Where the heart floats

I was born in Svishtov. It is a city in Bulgaria located on the right bank of the Danube River and the southernmost point of the river, from its sources in Schwarzwald to its delta into the Black Sea. For me, the river is the centre of my universe. For Europe, it was, is and will be a border, a frontier, a defensive and protective facility, a wall, a dividing line, a crossing point, and a connecting bridge to the future…

For centuries, the waters of this river have washed the banks of several countries and thousands of people, bringing them together under the banner of the “Danube States” slogan. The Danube seeks to convert them into amalgam communities. They construct walls and bridges between themselves.

Once the Danube was a long-standing frontier of the lower Limes of the Roman Empire. The river indicated where the province of Mysia ended, and where the province of Dacia began. Where do the Romans live, and where do the lands of the barbarians start – Slavs, Dacians, Avars, Huns and Goths? The city where I come from is the inheritor of the ancient Roman military castle of Novae – the home of VIII Augustus and I Italian legions. Roman legionnaires were supposed to defend the Empire from enemy invasions, protecting it in front of the waters of the river and shaping the borders of a new space where citizens of the Empire could live in peace, tranquillity, security, safety and prosperity.

Nowadays, two millennia later, the river is neither a border nor a system of defensive facilities. The Danube is a pearl necklace of majestic bridges that connect people from different cities and countries living within a ferry ride distance from one another. Today, we live together within the EU and stand in front of the river looking in one direction. We neither defend ourselves nor protect ourselves. We are following the flow of the river.

Over the past seven decades, the Danube has been asking us for peace – a sustainable, long-term peace. The Danube wants no more wars or walls, cold or hot warfare. It wants common security based on a rational assessment of the future of the EU as a cultural and spiritual peace space of shared responsibilities and strong resilience to several new risks and threats. I would like to live in a Danube region of new technological ideas and constructive decisions on urban development instead of new high-technological weapons for offensive/defensive reasons or the latest military assets. I want to discuss with my students several scenarios and predictions about battles of minds and progressive ideas instead of warfare over natural resources or defence capabilities in strengthening both regional and international security.

To conclude, I am aware such a peaceful space is not to be created by itself. It is a joint work and shared responsibility by each of us, day by day. Because we are those who decide how to use the Danube – to construct a new bridge over it or to build another split wall between its two banks?