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mariacallous · 6 months

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The ninth International Degrowth Conference, held in August this year in Zagreb, Croatia, opens with a provocation. Keynote speaker Diana Ürge-Vorsatz, the newly elected vice chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), has two requests to make of the audience. The first is to figure out how to coordinate with governments of all stripes, since the climate crisis requires global unity.

The second? “Maybe consider a different word.”

It’s about as close to blasphemy as this niche, academic, and politically radical conference can get.

To a rising minority of European leftists, the term “degrowth” is proving an attraction rather than a turnoff. The protean climate movement that exists under its banner is gaining momentum among academics, youth activists, and, increasingly, policymakers across the continent.

The European Parliament hosted its second (and terminologically defanged) Beyond Growth Conference just this past May, this time with unprecedented buy-in from elected officials; as organizer and European Parliament member Philippe Lamberts (of the Belgian Greens) told the Financial Times, the “big shots” are now “playing ball.”

Those in Zagreb frame the Brussels push as “extraordinary” and “major,” with the parliament building “filled to the brim” by a new swell of activists, nongovernmental organizations, academics, and elected officials totaling some 7,000 strong. Julia Steinberger, a longtime researcher of the social and economic impacts of climate change at the University of Lausanne, adds: “And they were young.”

This energy carries over to the degrowth circuit proper, which multiple veterans tell me has long outgrown its humble beginnings. At a watershed, self-organized gathering in Leipzig, Germany in 2014, ragtag participants made their own meals. This year’s conference, by contrast, is co-sponsored by the city of Zagreb, attended by the mayor and representatives of the IPCC, and professionally catered with vegan canapés.

With its deepest roots in direct democracy and anti-capitalism, the degrowth movement is bent on challenging the central tenet of postwar economics: that further increases in GDP—strongly correlated with increases in carbon emissions—translate to further advances in social and individual well-being.

The implications of the critique extend far beyond the usual calls for countries to reach net-zero emissions targets. To degrowthers, the climate crisis is a social problem, and addressing it will require no less than reengineering the entire global, socioeconomic order, especially in the wealthy global north.

Why the sudden interest in this radical program? Why Europe, and why now?

Perhaps the answer should be obvious: Late August 2023, when the Zagreb event convenes, caps off the hottest global summer ever recorded. The defining characteristic of degrowth’s latest influx of followers, as the movement’s major figures will stress to me again and again over the next four days, is youth—which is to say, a heightened vulnerability to the future effects of climate change.

The status quo has left these young supporters disillusioned and alarmed. And no wonder. When, during her keynote address, Ürge-Vorsatz draws up a heat map showing the proportion of the Earth that will become unsuitable for human life by 2070 under business-as-usual projections, no one bats an eye; it’s data that this particular audience has seen before.

The suggestion to “find a better word,” however, is met with an affronted laugh. For Europe’s young people, degrowth isn’t just a utopian slogan, but an intentionally provocative, environmental necessity—and an existing reality.

Parallel to these radical calls to abandon economic growth as a policy goal, many economists have observed that capitalism in developed countries is already slowing down, seemingly of its own accord, and very much against the mainstream political will. The trend is called (in a manner that hardly satisfies Ürge-Vorsatz’s invitation to find a more appealing term) “secular stagnation,” and it predicts that in highly developed economies, a near future of stagnant growth is more or less inevitable.

This slowdown in the year-over-year growth of GDP per capita is detectible in wealthy industrialized countries such as Japan, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, and the United States, according to economists such as Dietrich Vollrath, whose book Fully Grown describes this phenomenon.

The deceleration is accompanied by a rise in inequality, which contributes to increased polarization on both the left and the right. Poorly managed energy transitions and climate-induced disasters are poised to exacerbate the trend. So are declining fertility rates, which lead to a lopsided age distribution in the workforce, putting further strain on welfare systems. While it is tempting to ascribe the decline in birth rates primarily to the rising cost of having children in rich countries, in the EU, generous benefits to parents (Hungary, for example, recently waived personal income tax for mothers under 30, among other pro-family measures) have failed to turn the tide. At a certain point, wealthy societies in advanced stages of modern capitalism no longer want to grow.

As a consequence, for the first time since the mid-20th-century, young people from the world’s richest nations, such as those gathered here in Zagreb, cannot expect to be better off than their parents.

The anxious backdrop is enough to make one wonder whether the uptick of interest in degrowth isn’t, in fact, just another symptom of a lack of economic growth in Europe, coupled with impending environmental degradation. It brings into focus a bigger historical picture, one of wealthy countries around the world struggling to manage ecological decline and rising domestic discontent when the usual remedy—rapid growth—may be as economically impossible as it is environmentally dubious.

If such degrowth is inevitable, degrowthers ask—if for a very different set of reasons—how can it best be managed?

And is it possible for Europe to greet it with anything other than anxiety and despair?

On the opening night of the International Degrowth Conference, at a reception held in the lobby of the Zagreb Museum of Contemporary Art, at least two surveys of the 680 registered participants are going around, gathering demographics in the name of ongoing academic research. The shoe-leather approach provides a good estimate: A quick turn though the crowd proves the attendees to be overwhelmingly white, youthful, and fit.

And yet, considerable diversity exists within that apparent uniformity. Degrowth is a big tent, one that attracts graduate students, activists, Marxists, feminists, decolonizationists, and in more recent years, elected politicians, all of them disillusioned with the promises of “green growth” inscribed in the EU Green Deal, or in the United States’ growth-oriented Inflation Reduction Act. It could be described as an academic field, an intellectual crossroads, a political movement—or better yet, given its versatile nature, as a cultural one.

The term decroissance first emerged in France during the resource debates of the 1970s, when the Club of Rome published its famous 1972 report, The Limits to Growth, which is still one of the most controversial and bestselling environmental books of all time. That study argued that exploding global population and resource use would exceed the Earth’s carrying capacity within one generation, resulting in a precipitous decline in welfare.

Strongly influenced by a natural scientist’s understanding of the conservation of energy (as opposed to an economist’s understanding of abstract and theoretically limitless variables, such as demand), the report popularized the enduring idea that there is no infinite growth on a finite planet. Kenneth Boulding, author of the essay “The Economics of the Coming Spaceship Earth,” echoed the concept in congressional testimony delivered during a discussion of the global ecological situation in 1973: “Anyone who believes that exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.”

Predicting the future is a risky business. The Club of Rome report was—and still is—ridiculed by mainstream analysts, who pointed to the fact that the next generation became, au contraire, ever richer and more populous. Others rightly questioned the report’s tendency to stoke the West’s racist fears of population growth in the global south. From a purely ecological view, however, research from natural scientists continues to suggest that the 1972 study got more right than wrong; ecologists warn that we have now exceeded four of nine planetary boundaries that define a habitable planet.

Today’s iteration of degrowth, translated from the French, disavows these earlier debates’ Malthusian focus on population growth, instead shifting the emphasis to per capita consumption. This time, the culprit is decadence in the global north.

Embracing the ethos of anti-consumerism, anti-advertising, and decolonization, the idea of reorienting rich economies away from the hegemonic pursuit of GDP growth gained purchase in France and Southern Europe following the 2008-09 financial crisis—which was seen as yet another consequence of the reckless pursuit of growth—and the austerity measures that it drew into its wake.

Vincent Liegey, a French thinker, author, and organizer who was active in those earliest years of the degrowth movement, tells me that these days, degrowth might be best understood as a “tool,” one used “to question dominant paradigms and address 21st-century problems with [the idea of] well-being.”

There’s an academic flair to the accrual of terms and definitions in the conversations that I have over the next four days: “conviviality,” “frugal abundance,” and “well-being” are favored. (A primer from one of the movement’s foremost thinkers, George Kallis, bears the title Degrowth: Vocabulary for a New Era.) Marxism is more than ambient. But so are appeals for direct democracy and municipalism, as well as serious engagement from NGOs and members of the European Parliament.

It can be difficult to keep track of where the ideological accent lies. In their book The Future Is Degrowth, Matthias Schmelzer, Aaron Vansintjan, and Andrea Vetter helpfully break the movement down into different “currents,” of which there are two dominant schools: green-liberal economic reform, which relies on familiar tools (such as market mechanisms, taxation and regulation) to bring growth and institutions into accord with planetary boundaries; and “socialism without growth,” which focuses more on fundamental changes to distribution and ownership (and which distinguishes itself from the Marxist productivism practiced in Soviet Russia or Maoist China).

Natural scientists, too, supply working definitions. One of the most common (and politically neutral-sounding) goals repeated in Zagreb harkens back to a widely circulated 2020 Nature Communications paper titled “Scientists’ Warning on Affluence”: Drawing on economist Giorgos Kallis’s definition, the paper’s authors argue that degrowth aims for an “equitable downscaling of throughput (that is the energy and resource flows through an economy, strongly coupled to GDP), with a concomitant securing of well-being.”

“There’s always been an activist and an academic part of the movement,” the aforementioned Steinberger, a co-author of that paper, tells me. Though both factions have historically lacked traction with the broader public, 2023 may be the year this marginal status starts to change. Degrowth has made “giant steps forward” in “how we can articulate these ideas and how we can make them popular,” Steinberger says, pointing to the May conference in Brussels as an example.

Ürge-Vorsatz likewise welcomes the new momentum as a “really exciting development,” one further linked to recent degrowth-adjacent legislation such as a draft directive proposed in the European Parliament that would ban “planned obsolescence” and increase the durability of consumer goods.

There are further signs of momentum. The sixth IPCC assessment report, published last year, made its first mention of degrowth, citing the literature’s “key insight” that “pursuing climate goals … requires holistic thinking including on how to measure well-being,” and name-checking the movement’s “serious consideration of the notion of ecological limits.”

The writing of Japanese philosopher Kohei Saito, a rising international star (and also in attendance in Zagreb), has become a surprise hit in Japan and around the globe, with his 2020 book Capital in the Anthropocene grossing more than 500,000 copies; the week of the conference, he was profiled in the New York Times for his philosophy of “degrowth communism,” while a German translation had just appeared on the Der Spiegel bestseller list.

And it’s a kind of “cultural victory,” Liegey says, that policy magazines such as the Economist and the Financial Times, not to mention the present publication, have also begun to engage—even if only to debunk degrowth as a brewing economic disaster.

Pressed to explain the surge in interest, however, it’s notable that many organizers and researchers didn’t cite concrete proposals from degrowth’s own economic agenda, but rather the ruins of the old, postwar paradigm.

They cited record-breaking temperatures that have risen quite literally off the charts. They cited the pandemic, an experiment in rapid social transformation that has broadened the public imagination for what is possible in a narrow time frame. They cited, above all, the energy of the younger generation of activists heralding from Ende Gelände, Extinction Rebellion, Fridays for Future, and the many youth and graduate students who are getting involved in degrowth itself.

One such newcomer, here in Zagreb as a volunteer, tells me that she discovered degrowth after becoming disillusioned with green growth narratives and party politics in her native France. “I’m not sure how much is propaganda,” she says with a laugh, gesturing toward the cacophony of workshops and academic presentations taking place simultaneously in the conference center (the usual purpose of which, I’m told, is to host weddings; at least three can take place here at once). But she admits that she finds it “inspiring to see so many people working on solutions” after more mainstream channels left her pessimistic.

She is not the only person attracted to Europe’s degrowth movement by a combination of pessimism about the current conditions of the world and the promise of political solutions to quell that anxiety. But degrowth also raises the question of just how real these solutions are meant to be—or whether managing pessimism is the primary draw.

Asked to explain why the movement continues to enjoy more support in Europe as compared to other parts of the industrialized world, degrowthers point to the continent’s long tradition of leftist organizing and greater cultural openness to restraining the excesses of capitalism.

“There’s more freedom in Europe to question mainstream economics and the growth paradigm,” says Steinberger, who received her Ph.D. in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “It’s not that it’s comfortable,” she adds, “but it’s at least … nobody’s going to [be] fired for it. It doesn’t generate the same sort of kneejerk revulsion.”

Saito, who studied in both the United States and Europe before returning to his native Tokyo, where he is now a professor of philosophy at Tokyo University, echoes the claim: “I think in some sense, EU countries already regulate this system of capitalism, creating other space for other things, for noncommercial activities. And that’s already half-degrowth.”

But there is, potentially, a broader cultural backdrop to the increased interest, especially among the young. Gwendoline Delbos-Corfield, a member of the European Parliament representing France (and the Group of the Greens/European Free Alliance parties), tells me that the youth she speaks with are notably pessimistic. “Girls tell me we shouldn’t be having children because it harms the planet,” she says.

Youthful (and hyperbolic) critiques of the status quo are hardly novel to European politics. But the current attitude feels distinct from the student protests that swept the continent in the 1960s: “I feel there is more despair,” Delbos-Corfield adds.

There’s always been an anti-materialist, anti-capitalist bent among green revolutionaries in the West, but degrowth should also be understood as separate from the back-to-the-land or hippie spiritualism that marked the environmentalism of the 1970s. The main drivers on display in Zagreb are economic and environmental anxiety as the world slips into very real ecological and civic unrest.

“They have a lot of access to depressive information,” Liegey says of the young people he sees joining and reshaping the movement, “and no way of acting on it.” Ürge-Vorsatz echoes his assessment. “If you just look at climate [policy] in Europe,” she says, “then I think we should be very positive because Europe has been doing great things.” On that front, there’s reason for optimism. But as for the broader political landscape, she notes that it often seems as if Europe is entering “into an era of crisis after crisis after crisis” that will require an updated political vision: “The only way we can actually manage crisis is to think for the long term.”

Charges of pessimism, alongside demands for continued economic development in the global south, are arguably where critics gain the most traction against degrowth. Self-described “techno-optimist” thinkers such as Andrew McAfee and Steven Pinker have more or less self-consciously pitted themselves against it. Regarding climate goals, these thinkers call for more growth, not less, and especially for the so-called decoupling of that growth from increased material resource use. Their self-described optimism stems from the fact that this decoupling is already taking place; they reckon it can be accelerated through new technologies and judicious policy.

It’s worth noting that across this very fraught and contested spectrum of opinions—from techno-optimism and green growth to degrowth—everyone agrees on one thing: In order to avoid the very worst of possible climate futures, the material and carbon throughput of the economy must be drastically reduced. The attitude in which they go about achieving that reduction, however, could not be more different.

There is indeed evidence that relative decoupling has been underway since the mid-20th century, but so far only partially, and only in rich countries—and then only after an enormous intensification of resource use. Early evidence of dematerialization from midcentury peaks in countries such as the United States, furthermore, does not yet extend to powerhouses such as India or China.

It is also hotly debated whether this partial trend properly accounts for rich countries’ offshoring of material-intensive manufacturing, or for the so-called rebound effect, whereby more efficient and “dematerialized” production of goods and services translates directly into increased consumption, immediately canceling out ecological gains. Degrowthers, for their part, argue that the absolute decoupling is an outright fairy tale—one as dangerous as its proponents accuse degrowth of being.

Whether decoupling amounts to magical thinking or not, given current data, one would have to be very optimistic indeed to believe that decoupling scenarios alone will bring economic activity into accord with planetary boundaries and tipping points. The lack of evidence for an immediate silver bullet brings us back to the multitrillion-dollar question: If an economic deceleration is inevitable, are our options really delusion versus despair?

It’s no mystery why we fear economic slowdowns. Crumbling state finances, recessions, and economic transitions are enormously painful and disruptive, especially for those in the lowest income brackets. Juicing growth numbers as a means of alleviating economic pain and discontent, however, is increasingly looking like a holdover from an era when politicians could promise that rapidly rising tides lift all boats.

In today’s world—when global inequality is reaching prewar levels—it perhaps makes sense to lay at least equal focus on the redistribution of wealth accumulated in the 20th century, precisely with an eye toward insulating society’s most vulnerable from economic and environmental shocks that are increasingly intertwined. This makes even more sense if we consider that in the rich world, the previous century’s boom-time growth rates might be the result of nonlinear, irreproducible events, such as women entering the workforce, globalization, the financialization of government debt, and the use of imperialist force.

Perhaps, as techno-optimists predict, artificial intelligence will lead to yet another gain in productivity, yielding a 20th-century-style spike in growth. (Though this comes with the potential cost of AI turning on its human makers, which would hardly be conducive to economic flourishing.) For now, the shifting composition of developed economies calls for a correspondingly historic shift in policy focus.

“A fundamental difference between natural science theories and social science theories is that natural science theories, if valid, hold for all times and places,” former U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers wrote in a opinion for the International Monetary Fund published in 2020, “In contrast, the relevance of economic theories depends on context.” He continued: “I am increasingly convinced that current macroeconomic theories … may be unsuited to current economic reality and so provide misguided policy prescriptions.” The same could be true of chasing after GDP growth.

In that case, one might imagine that it would be the task of the degrowth movement to persuade the broader public of the point. And yet, if the idea of doing more with less has a branding problem—which is to say, a political problem—it’s not a problem that anyone in the degrowth movement seems immediately positioned to solve. Almost no one I speak to in Zagreb is inclined to “consider a better word.”

The issue of language and popular appeal hovers over the conference. On a smoke break, a local Croatian volunteer, a mother of two with a marketing background, voices concern over how the scholars gathered here plan on communicating degrowth to a larger audience. She tells me that her school-aged children recently came home announcing they no longer want to shop at secondhand stores. “It feels very different to degrow when it’s a necessity versus a choice,” she says.

During lunch, over plates of (vegan) lentil Bolognese, another volunteer, a Zagreb native in her 20s and a member of a local all-female eco-collective, shares impressions from her own visits to the academic sessions, many of which are open to the public. She’s come directly from a presentation about a hypothetical “ecofeminist city,” where she, too, wondered about vocabulary and broader appeal. “The girls in my eco-village, the ones [the presenters] should be speaking for,” she says, “I don’t think they would have the education to understand. I wondered, ‘Who is your audience?’”

Consulting the abstract for the ecofeminist city in question, the authors’ proposals indeed seem less than tangible or concrete: References include “configuration of spatial and temporary infrastructures” and “feminist time politics.”

The volunteer’s question—“Who is your audience?”—is a fair one, especially since parts of the movement really do hold the potential for popular interest.

After all, the primary aim of degrowth, Saito explains, is to carve a space “outside of capitalism,” whose market logic has colonized too much of our social and economic decision-making, but also outside of traditional socialism or Marxist productivism, whose ecological record in Maoist China and Soviet Russia proved just as devastating.

Though I’ve been wondering whether it’s the word “communism” or “degrowth” that poses the greater threat to the movement going mainstream, the more I ask, the more it seems that to degrowthers such as Saito, “communism” means something much closer to municipalism and an expansion of the welfare state (financed, presumably, through a mechanism that rejects both imperialism and economic growth) than it does to classical economic planning.

“I call it commonification,” Saito says of his own updating of Marxist principles for a climate-distressed era. “Make it common; make it common wealth. A society based on that kind of commonification of our basic needs, which shouldn’t be left to the market logic.” Every thinker I speak with is committed to democracy and rejects the one-party state. Saito easily sees room for market mechanisms: “Of course you should be able to buy an apple or an orange on the market. But does that apple need to come from Africa?” There is a commitment to an expansion of social services such as universal health care, education, public transport, and housing, with additional discussion of reduced work weeks and job guarantees; people use less energy and fewer resources when they buy and work less.

Saito himself doesn’t mind if others “use a different term” than degrowth “as long as they’re willing to think outside of capitalism.” But he notes that using provocative language often serves an important purpose; degrowth was coined precisely to be unmarketable, with its founders anticipating the greenwashing that has befallen the likes of terms such as “sustainability,” “green growth,” and “carbon footprint.”

The persistent use of radical terms, Saito further argues, can pave the way for progress. “Ten years ago,” he says, “in America, you couldn’t say the word ‘socialism.’ Today the taboo has been lifted, with politicians like Bernie Sanders and AOC [Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez].”

On the other hand, one could just as easily argue that the normalization of former taboos is simply a sign of greater polarization and discontentment with capitalism; taboos are being lifted just as quickly on right.

In this tense political environment, should the degrowth movement continue in its usual role of leftist activists and academics, or has the time come to think more like politicians—in other words, people who have to compromise?

On this point, the movement seems divided.

It’s clear, however, which faction is ascendent. On a concluding panel, activist and scholar Julia Steinberger, who wields considerable influence on social media, recaps the need to liaise between the public and centers of political power. “Science tells us we need to degrow,” she says, “but this means nothing to politicians unless we can also help them translate this to the public.”

She describes presenting data to elected officials, only to have them respond that their hands are tied unless they are also given a way to sell the implications: “And we said, ‘We thought that was your job and the journalists’ job.’ And they said, ‘No, we can’t do it, and the journalists aren’t doing it, so I guess it’s your job.’”

Natural allies for the movement, not to mention connections to more mainstream economics, do exist. If degrowth plays its cards right, its proponents might not have to do the job alone.

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magyarvandorblog · 1 year

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Chimborazo

Béláim!

Miután meglátogattam a finn Mikulást, átléptem az északi-sarkkör képzeletbeli határát, jártam rénszarvasfarmon, megmártóztam a Jeges-tengerben, huskyk húzta szánon raliztam hófödte finn tájakon és paparazzikat megszégyenítő elánnal örökítettem meg az északi-fény minden árnyalatát, nos, ezek után most újra itt vagyok.

Az elmúlt hetet keretbe foglaló, nagy műgonddal válogatott, valamint gondosan szerkesztett, a lenyűgöző tájról tanúbizonyságot tevő és így finn kalandomba betekintést nyújtó, napjában megannyi platformra többször posztolt „pikcsörcunami” után, „nyomtatott” formában térek vissza.

Bár a „puskapor” mostan még szárazon tartatik, ám a finnugor nyelvrokonságnál nagyobb bizonyossággal mondhatom, egyszersmind ígérhetem, hogy a lappföldi móka ismertetése nem fog asztalfiókom magányában maradni.

Az „előző részek tartalmából” szlogent kölcsön véve, a kronológia merev szabályrendszeréhez tartva magam és a visszatekintés metszőollóját segítségül hívva nézzük mi történt eddig.

Egy áldás békesség kezdetű, „mi vár rátok, ha ezt olvassátok” indíttatású gondolat jegyében megfogalmazott bevezetés után, aki még nem ismerte volna, megtudhatta ki volt Rotterdami Erasmus és képbe kerülhetett család- és előzménytörténetemmel is. Ezek után két részben „énekeltem” meg kiutazásom „gondtalanságát”, valamint szóba került világhálóval kapcsolatos kalamajkám is.

Itt tart(ott)unk. Nézzük, mi jön most!

Mi tagadás, izgalmasan indult az introduction week 3. napja, amikor egy Roger Sandberg nevű ürge – nem cicomázva sokat a bevezetéssel – előadását a szexuális zaklatás témakörével indította. „Ebből még baj lesz” jeligére megannyi szempár nézett az ég felé egyazon pillanatban hallván a nem megfelelő közeledés kiváltotta retorziókat. Félreértés ne essék, távol álljon tőlem, hogy elbagatellizáljam a témát, de Roger „apánk” túlontúl nagy hevű prezentációja és gyanús méregetései közepette olyan érzése támadhatott az ember gyermekének, mintha már az előtérbe várná a helyi TEK (Terrorelhárítási Központ). A corpus jurist odavissza ismerő prókátor, avagy a jogban kiváltképp járatos előadó – mintegy „oldva” a feszültséget – szót ejtett a tanulmányi- és vizsga szabályzatról is. Amikor kiderült, hogy csak egyetlen vizsgaalkalom van és ott is – a honi 50%-os tuti kettestől eltérően – legalább 60%-ot kell elérni a sikeres abszolváláshoz, bevallom, gyanakodni kezdtem azt illetően, újraindult-e a Kész Átverés Show …

Időben szorosan követve az imént tárgyalt „produkciót”, szünet nélkül, mondhatni sebtiben bemutatkozott a Student Union, vagy ahogy otthon mondanánk, a hallgatói szervezet is. Rogerhez hasonlóan ők is kitűnt attitűddel debütáltak, a figyelem megragadása és felkeltése persze gyerekjáték volt számukra, tekintve, hogy lappföldi, norvégiai és izlandi szervezett túrákkal kecsegtették az ifjúságot.

Képzeletemmel játszadozva, gondolatban már rénszarvasokat simogattam a finn télben, amikor a délelőtti program záróakkordjaként az utolsó prezentációt megtartó két idősebb hölgy látszólag beletörődve vette tudomásul, hogy a nagy öreg Roger és az ifjú titánok kétségkívül elvitték a show-t aznapra.

A jövőbeni csodálatos kirándulások idealizált képétől megigézve turbófokozatba kapcsoltam és azontúl, hogy kiváltottam, valamint kézhez kaptam diákigazolványomat, még arra is futotta időmből, hogy a lakbér kifizetése mellett buszbérletem is megváltsam. Ezt követően – vigyázat olcsó szóvicc a láthatáron - maga volt a megváltás - egyszersmind a time management (időgazdálkodás) megkoronázása -, amikor két „szerelmes” párharcának második felvonásában, mint régi ismerős toppantam be a MediaMarkt-ba az előző bejegyzésben tárgyalt - az internethez és világhoz való kapcsolódás ígéretét magában hordozó - adapterért. Így értem hát produktivitásom csimborasszójára. És még csak éppen elkezdődött a délután!!!

Etimológiai kisokos: A 19. század elejéig az Andokban található Chimborazo-t tartották a Föld legmagasabb hegyének. Innen származik a magyar csimborasszó főnév, amely tetőfokot, a szóban forgó dolog legmagasabb mértékét jelenti.

Zanzásítva tehát az elmondottakat, a bevezető hét (introduction week) közepén hivatalosan is átestem a tűzkeresztségen „iskolalátogatás” ügyében. Persze, illő volt már ittlétem harmadnapján valamilyen úton-módon a campus területére „tévedni”, hisz voltaképpen tanulni (is) jöttem ide …

Na most, a gólyahét vagy gólyatábor itteni elnevezése kick-off. Ez egy nagyszabású eseménysorozat, ami a második héten indult, szóval a következő bejegyzések egyikében fog csak szó esni róla. Összezavarásképp, történetem szövésében jelenleg még csak az első hét szerdájánál tartunk, amikor is az úgynevezett „pre-kick-off” kezdődött el. Legyen bármily csekély értelme, de ez a gólyahét előtti gólyahét …

Szó, mi szó, úgy hozta az élet, hogy az előző nap megismert cimbórákkal – jelesül Simonnal és Annával – ugyanabba a csapatba kerültünk az említett két esemény idejére. A Submarine névre hallgató, nációkban gazdag team a Béta-házban (a számtalan kolesz egyikében) tartotta pre-party-ját, vagyis az esti beavató buli előtti alapozást. Csapatvezetőnk állampolgárságát illetően talányosan csak annyit mondhatok, magyar ismerőseim száma újabb fővel bővült …

A pre-party fesztelen légköréből egy-kettőre az „akadémiára” teleportáltunk csapatostul. Összehúzott szemöldök okozta értetlen pillantások közepette teljes joggal kérdezheti kedves Olvasóm, milyen akadémiáról hadoválok. Nos, a helyi nyelvjárásban az „Akademien” elnevezéssel illetik az egyetemisták legfőbb bulizóhelyét. Korrekt, többtermes, viszonylag jó árfekvésű helyszíne ez a bulizni vágyóknak.

Itt aztán egy, az egyetemisták körében közkedvelt és általam is sokra taksált „sportágban”, a beerpongban csillogtathattam tudásomat. Francia csapattársamtól ellesett büszke öntudattal mondhatom – mindenfajta nagyzolás nélkül -, hogy senki sem fogott ki rajtunk, veretlen francia-magyar tandemünk sikeresebb volt, mint a két nemzet közti bárminemű kooperáció a történelemben, bár országaink közös históriájának baljós éveit alapul véve ez nemigazán meglepő. C’est la vie!

A győzedelmes „hadjárat" végén ismeretségi köröm egy vietnámi, egy német, valamint egy osztrák fővel bővült.

Summa summarum, egy tartalmas nap tartalmas leírása itt ér véget.

A blogon ontott szóáradat megtörése végett, ha úgy tartja kedvetek bátran skubizzátok meg „világkörüli turném” keretében készült képekkel teletűzdelt „galériám” az alábbi linken: https://vsco.co/magyarvandor/gallery

Utóirat: Majd elfelejtettem, miután hazaértem beüzemeltem az adaptert szóval lett netem. Apróbb szépséghiba, hogy 5 perccel ezután megtaláltam az addig nem létezőnek hitt routert az íróasztal azon egyetlen fiókjában, amit addig nem húztam ki …

Ernest Hemingway írta egyszer: "Szép hely a világ, érdemes harcolni érte". A második részével egyetértek.

Na pá!

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