkish. However, how Christmas and the new year is perceived depends on where you are in Turkey. Christians who live in Turkey celebrate Christmas at churches or with family gatherings. In many districts of major cities the lights, Christmas decorations and trees appear in early December. In Turkey Christmas is of course not celebrated as a religious holiday. It can, in many ways, be comparable to Father’s day, Mother’s Day, Valentines Day and so on. Christmas is brought to Turkey by the major stores and supermarkets who have seen their chance to implement this festive celebration. There are some very natural differences to the way other Christian countries celebrate Christmas. In Turkey there is no dancing around the Christmas tree and sing Christmas carols, just like Christmas cookies and socks over the fireplace are not a part of the tradition yet. But they have Christmas trees and Santa Claus and gifts! In the last years in Turkey they started celebrating the New Year by exchanging gifts.

On the other hand, in Ukraine the festive period starts on New Years Eve. Ukrainians usually congregate in a house of their families and/or friends. They have many dishes at the table, so they start with food, watching different TV shows and chatting. When it is 00:00 the champagne is opened, and there are exclamations “Urrraaaa” (Hurrah) and people wishing everyone Happy New Year. “After midnight, children find their presents under the New Year tree, some other people are just exchanging presents, telling nice words to people. Then Ukrainians call other friends, who are not celebrating with them and congratulate everyone they think is important. Very often the mobile network is overloaded. Then we have parties till the morning, and go to bed at 02:00-08:00 (it depends). In the morning celebration continues.”, says Hanna Polishchuk (AEGEE-Kyiv).
On the 6th of January it is Sviat Vechir (Holy Evening). In the evening, after 6pm all family congregates at the table, which has 12 dishes (obligatory). The main dish is called Kutia (sweet grain pudding), and everyone should eat at least one spoon of this dish first. After dinner, children (and sometimes adults) wear traditional clothes and go around carol singing. People give them sweets and close friends give also money. The next day (January 7th) is Christmas. In the morning people tell each family member “The Christ was born”, and they answer “Glory to Him”. They tell this three times, and each time people kiss the cheek of the person, to whom they tell these words. On this day people continue going round carol-singing. There is a tradition to forgive everyone on this day.

Photo by Szabina Hellinger

In Hungary, Santa is called Mikulás and comes on the 6th of December instead of Christmas. He brings presents to children in their boots in case they have been behaving well all throughout the year. If they have been naughty, they get some rods (for being whipped with) from krampuses instead. “On Christmas night, the 24th of December (Szenteste = Holy Night) we decorate our Christmas tree indoors and “Little Jesus” (Jézuska) is supposed to bring nice presents for the kids untill the next morning, placing them under the tree.”, Balázs Kovács (AEGEE-Debrecen) told us. The Christmas decoration involves szaloncukor, special Hungarian goodies.

Hoping you enjoyed reading this article, the AEGEEan would like to wish you Merry Christmas anywhere you are!

Written by Lia Tuska, AEGEE-Kastoria/Sofia

You might have heard about protests against fracking already. Romania is the most recent case of big protests this week, where an American gas company has started to explore their big reserves which may consolidate the country’s role as the largest gas producer in Central-Eastern Europe. But at what cost? What are the negative effects of Fracking?

Since the industrial revolution, our energy consumption has increased unceasingly. For many years this energy has been mainly produced by combustion of fossil fuels: coal, oil and gas. After exhausting most of the natural conventional reserves around, every day many European countries look for more and more costly importation trades. Prices are reaching never-seen values, beacause of this new extraction techniques -with extra costs- have now started to become profitable. One of these methods is hydraulic fracture: ‘fracking’.

Photo by: ebachetti

What is fracking about?

Shale gas is natural gas in sand or shale horizontal-layer formations. It is usually trapped, so conventional vertical drilling does not work. To make it easier to understand, imagine this: you have a cake and you love icing. So you first go for the top of the cake and since it is easy to reach, you eat all the icing pretty quickly, but you want more.

All that is left is a thin layer right in the middle, and if you drill a hole down into the cake you will only intersect a tiny little bit of icing, but if you have the capability of going down till that layer of the cake and then go sideways: you are in business. The current fracking method combines horizontal drilling with hydraulic fracture. The hydraulic fracture makes it possible to get the horizontal layers of gas out, by injecting huge quantities of water mixed together with sand and some chemicals under incredibly high pressures to crack over the rocks which keep the gas trapped, allowing to pump it up to the surface.

Why is fracking that controversial?

• As we said, huge quantities of water are transported (an average of 7-8 million litres, similar to a daily consumption of more than 60.000 people)  and pumped into the ground, with a significant environmental cost.
• Together with the water, thousands of litres of chemicals (some of them very toxic and potentially carcinogenic such as benzene) are also pumped underground to facilitate the process. Even though the majority of the fluid is pumped out again, some of the chemicals stay behind (or might even flow somewhere else). This used water is so contaminated that it cannot even be cleaned in a treatment plant nonetheless, often -after the gas source is exhausted- the used liquid is pumped back inside and ‘sealed’.
• Not only these chemicals, but also gases like methane, may dissolve in water and trickle down through the soil and reach water sources. In some cases concentration of chemicals is so high that water may become flammable!
• The methane that might be released in the process is also a greenhouse-gas, and one with a much, much bigger negative effect on global warming than CO2.
• There are worries that the fracking process can cause small earthquakes due to the aggressive techniques of cracking the underground layers. And there have been cases of small tremors following fracking in different countries like the USA and the Netherlands.
• Last but not least, fracking is another a commitment to hold on to the use of fossil fuels a non-renewable energy source, instead of investing on cleaner energy production.

And in Europe?

Last October, the European Parliament voted in favor of an amendment which imposes impact studies before any shale gas or other unconventional drilling method  is used in a EU-memberstate. Until now this was for every Member State decide themselves. Now the amendment’s fate is in the hands of the European Council, who will make a final decision whether or not make it an EU law. Further proposals for legislation on shale gas are expected to be announced in January by the European Commission as part of its 2030 energy and climate-change strategy.

However this new method of gaining energy is really attractive for the EU as it is now strongly dependent on fossil fuel supplies from Russia, Norway, North Africa and the Middle East. Some governments like the ones from the UK, Poland and Ukraine have publicly expressed their support and interest in a development of fracking. This despite the fact that there are more and more protests and anti-fracking movements all over Europe.

Should EU reconsider fracking? Would you like to know more about this technique? Do you know or would you like to know more about your country’s situation? Then join the next EnWG Social Skype Meeting Sunday 15^th at 19h (Brussels time). Fracking will be the topic this time! There will be a short documentary/video and right after there will be an informal discussion where everybody is welcome!

Written by: Pablo Laborero (Speaker of the Environmental Working Group)