It’s been sunny and 13 degrees in Brussels today, so time to think of spring and my favourite sporting pastime (well, it rivals cricket!) – inline skating. A friend asked me for some ideas of good skate routes today and apart from the suggestions at Rouliroula I wondered how best...
So 2007 draws to a close, my second full year of blogging (Euroblog launched in July 2005 – this is the 666th post since then), and it’s time to reflect a little about where this blog is going and what I might manage to make of it in 2008. But...
So the door to your shower cubicle falls off. What do you do? The answer from our neighbours upstairs: keep showering anyway! Spraying water all over the floor, causing mould, damage to the wooden floor outside their bathroom, and now damp and mould in our bathroom on the floor below....
I’ve moved from a global city, well renowned for its sights and economy (London), to a rather grey provincial capital where the EU institutions are based (Brussels). But I love it. Most people I speak to in London just cannot understand it. Why would I want to leave London behind?...
I’ve come to the conclusion that life in the big city – London – is really not for me. I’m currently splitting my time between London and Brussels, doing my website work in Belgium yet coming to the UK to visit clients and run training courses. I’ve not felt so...
If you just ask for ‘a coffee’ in a different European cities, what do you get? In Brussels the answer is simple – a long-ish espresso type coffee, with a slightly burnt edge, normally served with a biscuit (perhaps a Speculoos), a couple of sugars, and some cream. In France...
The last few weeks have not really been a high point for the blog – basically silence! It’s not that I’ve stopped thinking or reflecting. It’s more that I have not found enough time to sit down and put a few thoughts together. I’m still in London for the moment,...
I’ve always had some strange admiration for Victorian Britain. The sheer yet elegant scale of many of the machines needed thanks to nothing more advanced than coal power. So as today was London Open House day I thought it would be worth my while to pay a visit to a...
I’ve known for a while that I’ll be working as a freelance website designer and EU politics trainer from the autumn of 2007. The main question outstanding was where I would be based. I’m now quite relieved to be able to confirm that Brussels will be my main place of...
Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture paints a rather bleak picture of a generation that is economically troubled and emotionally taut – essentially the post-Baby Boom generation. The term Generation Y applies to people coming after them – statistically speaking people born after 1978. But that term has not...
I’m staying in the Europäische Akademie Berlin, in the middle of the grand villas of Grunewald in western Berlin. An additional advantage is the huge forest to the south west of here, towards Wannsee. I’ve just returned from a 40 minute run through the forest and around the Grunewaldsee, the...
The last few weeks have been manic – far too much to do in the office, and all the preparation for eventually starting as a freelance website designer in the autumn. It’s all very exciting, but tiring too, and blogging has suffered as a result. But the crazy weeks are...