Since we literally never get to leave the editing room during the day, we have gotten used to only observing the weather outside by looking at the online weather report.For those participants who actually get to venture outdoors once in a while, we present you the weather forecast of the next two days for your convenience.

BY RANDOLF AND ROBIN

LIBE III

LIBE II

HAVE YOU MET…BY LIA PACHLER AND NELA GÁBRIŠOVÁ

Marta Brzosko (PL)Once upon a time at primary school, six-year old Marta and her classmates got bored of their hairstyles and so the grandmother of one of them agreed to dye their hair. Finally, their wish was fulfi lled and they ended up having yellow and green hair for the next couple of days, because these “hairsprays” were actually intended for the purpose of marking wood.

Nata Tarasevych (UA)Consider meeting her at a convenient time, as she may pretend to have a phone call in order not to be obliged to chat with you. As a stylish person, she prefers Ukrainian guys to Czechs according to their way of dressing.

Michaela Onuferová (CZ)Being able to turn into a famous person for one day, she would become Oprah Winfrey, as she would love to meet all the infl uential peo-ple Oprah knows and also to gain all her expe-rience. At the Farewell pyjama party you will probably bump into her chewing and wearing Snoopy nightdress.

Nemanja Predojevic (RS)Be patient with him, because he tends to forget people’s faces. Once he talked to a completely strange woman for twenty minutes without real-izing he did not know her. She was just too gen-tle to interrupt him while speaking.

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LIBE I

AFET II

AFET I

Jonáš Jančařík (CZ)As a young fl ute player in primary school, he had an unintentional possibility to prove his tal-ent at a concert. Th e lights were so bright that the notes were not readable at all, so he had to improvise. Just imagine the eff ort of this poor little boy.

Gio Panagiotaropoulou (GR)To make sure that she is paying attention to what you are saying, just observe if she is play-ing with her hair, because playing with her hair means that she has already started the process of thinking.

Dominic Degen (CH)Talking about EYP experiences, he cannot even remember his most awkward moment. Being quite content with himself, the only thing he would do if he had just fi ve more days to live would be getting drunk.

Jan Nedvídek (CZ)As a big fan of bananas, he has his own strategy of dealing with this sort of fruit. Prior to peeling it, he always halves it. Surprisingly, he would not be too enthusiastic about winning a million dol-lars, because he simply prefers pounds (£).

Tereza Tupá (CZ)As a delegate at the International Session in Hel-sinki, she woke up in an elevator lying on a mat-tress wearing, because the others found the idea of bringing her there very funny.

Harm van Leeuwen (NE)Feeling the urge to have a perfectly organised iTunes library, it takes him ages to sort all his fi les. Also, he confesses that the Dutch must be exhibitionists, because they always keep cur-tains a little bit open to keep others informed about the regularity of their home.

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EMPL

CULT

Richard Janoušek (CZ)Due to his passion for extraordinary hats, you will probably meet him wearing a hat made out of white fur with a big tail at the back and two pompons at the front. Nevertheless, he would not spend a million Dollars on hats; he would simply invest it.

Enno Hermann (DE)He simply condemns traditional German festi-vals, maybe because of his disapproval with folk music. However, he seems to be unable to use modern electronic devices (at least while being half-asleep), because he once sent a text message to the wrong addressee, which turned out to be quite inappropriate in that case.

Hana Láníková (CZ)Sleeping in the same room with her might turn into a sleepless night, because the pretty blondie snores like an old man. Despite the fact that she is satisfi ed with herself, she would like to exam-ine what it is like being a character from Th e Invisibles mainly for being able to turn into a motorboat. Laura Th iemt (DE)She loves EYP so much that she would directly go to a session if you told her that she was going to die within the next fi ve days. Obviously, she enjoyed being at school a lot, because she went to Prague with her class just to visit a brewery.

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INOFFICIAL EYP “CODE OF CONDUCT”

DO DONOT

BY ANA MARIA CROITORU

Being a delegate at an EYP session can be a tough “performance”. Th is is not just because everyone has great expectations from you but it is also the stren-uous session schedule. It is the ability to keep the balance between academic and fun side that makes a session worthwhile. Th ere are some DOs and DON’Ts that you might want to abide by to maximise your fun at the session:

DO speak only English: It is encouraged for you to leave your native language behind and to speak English because there is always place for improvement and it also shows respect for interna-tional offi cials.

DO meet the offi cials: Hang-ing out with CJOs should help you fi nd some useful informa-tion about EYP volunteering and might infl uence your involvement in EYP.

DO speak up: You are here to learn, to develop and to have fun, and in order to do so you should put your heart, soul and voice into the activities that character-ise EYP sessions. Th ere is noth-ing more frustrating than getting home and feeling that you were invisible.

DON’T switch off sleep: A key part of EYP is socialising for as much time as possible, but try not to push your limits too much. Have at least 4 hours of sleep per night, because the lack of sleep will be refl ected in your daily activities.

DON’T stick to old friends: Make as many new acquaintances as possible, and try not to remain keen on the persons you already knew before the session; look for an EYP-buddy.

DON’T embarrass yourself: Beware of the alcoholic bever-ages - usually is the fi rst impres-sion that people get about you is the one that matters, and presum-ably being drunk is not what you want to be remembered for.

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GINGERBREAD LADIESBY JIŘÍ POUR

I am sitting in an empty cafeteria at Gymnázium Dašická. It is get-ting quite late and the only distur-bance is caused by few lost orga-nizers cleaning aft er the Czech Village (which was amazing, but let’s leave that for another arti-cle). With me at the table are sit-ting two lovely ladies, visibly tired yet still smiling from ear to ear. Our dear Head Organizers: Dor-ota and Veronika. And I have the great chance to interview them and take short look “behind the scenes”. PAR Excellence now gives you the opportunity to share that look with me. Enjoy.

What motivated you to become Head Organizers (HOs) even though you, as experienced EYPers, know how much work it is? Veronika: Because we wanted to make people to fi nally be able dif-ferentiate us - me and Dorota. But in the end the eff ect was quite the opposite.Dorota: But now it is actually bet-ter because if someone calls me Verča, I respond - so it is okay.Why did you choose Pardubice for this session? D: Because Chuck Norris sent us (laughing). V: Should I really say the truth?

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D: Yeah, go on.V: Okay, it’s because Chuck Norris told us that this school supports EYP and could be a good partner for us, and because no EYP event has ever taken place here before. D: And also because of the train connection.V: And the gingerbread.D: Yeah, when I told my friends I was coming here, everybody just wanted me to bring them ginger-bread.

What was the happiest moment you experienced, concerning the session, from the day you got selected as HOs until now? V: When we met our new friend. His name is Gingerbread, he is a part of the organizing team, even though he is not really a proper organizer.D: He does also have the yellow badge, so…V: He is very important to us, because he is connected with our childhood. He is a toy we always wanted back then.

Th e HOs sometimes tend to be a couple of extremely busy, ner-vous people, who like to give everyone the “I am going to kill you”-look. How do you manage to keep your smiles and cool-ness?D: We do not really have to do anything for it. It is just our nature.

Have you prepared your orga-nizers for all the stress and the fact that they will become a vir-tual boxing bag every time some-thing goes wrong during the ses-sion?D: Yes, we have.V: No, we haven’t.

What is the sign of a successful session for you? D: Th at the delegates will come to the National Selection Confer-ence in March.

Would you want to this again, even aft er you have seen what it takes?Both: Yes, but only with Ginger-bread, not with her (pointing fi n-gers at each other vigorously).

And the last and obligatory question: What is your message for future head organizers? D: Th at they will be worse than us.V: We are the best.

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TEAMBUILDING

THE COMMITTEE ON LLAMA AFFAIRSBY LIA PACHLER

BY LYUBOV DVORETSKAYA

Th e Committee on Foreign Aff airs I introduced themselves by pre-senting each others’ hobbies as drawings. Hopefully, the upcom-ing debates will be as successful as their paintings, because most of them should seriously consider this as a future profession. While the majority is really into nearly all kind of sports, others proved to enjoy spending time with girls (Attention female dele-gates: Th ey were not talking about specifi c girls!). Later they com-

posed and rehearsed their own committee song. So in case you see gorgeous people singing a song and imitating llamas, you’re probably watching AFET I!To sum up, I wish my dearest AFET I all the best for the rest of the session, and hope that they will become a bit more extro-verted and worry less about their English, because we all make mis-takes sometimes.

Hey! Zulus! Attention! Come on, it’s teambuilding time! When you see 100 people form-ing a circle, dancing around and cheering it can only mean one thing – teambuilding. It’s a uni-versal way of getting to know each other and an honored EYP tradi-tion of making a bunch of young strangers into real delegates of the EYP sessions. Teambuilding is something of an initiation into EYP, the essential part of any session. From general

to committee teambuilding, from “cheerleading” to “pass the ball”, it makes you smile, laugh and relax - and realise how much we all have in common in so many ways. Th ere’s no place too awkward and no move to bold for teambuilding, so just loosen up, put on comfort-able clothes and here we go with the big fat pony to the commit-tees’ teambuilding.

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THE PURPLE PAPER COMMITTEEBY DANIEL STEINDLER

A FAIR APPROACH OF AN ET TEAMBY ANA MARIA CROITORU

„Use the pieces of toilet paper later if you want to.“ - Laura (during a very original toilet paper intro-duction game)It was clear that the chair’s upbringing among her six siblings made her well-prepared for tam-ing this pack. I observed with fre-quent laughs the shift from silent strangers to a group resembling a café at rush hour, and then to pro-ductive and cooperative friends. However, there were moments when I was chased away while

trying to fulfi ll my duties and cap-ture committee’s special moments. You should think twice before you give a kiss to an imaginary rabbit! But the future of this committee’s team spirit is at stake. Probably. Since I heard someone, although out of context, say: “You are evil!”. Let’s see how the committee work day will turn out.

It was the round tree table near the City Hall around which the team of AFET II gathered. Th ough the sleepy mood and cold air were at large, they managed to pull them-selves together and solve the new and interesting games that were brought to their attention by the chairs. Th e icebreakers were a tasty aper-itif for their teambuilding. Th e problem solving and trust games were the ones to make them realise that they still have some

obstacles in their way to form-ing a unique and united commit-tee that would be able to deal with the interesting and dynamic topic of the Arab Spring repercussions. Receiving feedback pushed them to be more motivated, cooper-ative, and talkative during the Deserted Island game, which from my point of view was a good start for a great team.

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THE MULTILINGUAL COMMITTEE BY NELA GÁBRIŠOVÁ

Th e delegates from LIBE I were ambitious from the very begin-ning of teambuilding. Th ey made up a brand-new strategy for pass-ing a tennis ball in order to beat the fi ve-second limit they were given to pass the ball in a certain order.Soon, the eager delegates were given the chance to prove their abilities to work as a real team when dealing with a task to “untie” the human knot. Speaking either English or Czech was pro-

hibited, so, unless you were pass-ing by just then, you could hardly imagine the strange mix of Ger-man, French and Russian that could be heard in the commit-tee room. Although the delis were not able to form the desired circle in the end, they enjoyed the game and demonstrated their capability of cooperating very well despite the language barrier.

It seems that the ‘ice’ in EMPL was already broken aft er the third teambuilding game. Could you have imagined that art can be this hilarious? Th e members of EMPL discovered the funny side of art by painting the portraits of their teammates. “Sign the paper and send it to the person next to the left . Aft er-wards draw the left eye of the mate whose paper you got and pass it to the left again,” said Rich-ard. It began with only smiles...

until Adéla created a huge, creep-ily-staring image of David’s eye. We continued with other parts of body, bursting out laughing from time to time. Nobody could keep from laughing at these master-pieces. Hopefully, the portraits stay great memorabilia of the ses-sion.EMPL, stay that positive and spread this ‘disease’ among the other delegates as well!

LAUGH UNTIL DYING!BY DMITRIJ GLADKYY

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BEWARE! ACHTUNG! POZOR!BY JIŘÍ POUR

TWO TRUTHS AND A LIEBY ANNA KAMPFMANN

If there is a committee you should watch out for, it is LIBE III! Th ey might seem regular and harmless at the fi rst glance, but just listen to a couple of adjectives they gave themselves: Honza the Horrible (I’m sure you all learned at school about Ivan the Terrible and that was defi nitely a person to fear) or Sometimes Scary Sára. Th eir power also comes from the enor-mous life experience they have. As just one example among many, Lucy told us that she has already

gone through a marriage. Sadly it ended in a divorce. Oh, and I almost forgot to mention that it all happened in World of Warcraft . But do not worry, they are actu-ally quite a nice and friendly gang. Just never forget to show them the respect they deserve, otherwise it might not go well for you…

Listen up! Take some time to fi nd out about the fi rst steps of the committee LIBE II, but be care-ful, not everything must have happened the way it is portrayed here…

1. Suitable to the chilly weather outside the nine young Czechs started an adventurous snowball fi ght, literally breaking the ice. During that activity they didn’t stay alone…

2. Believe it or not, LIBE II turned

out to be a quite famous com-mittee. Besides three Madonnas, one might even meet Hilary Duff , Peter Pan, or Mr. Bean.

3. Aft er several hours of team-building, fun and socialising one could say that the commit-tee sticks together like sweet tof-fee and cannot even be separated by their worst of all enemies: Th e monstrous toff ee hater.

You don’t believe me? Obviously you should better get to know the delegates of LIBE II!

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HIDDEN MYSTERIES OF PARDUBICEBY NELA GÁBRIŠOVÁ

At the fi rst glance Pardubice might seem a plain, unremarkable city with a nice historical centre simi-lar to many other ordinary towns. Is this the impression you got so far? Th en do not get misled by it. Keep your eyes open and realise that Pardubice is a city with a long history full of mysteries. Th e fol-lowing stories are just examples of the many legends connected to Pardubice. Will you be able to tell the diff erence between true stories and tales?

THE DEATH OF A SEXTON

Adalbert of Pernstein (Vojtěch z Pernštejna) was a member of noble family of the Pernsteins

who inherited both the offi ce of Lord Chamberlain and great wealth aft er the death of his father William. When Adalbert died in 1534, he was buried in St. Bar-tholomew’s Church with his trea-sure. During the funeral, Adal-bert’s widowed wife Johanna of Wartenberg cast a spell that every-one who would try to damage or enter the tomb would die. Of course people greedy for money were considering the possibility of looting Adalbert’s tomb, but all of them feared the threat of death. Only the local sexton was dar-ing enough to break into it and immediately had to face the con-sequences. A disembodied voice

PAREXCELLENCE 12

from inside the tomb said that he would be punished soon. And so it happened. By the next morning, the sexton had suddenly died.Since that time not even archeolo-gists or historians have dared enter the tomb. So, if you’re “crownless”, you’d better use an ATM than try to steal Adalbert’s treasure.

NA SPRAVEDLNOSTI (“THE JUS-

TICE STREET”)

A lot of people believe that the street called Na Spravedlnosti is named aft er the police station that is located there. However, they are probably wrong. According to what is said, the name has its roots in the 16th century, at a time when executions regularly took place in that street. Countless murderers, thieves, arsonists, and even those accused of witchcraft were exe-cuted by hanging from the gal-lows for more than two centuries. Oft en, the bodies of hanged men were left there for a few days, so that the other citizens could see them as a warning or as an object of ridicule (you can only imag-ine how terrible the smell around must have been). Fortunately, the last executioner, Jan Zelinger, died already in 1825 when the city was on fi re.

WATER GOBLIN

A water goblin used to live in the lake not far away from the city.

Since he was a sociable creature, he came to Pardubice every Fri-day wearing a gray suit in order to look like a human being. When a resident farmer realised what was going on, he decided to pre-vent the water goblin from vis-iting the city. According to the general knowledge you could catch a water goblin using a rope made of baste fi bre, so the farmer made such a rope and successfully caught the water goblin. How-ever, as soon as the goblin was out of the water, he turned into a horse. Luckily, the farmer was well aware of the fact that if the horse touched water, it would transform again. Th erefore, he took the ani-mal to the farm and started to look aft er it carefully. Neverthe-less, he once accidentally gave it some water to drink, upon which the horse immediately turned into a cat, ran away to the lake, jumped into water and became a water goblin again.So unless you are a professional diver, do not make friends with any strange slim men who are wearing gray suits. You might get drowned.

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THE SORT OF SPARK THAT CAN IGNITE THE CIVIC SPIRIT…BY ANNA KAMPFMANN

Eurobonds, infl ation, disintegra-tion of the Euro zone - words, expressions that have been over-used during the pessimistic and oft en populist debate on the cri-sis that Europe is currently facing. However, these arguments some-what remind us, the citizens, that the European Union is not just an economic project but also, and mainly, a political one.Between all the voices of politicians like Merkel and Sarkozy one might have also missed the comments, remarks and innovative ideas by the philosophers and thinkers of our century. While looking for brave intellec-tual leaders one stumbles over the controversially debated opinions of the German philosopher Jür-gen Habermas, who even wrote the essay with the ambiguous title “On Europe’s constitution”.

According to the post-national thinker Habermas, we are stand-ing at a crossroads: Nowadays the idea of a European citizen-ship seems idealistic, or just naïve – whereas the failure of the Euro-

pean project has begun to seem a real possibility. But what if a United Europe is nothing more than an intermediate stop on our way to a legally-based global community? What if all that is not as unrealistic as it seems to be at the fi rst glance? Welcome to Europe, 2056. Even though some things might

have stayed the same, even more might have changed in comparison to the situation we are experiencing these days. A break-down of the very structures of Euro-pean politics or the Euro zone, accession to or res-

ignation from the EU – develop-ments one might either consider as absurd or within the realm of possibility – that is up to you. However, there is no doubt that we as EU citizens have to appeal to the politicians to stop running the European project behind closed doors as they have done in the past and still are at the moment. United in diversity: It is about get-ting people involved, informing them, and by that supporting the argumentative exchange of diff er-

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LIFE DOESN’T END AFTER EYP LIFE STARTS WITH EYPBY LYUBOV DVORETSKAYA

ent and diverse opinions in the public sphere.

We, the people: Isn’t it about time to stop concentrating on national matters and to start working on the European construction site? Isn’t it about time to stop wast-

ing our precious time on social networks and get inspired by rev-olutionary ideas, to fi nally be an active part of the project United Europe?

Did you ever wonder what hap-pens in fairytales aft er, “… and they lived happily ever aft er”? Everyone has their own suspi-cions, but no one knows for sure, because it’s all fi ction anyway. But in EYP, which is kind of a real-life fairytale for most of its active members, we can easily fi nd out what’s going to come aft erwards. One of the best parts of the EYP fairytale is that you’re not just a character here, you’re always also one of the authors.

Th e genius of EYP-present is sim-ple, well-known and thoroughly discussed on many, many pages of sessions’ newspapers, web-sites of National Committees and Facebook. But the genius of EYP-future is something we usually don’t want to think about, because the question of a lifetime is, “Is there a life aft er EYP?” I’ll give you a piece of advice – if you manage to have a life during EYP, there will be no need to fi nd out if there’s a life aft er, because it

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doesn’t have to end. You just have to take those skills you gained during all your EYP sessions, and put them on your CV – and you’ll be surprised how serious it actually is! Except, of course, you won’t include the incredible talent to perform public speeches at GA despite an extreme hangover from the Farewell party…All the crazy and seemingly meaningful teambuilding games that give you confi dence, ease in communication with new people, and the ability to remember more than 50 names of people you’ve just met will be a treasure when the job interviews and internships kick in. Th e knowledge you gain during committee work is sometimes more useful and real than facts you can learn about economic, political and social realities of dif-ferent EU countries from TV and Internet. Th e skill of expressing your thoughts simply and to the point will help you in any fi nan-cial or technical profession, while the ability to defend your opin-ion based on facts, logic and ora-tory talent can be eff ectively used working in consultancy business, economy, politics and judicial sphere. And if you just happen to be that delegate who succeeded in persuading your fellow commit-tee member from Germany that bailout of Greece was a necessary

mean of saving European econ-omy and not a mockery of Ger-man taxpayers, or found a way to rationalise why USA just have to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, then you have a direct pass to a suc-cessful career in diplomacy. Aft er you organized a few sessions yourself, you can already qualify quite easily as an event-manager, and party-planner, hotel admin-istrator, or, actually, any kind of administrator. Chairing at a ses-sion would give you a nice experi-ence in very wide range of profes-sions – from a nanny or primary school teacher to CEO of an inter-national company. And as for journalistic skills… Well, let’s put it this way: Remember the names of journalists at the session as one day in the future you may fi nd them in the list of Pulitzer Prize winners. But of course, the thing you’ll need the most in your life that EYP can off er is these amazing people from all over Europe that are your friends now, and can stay your friends for the rest of your life. And friendship is the most precious thing that exists is out there. Especially if your friends are those amazingly skilled CEOs of international companies, law-yers, diplomats, politicians, PR-managers and Pulitzer Prize-win-ning journalists...;)

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THE BIRTH OF THE SAUERKRAUT GUYBY DANIEL STEINDLER AND DMITRIJ GLADKYY

Yesterday evening all of us gath-ered at the CzechVillage to observe the smaller and greater cultural and culinary diff erences among the Czech regions. Almost everything went according to the plan – and moreover an unex-pected spectacle occurred: Th e “Sauerkraut Guy” revealed him-self. We made an eff ort to inter-view him and his “creator”.

JAN JANOUCH (CREATOR)

What led you to set up such a competition?I was standing completely alone with no potato pancakes left and a lot of sauerkraut. I had no more visitors and I felt alone. I just couldn’t let the famous Křimické sauerkraut rot; I desired to pam-per someone with its uplift ing taste. Th en I stood up in front of the audience.

For the fi rst ten seconds aft er your speech no volunteers appeared. How were you feeling?When I had off ered the best things from my table and had also done my best to push them through, I told myself, “Just shut up and

leave the place.” But then the vol-unteer appeared and saved me.

How did you feel aft er the suc-cessful sell-off ?It was pure satisfaction.

THE SAUERKRAUT GUY (VÁCLAV

HOMOLA, 15, GYMNASIUM

MILEVSKO, 1ST TIME EYPER)

What motivated you to take part in that competition?I am a big lover of Pilsner Urquell; I had to get it. I needed some adrenalin in my veins. Being a tough guy, I told myself, “Be cool and do it!”and I did it!

Was the sauerkraut tasty?I am not sure, but I don’t think so. Eating so much at once felt bad and weird.

How would you compare Křimické sauerkraut to the nor-mal one?Actually, I have never tasted sau-erkraut before.

Do you want to be involved in EYP in the future?EY…what?

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8th Czech Forum Pardubice EYP Czech Republic 24.-27.11.2011 Záštitu převzali:

Miroslava Němcová, předsedkyně Poslanecké sněmovny Parlamentu ČR Mgr. Jindřich Tauber, náměstek primátorky statutárního města Pardubic Ing. Jana Pernicová, členka Rady Pardubického kraje