this is not a revival festival

My plane left berlin yesterday with one hour delay and i missed my connection to sarajevo in milano. So I arrived here after spending the whole day in Milano and Vienna with 10 hours delay, and i missed the official opening ceremony of Dom Mladih :(
Doesn't matter as we have our sources, and they say that there was nothing to see but some older men talking about themselves.
There was not one person invited who could represent something worthy of the name "youth" - and when you enter the ExYouth House you can see that no young person at all was involved in making a concept for the renovation.
And there was not one word spoken about the REVIVAL Festival 2005, not one word about the energy of the young people in sarajevo given to it, not one word about ASK SARAJEVO and its initiators - who got the stone rolling, who came up first with the idea of reviving the old, damaged building.

A bit sad. And even more sad is the fact that it was expected to be like this by everyone here, and obviously there was no other way.
Today I took the chance to go inside Dom Mladih and i did not recognise it. At all. Somehow they managed to make a different place out of it. You can't say it's not nice - it is just for another target group than most young people here expected it to be.
They took the trashy but sympathetic spirit and exchanged it for expensive wood, glass, leather, screens, lights, projectors - and plastic flowers.

But as this is still a story about hope: the people who will come here to see bands and have parties can change a lot, and hopefully breath some life into new Dom Mladih - if they let them in!

so long, i am having a good time here anyway, and we will find out more during the next days!

gerrit