My Europe (4): Brussels

In my Europe, I will be living in Brussels in one week.

Belgium will be the fifth European country in five years that I am living in, but I don't feel like I am going "abroad". I am going away from where I am now, and it will be different from where I have been in the past. But that is not important, this is life in Europe.

In fact, I move to Brussels as a political scientist, as somebody who is trying to understand social and political regularities of a system called "European Union". These regularities may not even be specific to the EU, but I am interested in studying them for this particular case, a supranational political system.

This is actually the first time I will live in Belgium and in Brussels, and it is the first time that I will try to take a look at EU politics from inside "the bubble" (except for my short visit last October).

I'm intrigued by the change of perspective, although I still hope that I can keep the view of an outsider while trying to adapt to the living conditions of a new city and a new country.

I'm not sure what this will do with my blogging, because I've always been euroblogging from an outsider perspective. But as I have said above: I come as a political scientist, not as a blogger. Blogging will move with me, but that is because it is part of my European citizenship, not my profession. There is no need to be in Brussels to euroblog, to the contrary, it might even be better not to be there.

What I know is that as a political scientist I want to meet as many people working in and around the EU institutions as possible and talk about their work, their thoughts, see how they interact and how this makes them part of EU decision-making.

So if you'd like to meet me as political scientist or as a (blogging) European citizen, don't hesitate to contact me, I'm interested in a lot of topics and perspectives related to EU politics or life and work in the EU "capital".

Until then, I wish you a Happy Europe Day 2010, a happy 60th anniversary of the Schuman Declaration - and see you around, whether in Brussels or elsewhere in our Europe!

Picture: © redvers / CC BY 2.0

My Europe (3): A blog...

... written by a single person is nothing but a single voice. It is only relevant in conversation with others.

In my Europe, we are all some kind of blogger. All we need to do is to relate to each other, to link our blogs and to start the conversations that may become one common conversation, one European conversation.

If we try to build a common European blogosphere, it is because we want to build a common European space - not one in which we all agree, just one in which we know what we are talking about.

But there need to be blog posts first. Blog posts that we can actually relate to. If we don't talk, we cannot have a conversation. If we don't have topics, we cannot argue about them.

In my Europe, we are all some kind of bloggers, and our individual blogs can be linked, either because we choose to link them or because they share common topics, natural links that we just need to discover.

A blog written by a single person may be nothing but a single voice, but my Europe is a continent with 800 million bloggers, 800 million voices that are part of a common blogosphere.

In my Europe, we just need to add the links.

My Europe (2): Jeanne d'Arc

This is Jeanne d'Arc - or Joan of Arc - on the central square of Orléans, a city where I have been several times in my youth during school exchanges. Just good remembrances!

And Joan of Arc's story is a great European tale including national rivalries, the role of the church, medieval Europe etc. She is also one of the few "heroines" that are celebrated among the "great" kings and emperors that dominate story-telling of European history.

And I don't start talking about all the castles that we've visited in the Loire Valley...

Picture: © dojoe / CC BY-SA 2.0

My Europe (1): Trains

It is "My Europe Week" and instead of writing long articles I am looking for photos that make me remember my Europe.

In the early times of this blog I wrote a post titled "Talking to Europe" in which I told some stories I experienced while travelling though Europe on trains. Below are 11 train stations in 10 countries, many of them starting points or destinations of the stories told in the blog post.

Cerbère: © diebmx / CC BY-NC 2.0

Bucharest: @ granados / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Barcelona: @ davidduran / CC BY-NC 2.0

Paris (Gare de Lyon): @ jpmartineau / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Budapest: © kyz / CC BY 2.0

Cologne: © alschim / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Bruges: © fmpgoh / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Vienna: @ rmajetic / CC BY-SA 2.0

Zagreb: @ axoplasm / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Bratislava: @ chris-yunker / CC BY-SA 2.0

Poznan: © ciaron / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

All these train stations are part of my European story, and my Europe definitely is a place I have discovered a lot by train.

PS: What is your Europe? Join #myeurope on Twitter or submit you blog posts through this form.

War & Peace

(Best if enlarged to full screen and sound turned on loud enough.)



See also: more language versions

My 1000th Euroblog post: Join the "My Europe" experience!

Next week, from May 3rd until May 9th, European bloggers are going to organise a blog carnival titled "This is My Europe" - and I thought it would be worth dedicating the 1000th post of my own euroblog to announce this here.

Whether you have a blog or not, you can join and write, either by sending us the link to your blog post or by posting your complete article directly on our #myeurope platform, both through this form. It doesn't matter whether you write in English or French, Estonian or Maltese, Russian or Turkish, just write about Your Europe, your thoughts, wishes, ideas, angers...

The team of editors of Bloggingportal.eu is looking forward to your contributions!

I myself have been "Watching Europe" since 1 July 2008 with 1000 blog posts. I found my way into the circle of people blogging about European issues - I call them eurobloggers - through the EU blog directory (not updated anymore) that Nosemonkey had set up and kept updated at the time - I was included around August 2008. Since then, I have stayed around the block.

And believe me: When I started the blog, I didn't think that I would ever reach 1000 posts, especially not in just 22 months.

In the first year of my euroblog, quite some posts have been devoted to my thoughts about Europe and about European blogging, besides my focus on the European Parliament elections. Just some examples:

• What is Europe and why am I writing about it?
• Digging deeper
• Talking to Europe
• The European Dream
• A European blog = A European blogger?

More recently, I tried to explain how my mind became a "European Mind", why I am blogging in English, and I told a story about the strange notion of "Strangers". These are all different kind of reflections on how I perceive Europe, the European Union, and the blogging about both.

But these are just my thoughts on Europe, and I hope many of you will join to tell stories about your Europe, making #myeurope a shared experience of European bloggers and European blogging.

Let's shape the next week into our joint European week 2010 - be part of the experience!