The on-line publication Bread In The Past, Bread Today is about to be finished
Dušana Findeisen, Slovenian Third Age Universit, Ljubljana, Slovenia
It was during one of the many meetings somewhere along the Danube that Carmen Stadelhoffer, president of the International Association Danube Networkers DANET suggested bread would be a suitable topic that could bring together endeavours and reflection of older inhabitants from countries along the Danube. The project Tastes of the Danube. Bread, Wine And Herbs was born. Ideas and activities, like so many times before in our common projects, started and continued rolling as a snow ball would do. It was becoming big, ever bigger as it rolled.
Slovenian Third Age University joined the project with a clear idea in mind: to engage our students of journalism and painting, uniting them around a common topic. Our idea was to create a bi-lingual on-line publication based on the contributed stories and to create a catalogue and exhibition of paintings. The results of the two initiatives will end up in a mobile exhibition and events. They will, of course be presented at the Daniubian Festival in Ulm.
What the project offers are opportunities for meeting older students from the Danubian region as well as searching for possibilities of future co-operation. Today, along the Danube are needed new jobs and skills, the kind of skills that are based on traditional knowledge and skills the inhabitants possess. Baking bread is such a traditional activity. When to the existing knowledge and skills are added: the know-how concerning establishing an internet enterprise, running it, shaping bread and bread products, about how to market them and where, the knowledge about procedures and techniques, about how to attract designers, painters, adult educators, and others, a good (social) enterprise can be created.
Bread is a widely discussed topic and we were afraid that in Slovenia it would not arise interest. Upon second thought we said: bread is culture, picturing relationships be they family, local community, social, political, or historic relationships, Thus dealing with bread can make alive different aspects of our culture and enrich cultural tourism.
In this publication, the authors’ stories and the stories of those who entrusted the authors with them, they were of different age, social background or profession – the same topics keep returning: the symbolic value of bread, the smell of good freshly baked bread, childhood, safety, but also hard work in the fields and elsewhere, the unstable hard times, the today’s refugees and the topic of new poverty even in the developed Danubian country Slovenia.
Duša Jesih, mentoress of painting study groups and Neva Železnik, mentoress of the Journalism study group at Slovenian Third Age University have made their students enthusiastic about the topic. As a result of it they started supporting the project and identifying with it, opening up for us the known an less known aspects of bread, revealing its role in our life.
DANET and the project tastes of Danube are supported by Baden-Württemberg Foundation. We thank this foundation for trusting us.