| | O beata Ungheria! se non si lascia più malmenare! Oh happy Hungary! if she escapes further abuse! Dante, Paradiso, XIX.142-143. |
Percentage of GDP invested in UNIVERSITIES
EU average 1.3%
Danemark 1.7%
Poland 1.6%
…
Hungary 1.1%
…
Italy-Slovakia 0.9%
=> WE ARE THE LAST ONES!
This tacepao requesting more money for Italian universities was photographed by Wang Wei at the university of Torino where he was a guest professor during the student manifestations of the last week. Finally a list where Hungary is not the last item, or: the garden of the neighbor is always greener. And in these days, with the Slovakian economy flying high and with the imminent introduction of the euro in Slovakia it is an especially pleasant balm on the aching Hungarian national pride to see our northern neighbor at the lowest point of the shame board, naši najhorší.
We should better not consider it more closely that the name of Ungheria is probably standing there between twice three dots as a negative rhetoric example, as to indicate the level of absurdity: “we are even deeper than this.”
Wang Wei has also made a great antiquarian bookshop tour in Torino. We hope to see his photoreportage here soon. The picture below he has sent ahead in any case suggests that there are a few things anyway in which Italy does not leg behind us.
Well… it is a pun intended for those who knew pre-1989 Czechoslovakia. At that time on the main square of every Slovakian town there stood a “tacepao”, a large board with the photos and names of those local people who in that period “were in the lead of the building of Socialism/Communism,” and with the inscription “Naši najlepší” (Our best ones). A “board of glory,” so to say. Thus the contrary of it, a “board of shame,” like the imaginary one embodied in the above photo, with Italy and Slovakia on the lowest place, could eventually bear the inscription “naši najhorší” (Our worst ones).
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