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Trans Europe Express

2025-1-ES02-KA155-YOU-0002969802025Discover EU inclusion actionongoing
Countries: ES · Grant: €28,995

Objectives

We have always liked Kraftwerk. We love their legendary and primitive electronic music and we listen to it when we meet to work on our projects, studies and activities. But there are no coincidences in life. After watching the videos of the presentation of the DiscoverEU Inclusion Action carried out in collaboration with the ANE more than a year ago, one of the members of this promoting group said: "We hadn't realized, but do you know what Kraftwerk's "Trans Europe Express" song is inspired by?" We heard this song very often and we didn't know what it was about. The TEE (Trans Europe Express) network was organized in 1957 and jointly operated by several European railway companies. The network grew over the years, incorporating more and more countries, including Spain, until reaching its peak in 1974. By 1984, most TEE services were no longer operational. Most trains were replaced by a new international network called EuroCity. Today, young people have InterRail. Although it may seem that the Canary Islands don't, but they do :-) Let us explain. Ironically, the Canary Islands do not have trains. A fragmented island territory where roads abound, but little space for tracks (volcanic islands with more than 40% of the territory protected environmentally). We do not know what it feels like to travel by train. Nor the feeling of safety and environmental sustainability when using this means of transport. We want to know what it is like to travel along these routes that unite Europe and the possibilities it offers to get to know the countries, their cities and peri-urban environments, their capitals and rural landscapes through which it passes. Does the fact that we live in the Canary Islands not give us the right to understand mobility by train? This project takes ultra-peripheral insularity to another level. This travel experience is necessarily cultural (resulting from the mobility and the proposed activities), but also intercultural, gastronomic, democratic, photographic, based on human values and even literary. This is: • This DiscoverEU experience will allow us to be part of what could be called "a travelling community". A human journey through interaction with the citizens of the countries and cities we will visit, but also with those travellers from other parts of the world who come together for the experience. We will make friends on trains, in hostels, in stations. We will meet people and young people from all over the world who are experiencing the same thing. We will also make friends with the Berlin organisation we will contact. This fact is one of the foundations of the EU, the germ of the concept of a united but diverse Europe. • Europe offers one of the most spectacular concentrations of historical and cultural heritage in the world, centuries of rich and varied culture in a very small physical space and perfectly connected by train. And this history, especially modern history, which has so much to do with the democratic development of our countries, is one of the foundations of this experience. From the eastern capitals to modern-day Berlin, this experience will allow us to approach museums dedicated to memory, relevant monuments, exhibitions, concerts, parties, markets, and much more. The proposed program will bring us closer to the most relevant places and also some of the lesser-known ones in the field of the proposed theme. • Traveling by train will offer us the opportunity to put into practice various skills: from language and technology to photography. These skills, in addition to helping us improve as citizens of the states of law that make up Europe, will be useful to feed our logbook of the experience, which will result in our YouthPass. • DiscoverEU is the perfect medium to evoke literary journeys like those of Paul Theroux, the American writer who loves to travel by train and who wrote: "the noise of a train in the night... while one is lying down, moving through the world as travelers do, in the belly of the whale." We will propose reading it beforehand to arrive inspired at our destination. Every trip has something new to offer...

Project partners (1)