The blessings of inter-state duty-free shopping

On my way home for Christmas I felt like doing my old man a favour and by him a bottle of Chivas Regal, his favourit whisky. In the airport shop the whisky shelf is filled with tempting goods, but no Chivas. I lift my head to see if there's more whisky to be found and in a distance, at the very far end of the liquor store at Brussels National Airport, hanging from the celing there's a sign with a Norwegian flag and a message stating, in Norwegian, that those flying to Norway still can enjoy duty-free shopping. Embarressed and with my head down in shame I walked over, picked up my father's whisky and got in line.
We're part of Schengen and we're part of the EU Inner Market, but we still have our own shelves at the airports equipped with big signs and arrows pointing us in the right direction.

Reflections on extra-brugoise vacation

I'm FREE! Finally FREE! The last exam is over, it's holiday and I feel soo... ...empty? I've got two weeks away from Bruges infront of me, two weeks without articles to read, papers to write, presentations to prepare and notes to revise. I've got two weeks with friends and family awaiting and yet there's a certain emptyness. Two weeks of holiday is also two weeks away from the people I've learned to know as friends over the last moths. It's two weeks without communal breakfast, lunch and dinner. Two weeks without coffee&cigarette breaks in the courtyard. Two weeks without nerdy Community-jokes, late night drinks at 't Potersgat, Bruges Zot, good and warm hugs from cute College-girls, linguistic schzophrenia and long days in the library. Luckily it's only two weeks. Come Monday 5 and everything will be back to normal. How I can't wait for that day to come!

Pre-holiday stress syndrome

It is (fairly) early in the morning of December 18th and in five hours I'll be outside some naked classroom waiting for the professor to invite me in for my final exam. With institutional community law, EU politics and policy and EU political economy off the way the only thing that separates me from two weeks of vacation is a 25m chat about how a/the european identity has been born, baptised and shaped throughout the last 7-800 years. Well, a short-version of the class is Europe from Plato to NATO so I'll probably have to say a word or two about Athens and Rome and how the Holy Roman Empire (which, according to Voltaire, was neither holy nor Roman nor an empire) was a continuation of the Roman Empire, and then a phrase or two about Westphalia and the creation of the modern nation state.

The pre-holiday stress syndrome isn't caused by my fear for the exam. I know my stuff, it's general knowledge and then some. What stresses me is the hours I have to kill before the exam. What to do? What to do?

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.

42

No, it's not about Douglas Adams and the answer to life, the universe and everything, although for some it may seem like it. 42 is the number of votes, out of a grand total of 233.000, that seperated Ms Martie Aubry, the new leader of the French Socialist Party (PS) and the 2007 PS candidate for the French precidecy, Ms Ségolène Royal. With a leadership battle won with 50,02 to 49,98 precent, Ms Aubry, daughter of former European Commission President Jaques Delores, will find it hard to lead an equally divided party allready struggeling in its opposition to President Sarkozy and his UMP commanding a comfortable majority in the National Assembly.

From an outsider perspective I'm a bit ambivilent towards the PS' new president. While Ms Royal was accused for leading the party to the right during her presidential candidacy Ms Aubry is said to have the right ideology and a guarantee towards any centrist tendencies. Being neither French nor socialist but with an affection for France and with respect and recognition for France's importance, both i Europe and on the world stage, I'm not certain as to how to react. On the one hand the political operator in me, supporting UMP, in the lack of a better choice, sees a leader stearing PS to the left as even more centrist voters for Mr Sarkozy in 2012. On the other hand, it is not good for a country if the same people govern for too long (just look at France...) and so an alternation between UMP and a 21st century, social-democratic PS would be desirable. In this respect I'd prefer if they had chosen a different leader. Nevertheless, Ms Royal is not the moderate moderniser the PS needs. Thanks to President Sarkozy he left French politics in favour of New York and the IMF, namely Mr Dominique Strauss-Kahn.

The Lisbon Treaty moves on

Yesterday evening the Swedish parliament, Riksdagen, ratified the Lisbon Treaty, with the centre-right government coalition parties together with the Social Democrats voting in favour. It is not that long since the Irish population voted no in a referendum, but still the Swedish government decided not to put the process to a halt. I'm glad to see that responsible and euro-friendly governments haven't given up and hopefully we'll see a second, this time successfull, referendum in Ireland soon, so the Treaty may be implemented by January 1st 2010.

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.