Babel

**Speakers:**

- **Soloúp** (illustrator, political cartoonist, PhD holder from the Department of Cultural Technology and Communication at the University of the Aegean).
- **Giannis Koukoulas** (Assistant Professor at the Department of Sciences of Preschool Education and Educational Design, University of the Aegean).
- **Marianna Misiou** (Associate Professor at the Department of Sciences of Preschool Education and Educational Design, University of the Aegean, specialising in “Visual Narratives and Their Pedagogical Use in Teaching Practice”. Since 2024, she has also been Director of the Master's Programme “Children's Books and Educational Materials”).

**The Tower of Babel. The tower of confusion.**

Human vanity breeds monsters. Incomprehensible words, unfamiliar beliefs, ideas and religions. Us and the Others.

What could those fallen human beings, the builders of that towering structure, possibly have had to fight over, even when they began speaking different languages?

What could the soot-covered workers from every nation, digging coal deep in the mines of Belgium centuries later, possibly have had to divide them?

A young refugee couple who survived the destruction of Smyrna wander bewildered through the streets of a foreign-speaking city: Brussels. On March 5, 1924, they are still there.

A hundred years later, walking those same streets, their grandchild searches for traces of their long-forgotten footsteps. But their own steps unexpectedly lead them to a café. The last Greek café in Molenbeek!

And there, as the deep voice of Kazantzidis echoes from the jukebox, a group of elderly men, former coal miners of every race and language, sit together discussing this fleeting and fragile miracle of existence.

A pedigree dog, a stray dog — what could they possibly have to say about all this?