While I am currently happily living and working in Canada I have my roots in Europe and have spent quite a few years traveling her soil now, so I thought she deserved her own page.
It fascinated me that Europeans could at once be so alike – that they could be so universally bookish and cerebral, and drive small cars, and live in little houses in ancient towns, and love soccer, and be relatively unmaterialistic and law-abiding, and have chilly hotel rooms and cosy and inviting places to eat and drink – and yet be so endlessly, unpredictably different from each other as well. I loved the idea that you could never be sure of anything in Europe.
-Bill Bryson, Neither here Nor there
I have to agree with Bryson: Europe is a fascinating place. Although, I may be biased. I am European myself after all…
I am lucky in the way that my research interests and work have taken me all over the world. Most of my time I have however been spending in old Europe. Studies, work, research visits… A few months here and there. The funny thing is that for such a small, homogeneous place that Europe is, there is all this diversity. Language, culture. Local patriotism, sometimes antagonism. They are two sides of the same coin. Europe’s great blessing and strength; as well as her curse.
