ETO 2005/2006 - Story (English)
NEW YEAR´S MEGAPARTY IN VIENNA 29-31.12.2005
I spent the last New Year’s Eve in Vienna, Austria with 13 other Finnish people. There was an international party event organised for deaf people. Visualbrains group organised the whole event between on 29th-31st December.
There were participants from many different countries around Europe and some people came from America, Mexico and even India, too! All in all people were calculated to be even 800-900! That is very a large number. A Workshop started on 29th. VÖGS (an organisation of the young deaf academic students in Austria) organised the Workshop event. There were discussions about the interpreter-situations of the young deaf academic students of different countries. I participated online and so did many others, too. Every country represented in turn their own interpreter-situation in the university. The interpreter-situation is already a known problem, but it was very surprising to notice what kind of situations other countries have compared with Finland and Sweden. I take Austria as an example. There is only about 50-100 interpreters in the whole country of Austria. In consequence there are very few interpreters in the universities. A student must himself pay the interpreter’s fee. The student gets study grants from the Government and the largest part of that goes only to the pay of the interpreter! The consequence is that the student can’t get the interpreter for all his lessons because his money isn’t simply enough. Many people wondered the better interpreter-situation of us Finns and Swedes. We don’t need to pay for the interpreters ourselves, only the university and cities pay. However, we don’t have a good situation either, because many students suffer from the lack and the bad pay system of the interpreters, too. We all are in the same boat and together we must try to solve out our common problems!
After the interesting discussion of the Workshop we hoped that same kind of Workshop meeting would be organized again in the future. We want to devote more effort to the co-operation between different countries and together struggle for our own rights. Also we dreamed about establishing a common university for deaf students in Europe, like Gallaudet. There is a very long way to go, because we don’t have a common sign language in Europe on which could be taught in the university. However, we can always dream of such thing because we can never know what will happen in the future!
After Workshop ended we gathered in the deaf club of Vienna for relaxing and enjoying of the short films which had been directed by deaf people. We saw films from Slovenia, Italy and so on. The films were interesting and they told about our culture and life. During the films playing we got to meet both new and old faces. There were vivid discussions and new acquaintances were born a lot! The atmosphere was very good and all people enjoyed very much of seeing each other. I felt strong unity as in a family. The next day we went to watch beautiful sightseeing of Vienna city with a guide. Vienna’s old castles, churches, different buildings of the Government and museums had a big effect on us. Vienna can be considered as one of the most beautiful cities in Europe. After admiration we gathered at the appointed place where 3 busses waited for us.
Our destination was Semmering ski resort, about an hour driving trip from Vienna. There we were supposed to try to ski by tobogganing. It is kind of a sledge suiting 2 persons. We were a large number of interested tourists, three busses full. During the trip we were explained precepts about driving tobogganing and safety rules. There are neither brakes nor a steering wheel in the toboggans. We must brake with the help of hands and feet. “Oh…” I thought first and waited as a beginner with pleasure what it would be like. When we got there we were given the tickets and toboggans! And then sliding down with a will! We got to slide down on about 3 kilometers high hill. In the beginning it demanded adjusting to driving by toboggan because we had to touch the snow with hands and feet and to drive. Many of us fell because of losing balance. Snow came the whole time on our faces and the feeling was great! Step by step we started to realize how to keep balance many of us went too fast and with recklessness!
After many slopes the hillside started to become soft and changed more up-down-shaped labyrinth. Some had bad luck in the slope, for instance one Norwegian’s shinbone broke because his foot blundered into somewhere between snow and a toboggan. Many of us were hurt a bit because we blundered each other and fell during the slope. Huh, many bruises on the body!
Perhaps we should have been given a How-to-drive-toboggan –course first I myself enjoyed fully about the breakneck experience!
Next day we prepared ourselves for eating and relaxing properly at the New Year’s Eve party. Visualbrains group had reserved rooms from one Visual Arts Academy for our party. Academy’s large building was two-storeyed and impressive. There we were all in all about 800-900 people partying. Many Austrians came with us on the last day and so they upraised our number. It was very impressive to see so many people partying with happy and glad minds. There were different groups discussing everywhere and between it was difficult to find own friends in the middle of the throng. It was interesting to change from one group to another and find new discussion mates! There weren’t any problems with communication methods because we could easily use “international sign language”. It was very useful to learn to know cultures of other countries and observe different signs in interaction. I feel that we now live a time of strong globalization and many countries are approaching each other. The theme of this New Year’s Eve party was also “Europe to One” which emphasizes the congruity and co-operation between different countries. That’s wonderful! There appeared a hearing singer in the party, whose song was accompanied by two interpreters by signing. The performance was good but something was missing – perhaps deaf Signmark should have come on the stage.
There was a lot of bustle on the bar and the staff was busy with mixing drinks. We Finns gathered up in hall at 23pm because it would be 0.00 in Finland at the same time because of the time-lag. We hugged and bade Happy New Year. It didn’t take a long time until there were other congratulations for Happy New Year at the local time. We all ran out to watch fireworks and we hugged each other. It was amusing to hug the whole time different people and between it was impossible to remember who must be hugged next. Then we returned back in the warm and continued discussions with drinks. End of the evening went well expect for some disturbances. A very positive picture was lodged in my mind about this party and the whole event! I recommend warmly many of you readers to participate in some international event the next time! Why? Because it brings a lot of new experiences and richness to your life.
We thank T. Juhana Salonen (Finland ) for being mad enough to write the report "ETO 2005/2006"!
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TOPDIX (CH)
Sponsors
COCA-COLA
KATTUS
Partner
WITAF
ARTS ACADEMY VIENNA
HOUSEVERSTAND
SOUPSHOP
MEDIEN MANUFAKTUR VIENNA
HANDSPROJECT
HIRSCHENKOGEL - Semmering
ZUKLINBUS
FISCHERFILM
SCHRAMEKWERKE
VISION DÜNSER
CON MEHLUM (NOR)
VISUAL CIAK (ITA)
THEATER-ONAON (SLO)
ROBERT LAH VERSIC (SLO)
SONJA PIVAC (NZL)