Tag Archives: Life

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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A Life Without Regrets

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There is a danger I think of taking our criticisms of contemporary French political life to ludicrous extremes. So taking the opportunity that today is the fortieth anniversary of the death of Edith Piaf, I’d like to offer a small celebration of the enormous contribution of Francophone culture to our modern European identity. And to enter really into the spirit of things, the link below is posted in French. Incidentally, one small confession: when working on-line and not listening to music I seem to have gotten into the habit of listening to French radio. It was the commentary about Piaf on this morning’s news that altered me to the date. They also made the interesting comparison between Egypt’s Om Kalthoun, and the Portuguese ‘Queen of Fado’ Amalia Rodrigues as women of their time who came to symbolise something important about the popular sentiment of their countries.

BTW yesterday was also the 25th aniversary of the disappearance of Jacques Brel: ne me quitte pas.
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France to be the fourth nation in space

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The credible recent rumours that China is less than a week away from it’s first manned space flight appear to have stimulated some other potential space-faring nations. France and Russia have announced an accord en principle to launch manned Russian Soyuz craft from the ESA launch centre at Kourou in French Guiana. The Soyuz is the now roughly thirty-five year old Russian three-man launch vehicle which China has cloned for its space programme. France will be footing approximately half of the €350 million the ESA has allocated to the programme, making either France or the ESA the world’s fourth space power. Agence France-Presse, via Spaceflight Daily, is reporting that launches could take place as soon as 2006.

With the American space shuttle (also designed roughly 30 years ago) grounded indefinitely and no new money going into the design of manned launch vehicles, the Soyuz is the only manned space vehicle currently in service and appears likely to stay that way

According to French primeminister Jean-Marie Raffarin, “Cela nous donnera une grande base [permettant] ? nos industries spatiales, avec les Russes mais aussi avec les Allemands et les Europ?ens [..] d’avoir acc?s ? l’espace et ? toutes ses richesses dans l’ind?pendance.”

It seems that the Columbia shuttle accident and recent US-EU tensions have forced the ESA to evaluate its options for an independent manned space capability. At present, only the Russian space agency is able to reach the International Space Station. I guess the ESA figured that if China could afford to launch Soyuz capsules, then it’s probably the cheapest option for European manned space travel.

If €350 million will buy you a copy of the Russian manned space programme, can Japan be far behind? Perhaps even Brazil will want to join the game, since it has a really quite well developed unmanned space programme. €350 million isn’t that much money. There are individuals with more in assets than that.

It has become traditional for each space-faring nation to come up with a new word for people who travel in space. Americans are astronauts, Russians are cosmonauts, and Chinese space travelers are taikonauts (from tai4kong1 taikong – Mandarin for “space.”) Will an independent manned EU space programme require a new term? Enquiring minds (well, pedantic lexicographers at any rate) want to know.

My Petit Robert already has a French appellation for space travellers: spationaute. The term is, apparently, in actual use, since googling it gets approximately 2,300 hits. Some of the French press – and even a few anglophone outlets – have used the word to refer to Frenchmen (and women) who have travelled into space on the shuttle and on Russian launches. My Robert dates it to 1962, but doesn’t tell me if it was an Académie Française invention or a spontaneous production of the French media. It also marks it as rare, but that seems to be rapidly changing.

From a lexicographic standpoint, this one-word-per-nation approach is a disaster. I wonder if the other members of the ESA will be demanding their own words for their space travellers. Will Germans taking off from Kourou demand to be refered to as “Raumonauts”? How about the Brits and the Irish? Will they demand separate terminology from the Americans? Or worse, from each other? Will the Irish demand to be known as fanasonauts? Perhaps, in the name of European cooperation, we should all agree on a single term. Euronaut is a distinct possibility. The Latin root vacuus suggest vaconaut, but something tells me that will not fly. Any suggestions?

They’re Selling Postcards of……the Fiesta

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It’s party time in Barcelona. There’s no circus in town, but there is just about everything else. In fact many of you may be surprised to learn that today is a public holiday here, and indeed it may surprise you even more to discover that the holiday is only Barcelona. This situation is strange for many outside Spain, and draws attention to the fact that decisions about public holidays (and of course, many other matters) are taken at three levels: national, autonomous community, and municipal. (Oh how well I remember the days of travelling round Europe, and needing to change money on just the day………that everything was unexpectedly closed). It also draws attention to the prevalence and social importance of public holidays and festivals here. Of note too is the way these holidays draw attention to that unique combination of the traditional and the modern which characterises contemporary Spain. (Actually, to be really pc here I should say ‘the modern Spanish State’ since this is the terminology adopted by those of its citizens who do not especially consider themselves to be Spanish, there is no equivalent of the British/Welsh/Scottish/English classification here, and Catalan, Basque, and Galician football teams are definitely not encouraged in the new ‘multicultural’ Spain).
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