If a quiz question were to ask, “What zodiac sign was composer Vivaldi born under?” the correct answer would be—Pisces!
Italian composer Antonio Vivaldi was born on March 4, 1678, in Venice. As a sickly child, he tried out every string instrument his father brought home. His father, a barber by trade, encouraged him to take seaside walks to ease his breathing, as young Antonio suffered from asthma. And so the famed composer developed his musicality on his own—he never attended a music school.
He played in the way he heard things himself. Breathing in the sea air, Antonio composed all four seasons as a musical story about four characters walking the same path, each with their own temperament.
Children and art have their own mysterious ways of finding one another, and last Saturday at the Europe House, children painted “what they heard” using watercolor pencils. First they listened to “Winter,” then to “Summer,” and afterward they dove into their paints, papers, and palettes—this is how all of these artworks were created.
Children are frequent visitors at the Europe House. During the Saturday music-and-art workshops, they are creative, loud, and deeply curious. They have an endless number of questions and are never satisfied with short answers.
“How do you fish in Sweden when the water freezes?” they asked Ambassador Andreas von Beckerath as he stood in front of a large aquarium filled with freshwater fish from Serbia’s rivers and lakes. He explained how, when he was a boy, he drilled holes in the ice and managed to catch fish that way.
Ambassador of the EU to Serbia, Andreas von Beckerath, at a workshop with children, 19 November 2025.
The ambassador, originally from Sweden, also explained to the third-grade pupils of the “Drinka Pavlović” Primary School how he used to fish from a boat with his father. He, in turn, asked them how many of them had ever gone fishing and what they do with the fish once they catch it.
In unison, the children replied that the fish should be returned to the water, and that they enjoy fishing on Serbia’s rivers—but that they had never seen a frozen river like the one evoked by the sounds of Vivaldi’s “Winter”. That was until last week, when the ambassador showed them a series of photographs from Sweden in which not only rivers, but entire lakes, were covered in ice.
There were also images of lush forests teeming with wildlife. The children and the ambassador share a common concern for nature and animals, along with influencer Andrija Jo, who hosted that day’s meeting between the “children’s guardians of nature” and Ambassador Beckerath—who asked the children simply to call him Andreas.
This visit with the schoolchildren was no coincidence. As part of Green Diplomacy Week—when all of Europe seeks to align long-term efforts toward protecting nature—the ambassador brought another resident to the Europe House aquarium. It was a small fish, a type of stone loach, which he first placed in a smaller tank so it could adjust to its new environment.
“I’ll introduce the new fish into the big aquarium, and some of you will get to feed it. But first, we need to give it a name,” the ambassador said, inviting the children to submit suggestions.
Although he personally liked the name “Mićko,” the majority of the children voted to name the new stone loach “Krki”. Krki now swims cheerfully among the other residents of the large aquarium and showed no shyness in sharing the food that the children and Ambassador Andreas dropped in for him.
The nature and society lesson continued with Tanja Vukov from the Institute for Biological Research “Siniša Stanković”. The children listened to fascinating facts about wetland habitats, examined samples, asked hundreds of questions, and discovered how deeply interconnected nature is.
“From the tiniest river shrimp to the largest monsoon rain—everything in nature is connected,” Tanja explained.
What captured the children’s attention most, however, were the specimens of water snakes (both live ones and those preserved in jars), frogs, and other small amphibians.
Whether you love music, nature, fish, frogs, or Italian classical compositions—you certainly love children. That’s why you should sign them up for the children’s workshops held every Saturday at 10 a.m. in Belgrade, at the corner of Knez Mihailova and Zmaj Jovina streets, in the European House. You’re also welcome to learn more HERE.
This year’s European Green Diplomacy Week focused the country’s attention on water and the life it carries. The Europe House, together with partners from the EU for Green Agenda in Serbia project and numerous organizations, demonstrated how learning about ecology can become a fun and meaningful life lesson.
