Josef and I spent a few days in Paris and did some sight-seeing before and after he made a presentation at the
European Leadership Conference on Eurasia and Europe:
Cooperating for a Culture of Peace and Human Development.
http://lilly.fam-gundacker.eu/gallery/?album=12&gallery=29
The Conference itself was interesting and Josef’s contribution exemplary.
I felt his was the crowning presentation putting everything else into perspective on the topic. Of course my contribution to his presentation has nothing to do with it. He wrote it all himself. And then rewrote it after I read it. Then rewrote bits of it again and again. Then he even agreed when our kids united in their call for him to take Mummy for a romantic holiday to Paris, the city of love, and we flew off together on Sunday morning. The boys drove in to do their duty at the Imperial Palace and dropped us off at the railway station (Landstrasse-Wien Mitte) where we got a train to the airport. There are advantages to having grown children living at home! Three of them already have a driver’s licence. The last two are not far away. I printed out our boarding cards the night before so all we had to do was check in the luggage. What a travelling family! We met in New York, he from Waldviertel, me from Melbourne. Our legal wedding was in Jacksonville, Oregon. Our first son born in Neunkirchen, Lower Austria, the next three in Linz. The youngest in Zwettl where he (hubby) went to school. The kids then travelled all around the world with the Vienna Boys Choir.
Now, am I waffling on? No, that’s what this blog is all about. It’s my valve for expressing myself and my creativity. Of course, with the limitation that I am not allowed to over-expose my kids to public scrutiny. That’s a hard one. So I have to focus on myself. And my husband. So this is about the presentation in Paris about the contribution that family makes to world peace.
Yes, it all starts in the family. If you can love someone with all your heart, no matter what, you’ll manage to contribute to world peace. So many of my friends and colleagues have told me that they could not comprehend what change becoming a parent would make to their lives. Maybe it’s hard to love a partner, no matter what. But once you have children, your heart just grows and you learn to tolerate and respect and take responsibility for so much more.
So, out of that experience, sorry for the muddled picture when I was being introduced, I didn’t want to miss the sound, or interrupt the presentation, here is the video I took, in three segments of Josef’s presentation.
There are gaps as the batteries ran out and the last bit is filmed with my mobile phone camera so the sound is softer, but you get the gist from it. There was also official filming, so let’s see if we get an official version available.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRP6YUFGt0Q
[…] When Josef was asked to address the topic of “Marriage as a Vehicle of Cultural Rapproachement Between East and West” I immediately sensed that this was meant to address the issue of our international marriage and its motto of “World Peace Through Ideal Families”. The conference was about Europe and Eurasia and when I researched the definition of Eurasia it included all of Europe, so I was a little baffled by the request to address rapproachement between Europe and Eurasia. However in the spirit of the event, sponsored by UPF, we went ahead and he prepared a presentation. I write about this elsewhere. […]