It has been a long time since our European Culture think tank first gathered in Nijmegen to draw the outlines of our almost nine months project. Since then, we controlled our progress through regular Skype meetings during which we provided each other with feedback and schemed further phases of our cooperation. In February, we organised a highly successful workweek in Brussels: on the one hand, meeting in person considerably boosted our working efficiency; on the other hand, the visits to the European Parliament and the European Commission improved our knowledge of how EU institutions work. Only six weeks after our trip to Brussels, the Hungarian team members were ready to welcome their Dutch colleagues for a final workweek in Budapest, during which we wished to bring our project as close to completion as possible.

After the group reunited at Professor Hörcher’s place where we shared a most delicious dinner, the official work started on Monday morning when we gathered in Sophianum only to be faced with a fairly close deadline (1^st May) and an almost chaotic collection of texts that were to be sewed together into a single and relatively seamless paper. On Wednesday, the Sophianum working routine was broken by a visit to Piliscsaba. We made good progress on that day and we even had the time to insert a short football match into our lunch break. On Thursday we started to prepare for our Friday meeting with György Schöpflin, Hungarian Member of the European Parliament, to whom we were to present all the work we had done since our last meeting. However strict the Thursday working schedule was, we still managed to pay an hour long visit to the Hungarian Parliament the sight of which amazed Dutch and Hungarian alike. The next morning was spent in preparation for the meeting with Professor Schöpflin. He provided us with some useful feedback. Unfortunately, his strict schedule prevented him from joining us for lunch, so we thanked him for meeting us all three times (Nijmegen, Brussels, Budapest) and bade him farewell.

Our think tank’s work was concluded in a brief afternoon session on Friday 12^th April. Hopefully, our paper will be finished by 1^st May. And then? Promises have already been vowed of staying in touch, of informing each other about our future trips to either Nijmegen or Budapest. Yet, it is highly possible that the whole group will only gather again on the pages of the booklet we have been working on together.

Mónika Rusvai