Week 4 - Greetings from Warsaw

To everyone in DC freezing your faces off, I feel your pain! I am currently in Warsaw, Poland, preparing myself for a Conference tomorrow on multi-step dispute resolution. I arrived this morning, and am staying here until Thursday night. While I am a bit nervous for my speech tomorrow, it is nice to be away from the office for a few days and it will likely make the week feel significantly shorter. A few comments on Warsaw: It is frigid, the streets are utterly noiseless, and the sky is always grey. Still, this city is absolutely beautiful. I've been walking around all day, trying to absorb all it history, which is both cruel and fascinating. The entire city was destroyed during WWII, and when the Nazi's were finally driven out with the help of Russia, the Communist regime only helped develop the citizenry enough to allow themselves the opportunity to set up a puppet government. Needless to say, this city has scars. Still, if any of you follow EU affairs you will know that despite the financial crisis, Poland is doing quite well, actually remarkably so given its downtrodden economic past. Anyways, that's my 6 hour analysis of Warsaw. I will spend the night practicing my presentation, and hopefully it all goes well...I will let you all know in a week.

This past week I spent the majority of my time calling mediation centers in the EU and trying to convince them to join AIA's EMTPJ project (European Mediation Scheme for Practitioners of Justice). I have gotten well over 40 institutions to join now, far better results than we initially predicted. There is still much to be done however, as we hope to have the marketing campaign up and running by the end of the month. I am learning a lot in preparing this project, especially in regards to negotiating with people from other cultures. I have found it considerably hard to convince the German institutions to join our cause, for they seem to speak the least amount of English. Surprisingly, I had a very successful conversation with someone from Moscow, and he was very interested in joining. This ended any preconceived notions I had about Russians being difficult to compromise with (thanks to old James Bond movies). I also had the opportunity to use my Spanish when dealing with an institution in Madrid, and I was happy when I could sell the project in my non-native language. Most people I am consulting with are interested by the fact that an American is working for a Brussels think-tank, and I find it often works to my advantage. An Irish mediator liked my name, and when I told him my Dad's name is Michael Collins (the same name of the Irish Republican Army's former leader) he laughed and the conversation quickly grew more casual. These conversations have become very rewarding, and enjoyable.

Last week was much less stressful than the one prior. I was able to learn a lot about international mediation, which is what I am most interested in and essentially the reason I flew all the way to Brussels for this internship. Still, my boss still rushes into my office a couple times a day jabbering about an arbitration case he needs me to look over. I do my best, and there is no way he doesn't know I am not a law student now (for I have told him countless times), yet he still consults with me on dense arbitral cases. Perhaps this will grow on me, though I doubt it. For the time being, I am much more intrigued by cross-cultural mediation, for it seems to shrink the world and reduce any international conflicts to what they really are, communication errors. I hope to gain valuable insight during my time here on how mediation can be applied to not only business disputes, but those between governments as well. Until then, wish me luck tomorrow.