The symposium was the foundation pillar of establishing the institute in 1994 and has developed into a renown meeting of storytellers. In 2013 storytellers from around the world came to Slovenia to tell and listen to the medieval epos Parzival and discussed the importance of storytelling as a composing element of identity in Europe. Slovenia lies in the heart of Europe on the crossroads of cultures and is geographicaly rich on diversities where the Alps and Mediteranean, Panonian and Dinaric worlds are at our hand within an hour drive by car. In the Middle Ages, this was a position between the grail’s East and knighthood’s West. Culturally and historically, the time was ripe for
which with language of high aesthetic value, spiritual strength, and an incredibly precise outer and inner structure of the story of a hero’s journey, showing his transformation from naïveté through doubt into a universal man. The exact places mentioned in the epic can still be recognized in nowadays’; these include Rohas (Rogatec), Zilli (Celje),
Graien (Grajena near Ptuj) and, most importantly, Gandin (Hajdina), after which Parzival’s grandfather was named. This means that the poet was familiar with this area, at the very least.
