| Introduction to the Visit |
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The exhibition that we invite you to visit has been put together in the form of a show! Take your seats for a series of visual, auditory or tactile impressions that are designed to touch the heart as well as the mind, to make you, the audience, not only think, but also feel. Which brings us to the problem of how to describe this kind of exhibition in words. We have solved the problem by producing this "trailer" in the form of short video extracts (one minute each), as a kind of virtual preview … The visit should take you between an hour and a half and two hours. The first thing you'll notice is that far from being a text-book account of recent European history, we have set out to acquaint you with the everyday life of "ordinary" Europeans. You will be guided through the exhibition by these twenty-seven ordinary representatives of Europe, one per Member State of the Union. Their story starts in 1945, at the time when Europe was struggling to rise from the ashes of World War Two … Follow the exhibition to discover their fate, to the background of the efforts of the "Fathers of Europe" to rebuild a continent in the throes of decolonisation, the downfall of Western dictatorships, revolutions in everyday life and of a Cold War between East and West. The fall of the Berlin Wall marks both the end of the Cold War and the enlargement of the Union. This period that we are currently experiencing is naturally riddled with questions about the future of European construction and with the challenges that are facing Europeans at the beginning of the 21st century. |
