To get to know one’s neighbors, to discover commonalities—these were the goals of the international student seminar on “What Is Home?,” which took place in May 2005 with support from the Schering Stiftung. Students from Ruse (Bulgaria), Constanta (Romania) and Novi Sad (Serbia) intensively dealt with the culture and history of their neighbor states.

And they asked a lot of questions: What is home? Why is it so important? How do we define it—and why? The seminar participants collected cultural information in their respective home countries—images and descriptions of customs and festivals, song texts and much more—and finally met in Ruse to compare their material. The astonishing findings: the commonalities predominate. Something seen as typically Romanian was also bound up with the notion of “home” in Serbia and Bulgaria. And vice versa.