Category Archives: Life

The Strange Case of Odysseas Tsenai

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In the news today the Comission and Spain/Poland are still haggling over the price of the constitution. Meantime from another pole of Europe, a curious story of one young Albanian, and the struggle to assert his elementary rights in his new homeland: Greece. My feeling is that in our current preoccupations, our conception of Europe lies too far to the North and too far to the West. I also think, that when we come to look at the contribution and participation of immigrants in Europe, we all too often forget the adversity they face.

Background: in 1990 the Greek Alabania border opened. Over the mountains and across the sea the Albanians started arriving in Greece. Their numbers were large but never counted: their number still constitutes material for scare stories on popular Greek TV. The actual number is unknown but it might be as high as a million all over Greece (if you include the ethnic Greek Albanians ). The first arrivals came from a country whose isolation was proverbial. They were destitute, blinded by the city lights and the consumer goods, and clueless as to what they could do to earn a living.
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If You’re Surprised By This You Shouldn’t Be

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Really, much as I would like to see a marked and rapid improvement in the democratic climate in Iraq, forgive me if I can’t help considering most of the discussion about the possibilitiesof this occuring in the near future a bit like a contemporary revamp of ‘innocents abroad’. At the end of the day all these endless ‘corruption indexes’ that you see published from time to time in the press do actually mean something. Having lived in a society that was relatively less corrupt (the UK) and one that is relatively more (Spain), I do get to note some important differences. One of these relates to the social standing of politicians.
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Get Well Soon Tobias

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Just a short line for Tobias:”God Speed Your Recovery”. We and Europe need you. BTW: doesn’t this make an even stronger case for good public transport and walking!

just a short note to let you know I will presumably not be able to write much for the next four to six weeks as I broke my left arm yesterday and am right now reeducating myself to get on with single handed typing, which is not too easy once being used to ten fingers on the keyboard. I will try though, as part of my physiotherapy ;) . One tip from the expert: Don’t ever attempt ride a bycicle in autumn when the streets are slippery…

Tobias

If I were you I would try the local zoo. See if they have any macacos, because with “Um n?mero infinito de macacos, com um n?mero infinito de teclados…………….”

The people you meet on the plane

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You sometimes meet interesting people flying across the Atlantic, and this trip has to just about take the cake for it. On the way from Minneapolis to Amsterdam yesterday morning, my flight was carrying a group of Amish bound for Zurich.

Now, the Amish are perhaps another institution Americans are more familiar with then Europeans. They are not very large in number, but they have enough media presence that most people know who they are. The Amish are a Protestant religious group who, beyond just ordinary adherence to their faith, also live moderately segragated lives from the American mainstream. They speak a southern German dialect commonly but inaccurately called “Pennsylvania Dutch.” They wear a particular style of clothing, the men tend to wear long beards but not mustaches, and the women dress very conservatively and wear small bonnets, as commanded by Paul in the New Testament. They also don’t drive cars and restrict their access to quite a few other modern conveniences.

The Amish are widely seen as more isolated from the world than they really are, and their society is a great deal less idyllic than it is made out to be. Since I’m ethnically Mennonite (a related but more mainstream faith) and spent my college years in a heavily Amish area, I have a bit more experience with them than the average American and I can assure you that the Amish are good deal more connected to the world than they are made out to be. Quite a few leave their communities and join more mainstram life. There are drug problems, and I gather domesitic violence and child abuse are not rare. They are not subsistence farmers; they sell their crops for cash, put the money in banks and buy food at grocery stores. Apparently, roller blades are very fashionable in Amish communities right now, and I remember seeing a lot of horses and buggies at Taco Bell on Sunday afternoon.

Anyway, why would they be travelling to Zurich, and what does this have to do with Europe?
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Life outside of Europe

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So, today I’m blogging from Idaho where I’m visiting the in-laws. This is the first time I’ve been back in the States long enough for the place to feel foreign since decamping off to Belgium a couple years ago. Actually, the strangest part of this trip has been the feeling of being in a foreign country, even though it’s a country that I’ve spent almost half my life in.

Some of that could be Idaho. I’ve lived in California, Colorado, Indiana and New Jersey, and this is a bit like Colorado. Of course, I haven’t lived in Colorado in 20 years. But, considering that I’ve spent most of this trip either working on a white paper for my employer or planted in front of basic cable, I have to at least consider the possibility that Idaho isn’t really the problem.

[Warning: This post is long and will contain extensive references to life in America. The Americans will probably all get it. You may not.]
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Some thoughts on borders

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One of the things about living in an island state is that you rarely cross over national borders on land. To get to any other country from Britain you have to fly, sail or travel underground and all these have their various formalities for border crossing and, like most Britons travelling abroad, my travels within Europe in recent years have been a case of going from Britain to another country and then coming back.

So, on a day trip to France on Monday, we took a brief detour into Belgium and crossed a European border on land for the first time in several years. Having spent some time travelling through the US last year, it was quite an interesting experience to notice how little paraphernalia there is to mark the border nowadays, especially compared to the changes you notice on the borders of many US states. A simple ‘Belgie’ sign, a sign telling you the new speed limits and a single police car on the French side of the border are all that marks the transition from one country to another, which is a rather strange state of affairs. There are obvious differences that soon become apparent – the signs are now in Flemish, rather than French, and there are subtle differences in architecture – but the ease with which one can now cross borders within Europe is, in my opinion, one of the great benefits of European integration.

However, even though the physical borders have gone, it does not mean that there has been any homogenisation of the culture across the border. Adinkerk, the first town across the border in Belgium, is still unmistakeably Flemish, even with the large number of shops there selling cheap tobacco to British (and now also French, after their tobacco tax rises on Monday) visitors, and the other side of the border is still clearly French.

Anyway, what I want to do here is open up the floor to our readers for your thoughts on and experiences of travelling across borders. Are there places where the borders are unnoticeable physically and culturally? Where are there still strong border controls within the EU? What do you think the future is culturally for the borderlands of Europe? Will they maintain their identity or will continual cross-border traffic eventually create a homogenous border culture?

And, for a quick consumer travel tip for our readers. If you are planning on travelling between Britain and France then Eurotunnel are currently charging ?39 (approx ?59) to take a car and passengers for a day return trip.

German Is Getting Sexy Again. Again.

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The controverse reaction to Edward’s use of a French block quote in a blog that claims to be the place for intelligent English language coverage of European affairs, made me remember my first blogging conversation. It was a discussion about Germans not publishing in English and the stipulation by the Norwegian blogger Bj?rn St?rk that ??nothing beautiful or sensible should ever be written in Norwegian, if it could be written in English.? So after speaking French all evening, and in light of the above mentioned comments as well as my imminent visit to the Frankfurt International Book Fair (link in English) I felt compelled to recycle my defence of linguistic diversity as a virtue of its own right, which was first published in a slightly different version in almost a diary on February 2nd, 2003.

Bj?rn St?rk had a look around the web and was astonished by the fact that he could find relatively few European, particularly German and French, (particularly political) blogs published in English. Contemplating the deeper issue at hand – the relation of national cultures and supra-national languages – in this case English – in an age of global interaction – Bj?rn made an interesting argument concerning cultural imperialism, linguistic protectionism, linguistic economies of scale and scope as well as the advantages of publishing in English instead of one?s native language.

No doubt about it – English has become some sort lingua franca in many respects.

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Number 2 in line for the Dutch throne resigns

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I’m going to get a reputation for never putting up very serious stuff on this blog if I keep posting this sort of thing, but here goes.

So, I’m watching the coverage on Nederland 1 of today’s announcement from Prince Johan. It seems that, like his older brother, the number two prince of the Netherlands also has a penchant for falling for the wrong woman. Mabel Wisse Smit – a career UN human rights worker – may or may not have had a relationship with murdered gangster and suspected drug smuggler Klaas Bruinsma sometime in the distant past.
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