Young man, you should know this by now.

Walking down King's Road from Victoria Station towards Belgravia I passed a young man clearly preparing for his day as late as possible. This man, probably no older than, maximum, 16, walking in the opposite direction, was wearing suit trouser, a white shirt hanging outside his trousers, and had his jacket hung over his arm. Around his neck was a black tie hanging untied. As I walked passed him his hands were on the knot desperatly trying to tie it and I could litteraly see how frenetically his mind tried to remember how to do it properly.

Poor sod, didn't your father teach you this ten years ago already?

A Night at the Boleyn Ground

Reading today’s papers I see that I was lucky. The queue outside Upton Park tube station stretch for maybe a hundred metres and the streets where lined with shield-and-baton bearing Met officers. Nevertheless, things seemed to run smoothly. Not long after, I learned, all hell had broken loose and these few streets in East London had turned into what some described as a “war zone”.

Three hours earlier I found myself at the Boleyn Tavern, trying to avoid having beer thrown at me. I was standing in a pub doing social-anthropologic field work on the 21st century tribes of working class England, or football supporters, as they’re also referred to as. I’d come to watch West Ham United take on Milwall in the second round of the Carlings League Cup, and was in the middle of a pre-game ritual including singing, shouting obscenities about their rivals and, of course, throwing half-filled plastic-cups of beer in the air. Abiding to the laws of gravity beer falls to the ground and at one point I found myself between the beer and the floor. Oops!

The match itself is worth remembering. Together with 24,491 others I was packed into the Boleyn Ground, or Upton Park as it’s usually known. A friend of mine from the area had gotten us tickets at the Bobby Moore Stand/South Bank, which was inhabited mostly with, from what I could see, fairly die-hard home supporters. For those not having an intimate knowledge of London football rivalries, myself included, Milwall is not very popular in this part of town, and long before the match began there was a heightened tension in the air.

Milwall is a few divisions below West Ham in the league system, so normally this should be a walk-in for the home team. It was far from it. West Ham got of to a decent start, but half-way into the first half Milwall took the lead. This seemed to knock the air out of the home squad, and for the next forty minutes or so, until only fifteen minutes remained of the match, there was not much to enjoy for the over 20,000 home supporters. They sang, they cheered, they shouted and they cursed, but for an outsider the entertainment was much more to be found on the stands than on the pitch. In the far end, where the Milwall supporters were gathered, things started to happen. From where I was standing, some 120 metres away, it was hard to tell exactly what was going on, but steadily more and more police and security guards gravitated towards the area, creating a solid blockade between the Milwall supporters and the pitch and between the supporters and the local majority. Then the bubble burst and the tension, for now at least, was released. With full time less than five minutes away West Ham equalized and crowds from three sides flooded the grass in a jubilant explosion, the guards unable to do anything but watch them in despair. It took a good five minutes or so before the pitch was cleared and the match could recommence.

Full time ended in a draw and early in the first extra half West Ham got a penalty shot. The guards braced themselves, only to find once again the pitch crowded as the home team taking the lead was celebrated. When the match finally ended, 3-1 to West Ham, once again the pitch filled with cheerful boys and girls, men and women celebrating.

After the match the streets were packed, people singing and shouting. As I walked to the tube I saw the police prepared for trubble but everything went smoothly all the way home. A night that could have ended so badly was just one long and joyful study of human interactions and turn of emotions. Then I watched the news this morning and saw what had happened after I left…


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SdJNu_KtA-4

Brick Lane

I’m not from this part of town. I’m not even from this very city. I’m a tourist. I’m an intruder, and it’s tattooed on my forehead. I’m a tall, blond, blue-eyed Norwegian in an Indian/Pakistani/Bangladeshi area. I’m in exotic Brick Lane. Yeah, right!

There’s nothing exotic about Brick Lane. On the contrary, Brick Lane on a Sunday in late August 2009 is a hang-out for the middle-class children and grand-children of 1968. It’s a London symbol of western cultural relativism and liberal colonial guilt. The entire street from one end to the other is filled with white Bob Marley-loving hippies and cappuccino-drinking slim-jeans & hat urban hipsters selling each other books on spiritual enlightenment, the “for Dummies” version, and African wannebe artefacts. And I fit right in.

I jot these lines down while sitting at a café called “Verge” and drinking herbal tea. In my bag is a copy of St. Augustine’s Confessions. Just after I’ve sat down and put my block on the table and started writing an old man, probably remembering when this place was still exotic for anyone looking like me, walks by and exerts “Ah, inspiration!” as his eyes fall upon my activity.

Obviously English is the most common tongue I’ve hear around here, but Hindi is not number two. The language I’ve heard second most often is French. And it’s not Maghreb French, nor is it the French of the banlieus. No, it’s proper French. It’s the French you teachers whish they commanded. It’s the French of Jean Sarkozy when he lunches with his mother-in-law.

The guys walking by are fit and slim. They wear loose and light summer clothes, sport Beatles anno 1964-long hair, smart hats and Ray-Ban Wayfarer sun glasses. They’re my age and a little older, a little younger. Some just got their A-levels and are heading for university, others graduated years ago and are already in comfortable jobs. The common denominator is that they’re all educated, successful and on top of their lives.

I'm in Brick Lane and there's nothing exotic about it.

Flanders vs. Norway

Flanders Today, my local, English-language weekly on life in Flanders, reports that population density in Flanders has reached 456 inhabitants per square kilometre. In Norway, on the other half, we're about 13. 13 inhabitants per square kilometre. On average. The reality is that... well, just look at the map and compare the two. For those ignorant souls out there, Flanders is the northern half of Belgium.

And for those of you who have a problem with scale, the total area of Belgium is 30.278 square kilometres, while Norway is a grand total of 307.442 square kilometres, or roughly ten times bigger.

EU ban on snus is illiberal and illegal

I'm neither a smoker nor a snuser (user of snus), and only a moderate drinker. A few years ago when the Christian Democrat Dagfinn Høybråten, then Norwegian Minister for Health, introduced a law banning smoking in pubs and restaurants in Norway I applauded it, and I'm still a bit taken back when I come to countries where smoking indoors, in pubs and restaurants as well as in private homes, is not only completely legal but also common. Okay, so smoking in private homes is not outlawed in Norway, but it is becoming less and less commonplace. I think people should have the right to use substances that might hurt their health, such as tobacco and alcohol, as long as the use of these substances does not inflict harm on others. Which is why I support the ban on smoking in indoor public places. What I neither support nor understand, however, is the ban on substances that have practically no harmful effect on third parties and what's health risks are debatable. I am here talking of snus. Being very common in Sweden as well as Norway as an alternative to smoking, as the only external harm it inflicts is that the use of (old fashion) snus is not very aesthetically pleasing. Unlike cigarettes, snus does not give of smoke stuck on bystanders' clothes. Whether it causes cancer in the same way as regular tobacco is debatable. Nevertheless, albeit being completely legal in most Scandinavian countries, it has since 1989 been banned in the rest of the EU Inner Market. This inflicts not only with the basic freedom of movement of goods, as established in the Treaties, it also contradicts with the principle of mutual recognition, so famously established with the Cassis de Dijon case in 1979. Snus is a legal good according to Swedish health standards and should therefor be able to be legally sold in all countries members of the Internal Market. To forbid it is not only a paternalistic infringement of citizens right to make individual decision for their life, it is also a clear breach of basic Community law and ECJ jurisprudence, and the ban should thus be lifted.

Belgian hygiene

I was having a coffee at Wall Street Café in Rue de la Loi before going to an interview at DG MARKT, and had to do my thing before I moved on. Standing by the sink at the loo I witnessed a sign instructing all staff of the café to wash their hands after having used the toilet. In this part of the world do we actually need to instruct people to wash their hands? Should not that be taken as a given?

Happiness

Overpriced take-away coffee from Häagen-Dazs. A dry bench. Sun that warms in March. The newest edition of The Economist.

Café Brant - 11.03.09

Strasbourg, a Wednesday afternoon in the beginning of Mars. Café Brant, a place I've been before. I sit by the window and if I turn my head I can see the Palais Universitaire. Across the square is Gallia, the student residence, and in front of me passes bus no. 6, a bus I've taken so many times before. A year has passed since I last was here, over two since N and I discussed his French love affairs and nearly two-and-a-half since I moved from the steps of the mentioned Palais and over here to finish my melancholic and longing letters to E while drowning my sorrows in coffee and Alsacian wine.

Half-an-hour ago the heat of the sun through the window forced me to lean back into the shadows. Now the road bricks are steadily turning dark and slippery from the rain, pouring down in uncontrollable waves. I look out and it rains. I turn my eyes down to the papers to write and when I look up again the rain has momentarily ceased. I look down to scribble down my observations and when I look out to confirm then the rain has once again commenced. The changes occurs faster than I manage to note down.

It's spring in Strasbourg and I'm back.

Globalisation in everyday brugeois life

"Due to transport problems in London, Professor NN has been obliged to cancel his class today. The Professor and I are very sorry for this inconvenience."

With this short message in my inbox my class and thus also my presentation today was cancelled. Because of 'transport problems' in London, England a class on the European Parliament is cancelled at a school in Bruges, Belgium. At my old university a class was once cancelled, I remember, as the professor forgot to tell us he was out of town that day, but mostly the lecturers walked to the Hill like the rest of us. Here they tell us about the jam at Manchester Airport at 4am or how much they enjoy travelling with SNCB (the Belgian railway company) from Brussels and up to us. It's nice to have 'the best' professors flewn in and its entertaining to listening to them joking about the 'typical Bruges wheather, as it is the same everytime they come here, but having them cancel because of a London traffic jam is just annoying. On the other hand, it does give me the opportunity to be productiv today...Like that's going to happen.

Me vs. Insomnia

It's 05.43 and I've been up for an hour and awake for some more. I fell asleep probably about half-an-hour after midnight and found myself wide awake at 03.30. What to do? What to do? I've got nothing to read (except my economics syllabus). Had I had a place of my own instead of a single room in a student residence I could have made myself coffee, watched some CNN and been properly productive, but here, as I care about my neighbourghs, I'm confined to my 10m2 room with no water boiler, no TV, no nothing. An hour and fourty minutes from now I can get breakfast, but until then it'll be just me, my computer and Sir Humphrey Appleby, I'm afraid.

A story from everyday life

One of the things I like best about Bruges (together with Bruge Zot) is the pathway around the inner city, perfectly made for late night walks. In fact, I would go as far as to say that the hour-and-a-half I spend doing the tour of the town three to four times a week helps keep me sane. On these late night walk I've been accompagnied by my beloved iPod Shuffle. 1Gb, 250 songs and little to no intervention on the order of the songs. A gift from my sister and one I cherish very high. However, as I was about two thirds of the round the other day, while changing the volume, I discovered to my surprise and dispear that the protectiv silicon cover had fallen off. Let it be noted that these covers cost little to nothing but it's still enoying. Knowing that to walk back, in the dark, hoping to recover the cover would be useless I decided to contitue, angry with myself. As I for the n-te time walked the round today I thought it couldn't harm to keep an eye out for the cover, being perfectly aware that the chances of finding it would be next to nothing. As an observent reader you've probably deduced the continuation, but I will nevertheless procede with the end. Half the way through the round I'm at the crossing next to the train station. While standing there, waiting for the light to turn green it comes to be that two days ago, as I was standing at the precise same spot I skipped a track, and it was thus possible that this was the place the cover fell off. I look down, and there, halfway covered in dust, I see it, the cover. On a day that otherwise looked to be a gray one, with a cold holding a tight grip on my body, exams approaching and otherwise just too much on my mind, this was exactly the sort of tiny, insignificant thing that lifed my spirit just that small bit over the edge.

Fall in Bruges

It hit me the moment I step out on the street this morning, fall has finally arrived in Bruges. The sky was clear-clear blue and the air crisp. A slight morning fog was still hanging on, with the tower on Markt, the main square, being a bit unclear. The canals still hold a decent temperature, with vapour playing over the surface and rising to the sky. It was, in all, a pleasent October morning.

Friday night blues

It's Friday night and the we the poor students of the College are about to switch over to week-end mode. For most others that means sleeping until mid-day, having looooong breakfasts and generally relaxing before a new week beguins on monday. For us, however, it just means a bit fewer classes, partying, essay writing and researching for whatever presentation or debate we might have in one of the following days. It's 7.30 pm and I've just come from dinner. Some will spend their night working while others having slightly more time, myself included, will actually relax tonight. It's Friday night and tomorrow's a day like every other day in the week.

Bodies moving in harmony

There's nothing as beautiful as two bodies moving in harmony. However, when some 40 twentysomethings from all over Europe, some of them from unrythmic countries like Germany, Belgium or Norway, try to learn how to dance salsa, bodies moving in harmony isn't the first things that would strike your mind. You take a look at the southerners and you see that the rythm comes to them automatically. They don't care that much about having the right posture or doing the right steps. After all, it looks good anyway. Then you look at the northeners. They have no rythm at all, they suffer from permanent body stiffness and they do their absolute best to follow the steps of the instructor, but quite frankly a cow moving sideways is more gracious.
It's tempting to draw lines to behaviour in general, with germanics obsessed with doing things correctly whilst the romanics care more about appearens and thus slides through. However, such generalisations are not very polite, and thus I will not.
On the other hand, as we supposedly are destined to govern Brussels in twenty years time, hopefully having seen oneanother trip in our own legs will make us more sympathetic when we make gaffes in real life. If our bodies can't move in harmony, let's hope the same won't be the case for our minds and hearts.