Buzz Aldrin in his novel “Encounter with Tiber” inventend a fictional french space programm and of course with an french name: ?astropilot de france?, in short: ?astro-f?. I’d could imagine an astro-e.

Like Karl Heinz I would prefer something like space traveller, Raumfahrer - or sounding more poetic: Raumreisender - in german and similar terms in other languages.

By the way: I like to say that Germany’s first astronaut was a cosmonaut.

Markku, Out of curiosity, do you consider yourself a European ?

Or did you exempt yourself from your unfounded slander ?

In either case, I take it as a compliment that I’ve been able to liven things up a bit. The discussions in Euro blogs tend to be so circumspect, and filled with too much probity.

The Germans use Astronaut / Cosmonaut often enough. Proper German is “Raumfahrer” - space traveller.

If you want some term suitable for all of Europe, the Vatican Dictionary has a modern Latin term: “Nauta Sideralis” - Star sailor
Strictly speaking, I am unhappy with any term that includes “Star”. We are literally light years away from travelling to any star. “Space” is more appropiate. So intellectually I prefer Cosmonaut to Astronaut. However, I admit that I routinely use Astronaut out of habit.

Greetings
Karl Heinz

Hamburg, Germany

I don’t know what kind of people you meet or where you get information, but both in the media and in popular opinion, European attitudes towards America are neither uniform nor uniformly negative.

- Lots of people like American culture (in a broad sense, whether films, folk music, hamburgers, whatever). On the other hand, there are enough people who think it vulgar,

- Lots of people have travelled or lived in the US or know Americans who live in Europe. Generally they are happy with the experience. As usual, there are the unhappy exceptions. Plus, some American attitudes are very different from what most Europeans think (e.g.about the death penalty)

- Remember 9/11 ? There was a huge outpouring of support and sympathy for the US.

- US government policies have come in for serious criticism, especially under G.W.Bush. But there is a long-term issue here. Just one example: Do you remember that US governments supported dictatorship in Spain, Greece and Portugal ? A lot of people really mean “US government” when they say “America” - the same happen from the other side, of course

- Finally, Europe is a very diverse continent. Speaking about “European attitudes” without any qualifications often is sloppy thinking. How much can you really generalize about Britain, Ukraine, Spain, Germany, Finland, Croatia and Malta (to name just some of the countries) ?

Greetings
Karl Heinz

Hamburg, Germany

In your efforts to reassure Europeans that there is no anti-European hostility in America, you’d most likely expect that your sentiments would be reciprocated. However, should you ever have a chance to immerse yourself in the kind of discourse Europeans engage in amongst themselves - especially when the language is not in English - you’d recognize that the goodwill of Americans is certainly not returned.

What you might have encountered, Mr. Jaume, was actually directed at me–not Europeans. In other words, advocates of the Bush Administration’s dictatorial proclivities are trying to create a bizarre synthetic resentment with no historic roots. The target is Americans in the opposition.

Here’s how it works: I suggest that a lot of features of European society are successful and popular and have been tested for decades. We Americans could imitate them.

They say “James, why do you hate America?”

I say “Where the hell did that come from?”

They can always trundle out articles from Le Monde Diplomatique, which do tend to sound quite malevolent to Americans. Or they can blather about Swiss socialism (yes, I’m mocking elected Republicans!) and bickering ensues about that.

European opinions, expressed in public, have always provoked a lot of alarm from Americans. But the prestige and affection Europeans have in the US is enormous. If you have experienced rudeness from Yanks, I’m sorry but that represents that individual’s personal problems–it’s not a reflection of widespread sentiment.