In 1995, the city of Luxembourg received the honour of becoming for one year the European capital for culture - after larger and more famous cities in what tourism and culture are concerned. This one year enligtenment was the real start for cultural institutions like the Casino art centre, which remained since then at the edge of the avant-garde, the occasion for others to be better known and for the Ministry in charge to begin the design of a totally new cultural scene. But in a rather ambitious way, the concern of the Ministry of Culture, ruled by Erna Hennicot-Schoepges, was not only linked to an event. It led to a colossal investment’s policy - if we think of the size of the country - with the foundation of a series of institutions offered to the citizens of Luxembourg and to the neighbouring transborder regions: a “Centre Culturel de Rencontres�, a Museum of Modern Art, a series of explanatory itineraries of the fortifications in the city of Luxembourg with, as its heart, the Fortress Museum and a flowering of museum’s initiatives. But the Kirchberg plateau will also receive soon the new Conservatory – Room for the Philharmonic Orchestra and an extension of the National Library, while the National Archives are moving towards the industrial remains in the south of the country, meeting there the new National Audiovisual Centre, then to mention also the accommodation of the European Institute of Cultural Routes in the Tour Jacob and the opening of a lot of cultural centres within the country ending with the launching of a Rockhall. A true revolution, even an electroshock which pushed Luxembourg forward in the mainstream. “Culture is no more an empty space but a ground where plants are flowering� said Octavie Modert, Secretary of State for Culture, Higher Education and Research, paying as well a tribute to the previous Minister.

This means that when the Ministry of Culture of the Grand Duchy decided two years ago to take the chance of a second bid in Brussels and to persuade the neighbouring regions to be part of this second initiative, in spite of the immense task that waited the country to valorise the new structures, a few were as fool as to encourage the concept. More than that, a lot tried to do their best against it. But perhaps they did not know the perseverence of Guy Dockendorf, General Director for Culture who has been helped for more than one year by Robert Garcia, the coordinator.

The European Institute of Cultural Routes has been associated since the origin to the discussions and participated to many meetings as well as missions in Romania where the twinning initiative aimed by the European Commission has led to a co-operation with Sibiu as partner city for 2007.

We are proud that the Institute brought ideas, themes and some help in terms of knowledge about Romania and that we fulfilled our mission in trying to enlarge the perspective in the frame of a second motto “Greater Region – Greater Europe‿. We thought that the year 2007 could go beyond the closest European family circle of Franc and Lotharingan worlds. The Greater Region is for us a demonstrative example of a piece of land which received its structure and got its culture through an exceptional transborder situation, but also from a series of waves and influences during ages and European history at large.

A work in the proximity, marked by people and conflicts, languages and artists, migrations and discoveries. And then, from this circle onwards, a back and forth movement established as a result of multilateral relations between royal and princes families, through geopolitical alliances always woven anew and dramatic wars changing the drawing of borders year after year until today.

To say something about the Greater Region, putting some light on it in order to enlarge the European context, means taking into account relations with Bohemia, the Duchy of Burgundy, the Habsbourg Empire, conflicts between South and North Flanders, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the German Alliance, the dramatic confrontations of nations, the launching of trade-unions and the arise of fascism, the birth of modern Europe, final step towards an everlasting Peace?

To say it in another way : just begin a work of memory.

...but why are we at the crossroads of European Routes? The context of cultural routes, which is so rich, helped us of course to give consistency to our proposals.

We had to cross a transborder initiative with the cultural routes programme and to choose some themes of the Cultural Routes of the Council of Europe which corresponded the best to four of the themes chosen by the curators: European figures, memory, migrations and industrial heritage.

In what the European Figures are concerned two seemed good case studies: Edouard André and Saint Martin.

In fact, Edouard André was certainly one of the most important landscape architect at the end of the XIXth century. His work in Luxembourg city was commissioned after the dismantling of fortifications. The innovating aspect of the project we proposed was to give to this town planner the respect and interest he deserves today regarding the aspect of Luxembourg's landscape known for years, with fortifications behind nature just as a remain of a past period which has to be forgotten and based on the new dialogue which has been established recently with the approach of the same fortifications today in a context of pride and valorisation of Vauban’s work. We intended also to make people of the Greater Region aware of the European importance of the architect. It should have brought a rather different context to the historic and natural trails which will be launched. A photographic approach should have also given some ideas about the work done in Lithuania on behalf of the bilateral co-operation with the Grand-Duchy of Luxembourg.

The figure of Saint Martin, symbol of sharing, Roman soldier and at the origin of Eastern monasticism, is on the way to be certified by the Council of Europe in 2005 as a Major Cultural Route. Some episodes of his life are linked to the Greater Region and especially as a soldier in Trier, as well as the habit to celebrate in various cities and villages of the Greater Region his anniversary on 11 November. In order to enhance the transfer of experience along the routes and to allow a sharing of experience along the itineraries we have suggested together with the person in charge of the project that a Martinian Centre of the Greater Region develops multi-disciplinary networks and helps to put into practice long-term co-operation projects “Saint Martin of Tours‿, on the Rhénanie Palatinat, the Sarre, Wallonia, Luxembourg and Lorraine in connection with the European Centre Saint Martin (Tours- France) that the French Minister of Culture has just accepted to finance for three years. It was a matter of accomplishing a cultural touristic product founded on an European monument lighting convention in the manner of an educational network. Anyway, a virtual exhibition on Saint Martin and the Greater Region will be placed on the site of the European Centre Saint Martin in Tours. A series of concerts were planed in the main Martinian cities of the Greater Region. An European colloquium “Saint Martin from Tour to Trier‿, with the participation of scientists from Greater Region and France was also supposed to take place. We thank Antoine Selosse for having helped us to prepare this file and we will try other solutions to take stock of this challenging and promising initiative.

In what the industrial heritage is concerned, we have the duty to organise in 2007 a great European meeting with all the partners of the European networks who work in the new framework of the new cultural itinerary of the Council of Europe, integrated in the programme in 2004 and we intended to prepare for the occasion an exhibition with the title: "Industries: between utopia, memory and discovery". In our mind, this meeting was destined to put the Greater region in the circuit of the industrial heritage and make it the starting point of a co-operation network whose centre of experience and quality is the Greater Region. Laurie Holzer, trainee at the institute helped us prepare an exploration file of the structure of the exhibition.

However, the theme of memory was the most difficult part. Starting with several leads elaborated during a workshop meeting on the places of memory which took place in 2001 and starting also from the idea launched by one of the experts Theo Robichet of a "Train of Memory" across Europe, we have kept them all in mind and we adapted our project to the Greater Region. Why a train? Because the train has a memory-like movement which is not fix but mobile, which evolves and becomes richer continuously. This train will not have as objective an already defined memory, but a multi-facet memory (as many facets as carriages) and which will not cease to become richer due to the contacts visitors-actors (memory collecting workshops on the internet made in collaboration with responsible associates will allow visitors to add their memory to the memory mosaic of Europe). This project, explained in detail - including the budget plan (the budget reached almost 3 million euros) - was prepared by Ruth Blau. It is still under discussion and we will have to find a way to make a feasibility study in several stages.

We have also answered the request of the coordination to work on the themes of the Greater Region. Danny Elsen put the bases of a particularly delicate subject because it sometimes touches the ancient identity and the traditional society but also the contemporary transformation of the rural world where the idea of rural world became the most reconstituted, made and even depraved concept. The analysis that was made had to allow the taking place of an year experimental action entitled: "Territories without frontiers. Rural itineraries and landscapes of the Greater Region". Transborder journeys and week-end touristic products had to be accompanied by a lecture on landscape typology and rural typology starting with workshops or residents of the land taken from ethnologists, sociologists, landscape architects, food specialists, professionals in receiving tourism and the natives. They were destined equally to have as results guided tours, itinerary meetings, parties which follow a traditional calendar of calendar parties.

The last two proposals concerned on one hand the Toscan presence and particularly the Lorraine one in the Greater Region because, in 2004, we worked with European Scholars on the Great Dukes de Lorraine and on the other hand a young people meeting on the theme of the frontiers starting with the association of "The theatre for Youth in Europe", an yearly action made by Vosges department.

From the seven projects , only one, "The Train of Memory" has caught the attention of the organisers even if they still doubt its feasibility. The other ones, which we will try to promote in a way or another will be included in a virtually manner on the site "Greater Region, memories and cultural routes" which we prepare – they will have to be adapted according to the budget that we will be able to find, or they may be made in countries or regions from Europe a little later.

Was it too much ? We don’t think so, because we have accepted with the honour of the player the game of calling for proposals according to our skills, our networks and our missions and we sometimes had the feeling that we were imitated or plagiarized, and we took that as a compliment. We have followed exactly the idea of a transborder start and we are proud to have played the part of an idea laboratory where our partners, like the trainees that helped us, found new European proposals.

We offer few concise presentations of our proposals for the subscribers of the site and more detailed files for our partners. After all this we would like to find susceptible operators who can help us promote these projects and in fact to know and acknowledge the ones we trusted in making in a year this huge work of analysing and proposing.

We still have to prepare some proposals for the second capital 2007, Sibiu...Encounter of youngsters coming from the Grande Région and Transylvania, implementation of cultural routes in the surroundings of Sibiu for fortified churches. But this is a future story.

On the 10th of March, the Culture State Secretary, Octavie Modert, the mayor of Luxembourg, Paul Helmiger, and the coordinator for the year 2007, Robert Garcia, started at the heart of a building from the ones which will be the lighthouse places – the minister spoke about the epicentre - one of the round buildings of the railways from Luxembourg built in 1875 to be used as a maintenance workshop for steam engines. A symbolic place for “The train of memory�, insn't it? Industrial wasteland, those buildings of 52 meters diameter and 15 meters high are being restored by the National Service of Sites and Monuments and they will soon acquire the coordination, there, in 2007, there will be artistic activities and musical manifestations. At least one of the round buildings will remain experimental in 2007, before its completion in 2008 and it will be invested by the youngsters together with the Youth National Service from Luxembourg.

In what the logotype created by Bizart agency from Luxembourg is concerned, if Robert Garcia confesses that he had problems in using it at the beginning but he ended by adopting it, we hope that this wild animal, which is now just a “Bamby�, will become a wise old herd leader.

What has left is the presentation of the mayor of Luxembourg of the new urban policy of the city which plans to re-establish a balance in what the quarters from the Railway Station and the quarters from Bonnevoie are concerned, taking advantage of the cultural enthusiasm of 2007 and a new notoriety and to transform the migrating identity of a transborder tide in a mixed identity in which the youngsters from Luxembourg, the young students of the new university and the residents of the quarter will find a meeting place and an approach to the diversity of activities which is full of promises.

From the presentations made on the 10th March from which a lot still remain in the stage of utopias and promises – including the budget which will be revealed only later, this structural presentation was the most convincing and the most considered one.

We would like to finish by answering the question we asked in the beginning. Several years have confirmed that the habits to have transborder meetings between cities (quattropole), between political partners from the Greater Region, between interregional project consortium members or culture 2000, between professionals in land arranging, between economic partners in what “Jeudi� magazine has recently called “Greater Region, the necessary myth� could have led without difficulty to a partnership agreement materialised by a transborder non profit association to prepare 2007. This was a far-reaching goal in the beginning.

In this extended cultural capital, Luxembourg will value even more its marvellous equipment and it will offer its honour to the industrial wasteland Belval, also confirming Dudelange “European City of Migration�. Rhénanie-Palatinat will offer an international tribute to Constantin the Great and the Land of Sarre will have in the middle of its activities the Völklinger Hütte. Lorraine will inaugurate the Pompidou Centre from Metz, thus completing its stupefying metamorphoses of the capital of Moselle. Wallonia will draw on its collections from its museums and its banks to speak about modernity. All this is already very much. On the other hand we would really like to believe that the ideas will circulate from Greater Region to Transylvania in the same way they did for almost a millennium and that this twinning will not be just a pretext . Perhaps part of the “Train of Memory� will travel to Romania? We will wait for Saint Nicholas 2006 to know more.

But if one expects that neighbours take the opportunity of 2007 to transform their habit of perceiving the Greater Region and especially Luxembourg as a paradise for employment to behave as European citizens wanting to discover Europe, the fact remains that they will get so few proposals to find new transborder cultural courses, understanding projects on interregional space specificities, invitations to discover the Other, except on the margins of an “Islek without borders� or along the Moselle River. It will certainly need some years to achieve the confrontation of transborder cultural activities to the concept of common heritage, to the appeal of memory and to the rigorous exigencies of history and take stock of differences, mute attitudes and oblivion. After this work on memory the Greater Region will become at the end a Region in the true meaning of the word.

For the moment everybody is celebrating. So we should’t disturb it.