Meeting of cultures

As Slovakia is walking steadily towards the European Union I wonder if our people are ready to step into a more technically developed world. However this isn’t the main problem. The true difference between us and the most powerful countries in Europe is the mentality of our people. This has been changing in Slovakia during our history, however not in a positive way. The biggest influence on our people has had the fact that someone always controlled us and we had to obey his orders. We didn’t have the courage to cope with our problems, but we waited for someone to come and save us. The remains of all of these facts we can find in each of us. This has to change-as Slovakia grows to a modern European state we have to understand that we have the power to make our own decisions. Therefore I think that the European integration isn’t only about economics, but mainly about the people.
About this I’m convinced from the day I visited Switzerland which is one of the richest European countries. Here everyone can see how far are we from the top. The first thing that dragged my attention was the newspaper rack-it was a box full of different magazines and in the right corner was a slot for the money. So far it was nothing unusual, but the main thing was that it wasn’t locked. Anyone could take the magazine without paying anything, but the people were so loyal that they paid the full price. I think everyone can imagine how would something like this end in Slovakia-people won’t pay a crown. Not because they don’t have them, but because they don’t have to. That’s the difference.
The other thing is the cleanliness of the whole country, which is really amazing. On the grass not a single paper can be found because everything is kept tidy. The important thing is that they don’t have any strict law that will punish them if they don’t keep their lawn tidy. For them it seems natural to keep their surroundings in good condition. Why in Slovakia it doesn’t work like this? Really I don’t know, but our people just like to destroy rather than make new things. If you walk through every park, you can’t find a single bench that is not broken. Because of this vandalism the city’s spending more money on the renovation than on building new facilities that would help the city to develop faster. The tragedy is that the vandals are often just small kids who consider it as fun. If we want to change this we have to start from the primary schools and teach children to be creative rather than destructive. I think this is the only way.
These are just one of the facts which stand between us and the new modern world and it will surely take many decades before we become a modern European nation, but the time doesn’t play an important role in our case. It’s the result that matters.

meno a priezvisko: Tomáš Valkovič
škola: Gymnázium J. Kráľa, Zlaté Moravce