My 'Brussels weeks' feel a bit like coming back to my home village.
I’m on the train back to Berlin after a week in Brussels. Given that I’m now four months in with this dual-city life, I was naturally getting a lot of questions during this ‘Brussels week’ about how it’s going.
So far so good, has been my response. The two cities are so remarkably different so it’s nice to shake things up every two weeks. The train has served me well as a sort of ‘mobile office’, and so far it hasn't felt too disruptive.
While banks in Germany rake in ATM fees from customers of other German banks, EU law forbids them from charging citizens of other EU countries.
It's a 'Brussels week' for me this week, I'm in town to shoot a few videos and moderate some conferences. As the Autumn draws on, I'm finding myself here more often than I'm in Berlin. But this is fine, since I have apartments in both cities.
Strictly speaking, when I'm in Brussels I am "home". This is still my primary address - my Belgian phone is still my primary number, and I still use a Belgian bank account for all transactions. And actually, this last fact has made my life in Berlin easier.
Tomorrow is the 'Day of German Unity', marking 25 years since East and West Germany were merged. But don't call it 'reunification day'.
The area around Brandenburg Gate, once home to the 'no mans land' between the two layers of the Berlin Wall, is tonight being decked out for a massive celebration. Tomorrow, 3 October, is the annual celebration of 'German Unity Day'. This year's holiday is no ordinary one. It is marking 25 years since German reunification.
But don't make the mistake of calling it 'Reunification Day'. I called it by this name with a German friend today. I was swiftly deutsched, and told that despite the fact that it is held on the anniversary of the day the East German government was merged into the West, the proper name is 'unity day'.
I was only repeating the term I have read in English-speaking media, as there have been several reports this week about the 25th anniversary. But there are two important reasons why this is not called Reunification Day: it corresponds to an older holiday name, and because pre-war Germany has not been entirely reunited.
I hadn't been to Krakow since 2002, and my how the city has changed.
This week I spent a few days in Krakow, Poland. I had to do a bit of work there for my book, and a friend visiting from home in New York wanted to come check out the city.
The last time I was in Krakow was in 2002, while I was living in Prague as a student. Me and a few friends rented a car and drove the six hours to Poland, stopping at Ostrava in Moravia along the way. We also visited Auschwitz, and to be honest that is the only part of the trip I remember well. Krakow city was a bit forgettable for me. I remember that we were not terribly impressed with the cultural activities or the nightlife.
Germans may be more sympathetic to Syrian refugees because many of their grandparents were refugees themselves, expelled from their homes after World War II. The Poles and Czechs may be less sympathetic, because it was their grandparents doing the expelling.
This week I took a train to Prague from Berlin, in order to talk to people continuing on the train to Budapest for a radio report I was working on about Europe's disappearing overnight trains. I lived in Prague back in 2002, and it was nice to be back. I met up with a few Czech friends, and at each meeting the subject of the refugee crisis came up. My Czech friends said they were very embarassed of the images being shown to the world, of Czech security officers marking Syrian refugees with numbers and treating them inhumanely. I told them, at least the Hungarians are making you lookmore humane by comparison.
A real East-West split has emerged in the EU over how to deal with the refugee crisis. Right now the 'Vyshegrad Four' - Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and the Czech Republic - are furiously resisting a proposal to resettle the Syrian refugees pouring into Europe in a proportionate way across EU member states. Much ink has been spilled analysing why Eastern European governments are behaving in this way.
...well, level A1 at least. Now I'm going to improve my German through schlager music lessons.
This week I 'graduated' from my first intensive German course, finishing level A1 (elementary). I did pretty well on the final exam actually, so despite my fears about it being such a daunting language I think I'm doing alright. But, as I was warned, it is very challenging.
It's been a very different experience from learning French at the Sorbonne in 2008 in Paris. For one thing, I started in July with absolutely no knowledge of German, whereas I had already taken French in high school. But even with this in mind, I found French to be a much easier language to learn because the sentence structure is quite similar.
