Nowadays, people’s lives often take them far from the land of their birth, right? And the internet is supposed to be able to help diminish the problems arising from distance, yes? We will see if Apple and iTunes are up to the challenge.
Dear Sir or Madam,

My sister, who lives in the United States, sent me [...]

Bleh.

Did prices really go up when the Euro arrived? The public mind, or at least the dominant media discourse, says they did. The inflation indices say they didn’t, or at least the prices that did go up were outweighed by the ones that went down. This paradox may have been solved. Erich Kirchler, of Vienna [...]

The first banners for the coming World Cup have been hung here in Munich. The stadium that will host the opener on June 6 has been finished for more than a Bundesliga season; the autobahn enlargement is done; and I think even the renovations on the main subway station will be finished on time. Teutonic [...]

It never stops when your blog has to cover an entire continent. Hardly had the Italian left taken AFOE’s advice to get Giorgio Napolitano elected as president than the Clearstream scandal in France was getting out of hand, and nothing at all on the blog! Fortunately, at the moment the news from that quarter is [...]

Overheard in the bar, Paris-Toulouse TGV near Bordeaux…
A French saloon bar bore, who has apparently just returned from a spell abroad, is in the process of berating “national decline” to the barman. Apparently these students are deluded, irresponsible fools, France is in the Middle Ages, and two of the escalators weren’t working at Montparnasse [...]

Everyone’s been terribly worried about France. First of all, last autumn’s carburning outbreak saw a lot of people who really ought to know better gathering to hail the end of days and the Islamofascist conquest of Eurabia, or something. Now, the students are out on the streets to protest the government’s new labour laws, and [...]

Regionalist tensions in Spain, murderously cold weather and French nuclear stroppiness are all important enough in their way, I suppose, but let’s not lose sight of what truly matters: Bayern Munich move ahead to the semi-finals of the DFB Cup. It will be scant comfort to Tobias, I fear, that his boys from Mainz 05 [...]

Eastern Europe is currently enjoying its coldest weather since 1979. Temperatures in Moscow have been below minus 20 C (that’s minus 5 Fahrenheit for our American readers) for a week straight now, with regular visits to minus 30 (minus 22 Fahrenheit). In Bucharest, where we live, it’s currently minus 9 Celsius; that will [...]

Spain’s economy is of course booming, (as it has been for the last ten years). The inflation rate is booming too. Some even go so far as to suggest that Spain should now become a member fo the G8. Spanish people are of course buying a lot more houses, indeed more housing units were built [...]