Europe Day 2011 will be celebrated in big cities including Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh during the month of May with a series of cultural activities.
The event will open with an art exhibition titled “Dipolar”, featuring art works by Khai Doan, a Vietnamese German creative director, at the Goethe Institute in Hanoi on May 6.
The program also brings to music lovers a classical concert by the Duo d’Accord that includes two talented pianists from Germany, Lucia Huang and Sebastian Euler. They will perform in Hanoi on May 8-9 and Ho Chi Minh City on May 10.
Cinema fans will also have a chance to enjoy a film festival featuring 13 films from Belgium (Wallonie-Brussels), Germany, Greece, Slovakia, Sweden, Poland and the UK from May 16-29.
The European Literature Day, held jointly by the Goethe Institute, L'Espace and the Wallonia-Brussels Delegation (Belgium) in co-ordination with the Italian and Danish embassies will present European books, which have recently been translated into Vietnamese at the Goethe Institute and at the L'Espace in Hanoi on May 27-28.
Other cultural and sports activities including a competition for making a short video about climate change, a discussion on ‘Towards the young generation” between European ambassadors and Vietnamese students will also be on the program’s calendar.
“Europe Day” marks the historical speech by French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman - the so-called “Schuman Declaration” - on May 9, 1950 calling upon France, Germany and other European countries to pool together their coal and steel resources to form a concrete base for the European Federation to safeguard peace in the region. Thus was sowed the foundation for the beginning of what is the European Union today.
