Pizza Bolognese Á la Russe

More than once the Bologna Process has inspired culinary metaphors. While creating a European super-state has not proven to be an easy task, predicting the qualities of the common European cuisine is particularly difficult. Evidently, cultures have already influenced each other’s eating habits to the point that depicting the truly traditional has become a hopeless task; and more change is in train. It remains to be seen whether the French will ever be able to digest the freedom fries so popular in new Europe, and what hidden agenda President Putin may have in making the world respect the original boeuf stroganoff, the recipe of which is still perhaps being kept in an undisclosed location somewhere in East Prussia under the close guard of the Federal Security Services, and out of the reach of former colleagues from Lithuania dieting on vegetarian tseppelins. Côtelette á la Kiev has still to join the equation, once the long term political goal of many Ukrainian academics is finally achieved and the new, orange Ukrainian Minister of Education is invited to sign the Declaration and join the Process known for its many meetings and abundant culinary delights:

• Not for nothing did the forging of a “European higher education identity” begin in a city famous throughout the known world for its spaghetti with meat and tomato sauce. Nor that the delights of the fork should continue in the home-place of the potato dumpling (Prague), make obeisance to the Berlin home of the Eisbein (pig’s knuckle) and will, next year, assuage political appetite by feasting on Norwegian boiled cod at Bergen. The fusion of the delicious (national gastronomy) with the partially digestible (the reconstruction of higher education in Europe) is in a very soothe a radical innovation indeed (Neave 2004a).