The narrow mountain roads, that lead up to the former hunting lodge of Tito, are framed by thousands of people. They all have taken the Mayday as a cause for a trip into nature, lay easygoingly in the medium high grass or are barbecueing the meet on an open fire. Everything has its order in such an idyll like hundred years ago: The kids play ball, the women spread out blankets, the men drink beer.

Only the drivers from the two modern tourbuses, that have been chartered by the organisers of the first Transeuropean Picnic, are refusing to take this originally planned route. Countless promenaders, drunkards and parking cars are blocking the rampant road, that isn't in the best condition: suddenly provisionary roads lead around a bomb crater, that is overgrown from low shrubbery.

With almost a two hour delay the tourbuses are finally arriving on the clearing in the forrest with a noble hunting lodge, that has been choosen as a romantic closure for the two day conference of young media activists from eastern - and western Europe. The dinner is ready, dishes with venison goulash, are on the table and therefore the orginally planned panel discussion about mobility and freedom of movement has to be cancelled.

There isn't much to say about that anyhow on this small congress, that has been organised by the new Media Center KUDA and the dutch "V2_Institute for Unstable Media" in Novi Sad on the first weekend in May. Whereas elsewhere the accession of the ten new EU-countries is celebrated, here are those gathering that have to stay outside - for the time being or until further notice: techno musicians from Georgia, Romainian video activists, Bulgarian curators, programmer from Croatia, Serbian performance artists -- and onlookers from the old and the new Europe, who now also don't know anymore who is on which side of the new border and why.

If there would be a conclusion from the meeting, it would be quite disillusioning: The East doesn't exist. The more virtual the formation Europe becomes, the more vanishes the yonder and the outside. The perspective of the ones that were missed out is dissolving into a multiplicity of perspectives, that are not orienting on a standard anymore. The richness of meaning, the instructable netting of carefully placed allusions, melancholic metaphors and obviousness seem to scotch every debate around something like an identity of the excluded and the ones waiting. And that is probably a good thing.

Already the titel of the event is not only referring to the locally typical degree of sarcasm: the "Transeuropean Picnic" is alluding to the "Paneuropean Picnic", almost 15 years ago. At that time, some hundred kilometeres more north on the hungarian-austrian border near Sopron, almost tenthousand people met, invited through local opposition parties, in order to tear down the barbed wire of the East-West border by their own hands. The 19th of August 1989 is the inofficial, hardly recognized event, that anticipated the great historical dates of the same year: the opening of the hungarian border on 9/11 and the fall of the wall on 11/9.

Today the world looks quite differnt - or not. Aleksandar Karisik is a filmmaker and has just finished a documentation about a German descendend population in Vojvodina. Shortly before midnight he is drinking his last beer in the garden of an artist pub in the Old Town of Novi Sad and starts to talk about himself outright: That he is one third German, Jewish and Serbian descendent, how he was organising the mass protests at the turn of the year 1996/97 against the forging of the local election results, and that he hasn't left the country for more then ten years. "I don't want to be humiliated and stand for hours and hours in a line in front of the consulate."

Serbian citizen can hardly travel to any country of the world without a visa, not even a neighboring country, not to mention one of the Schengen countries. This may also be one of the many reasons for the extrodinary distinct culture of the new media in ex-Yugoslavia. Mailbox systems like Zamir-Net have already been founded during the beginning of the civil war and long before the World Wide Web. Legendary are also the internet campaigns of the Belgrad radio station B92 against state censorship. Last year, the media initiatives from Sarajevo to Ljubljana, Zagreb to Novi Sad have joined in "a.network" and try desperatly to look for synergies in the daily fight against narrow-minded authorities and empty funds. The few funds are now discontinued, since the attention of the western partners has shifted to other parts of the world.

KUDA means "Where to" and the question is meant quite seroius. On the homepage it says: "The page could not be found" and only the fine print opens the way to the actual informations. The small media center is situated between a postoffice and a fischmonger in a typical neighborhood of industrial workers far outside of the center of Novi Sad. The old computers in the internet cafe have been sorted out in the end of the 90ies by the statecapital of Bavaria, Munich. Zoran Pantelic, the young director from KUDA, has brought them in a truck shortly after the NATO air raids to Novi Sad and reconfigured all of them with Linux operating systems. Now these ancient machines are standing on a selfmade forged bar in one of the lovingly designed rooms of the center.

The guest list from KUDA.ORG looks like a Who-is-Who of netculture of the past 10 years: from Critcal Art Ensemble to VJ's of Coldcut, from Bureau d'Etudes to the director of Ars-Electronica Gerfried Stocker, they all found the way to the city on the Danube, whose famous fortress has once been conceptualized by the Habsburgs as a bastion against the ottoman empire.

Today the 400,000 inhabitants of Novi Sad are located on the other site of a border, whose political function looks surprisingly similar to the one back then. Bitterness and disappointment about being for an unknown time the loser of an european unification process are forming the ground for ultra-reactionary and nationalist movements, who are now also gaining popularity in the traditionally very cosmopolitan Vojvodina after they already won the parliamentary election.

The new national cultural policy seems to withdraw the short period of liberalisation, that happened after the deposing Milosevic and enabled the founding of media centers like KUDA. Zoran Pantelic says: "Nowadays projects that are religiously or nationalistic motivated get funded. An urban, european or even globally focused culture is not supported anymore."

For the local election in September Pantelic is worried about a landslide victory of the right winged ultras in Novi Sad, who already have their strongholds in the proletarian neighborhoods that surround the antic Old Town. Therefore the media artists from KUDA have left the virtual domain and interfere with an old school protest action in the current political debate. Right before the official celebrations of May 9th, the day of victory over fascism, the media artists are passing out carrot juice to the assembled press. "The vitamin A should help to see the increasing danger of right winged extremism", says Pantelic.

The symbolic action is the starting shot for a local alliance: In the beginning of May KUDA started an "Initiative for the reconstruction of social and cultural life in Novi Sad". "The reactions have been overwheming", Pantelic says and points out the importance of an open, new media culture that is rooted locally, especially now. Then he starts to adore an abandond handball stadium, situated at the Danube, which Pantelic and his five person team want to modificate into a large cultural center. An architect and friend from New York is already working on modification plans and a financing concept.

In the condition of improvisation, in which the city finds itself still five years after the air raids, such ideas seem to be almost ludicrous. On the way back from their picnic the artists in their tourbuses are late again: a heavy storm has forced all excursionists to a harum-scarum homeward journey. And since the rebuildung of the in 1999 bombed "Bridge of Peace" is still in process, there are traffic jams for miles and miles to pass the only provisionary bridge to cross the Danube.

(written by Florian Schneider, originally published in german in a similar version in FAZ. the german original can be found here.)