Sunday, 26th May, 2013: Back Home, in Europe.

Home! Cats. Husband. Whoops. Change that. Husband. Cats. My own bed. My own kitchen. My own job. Well, not til Tuesday. It’s a bank holiday weekend.

After almost one full month traveling around Europe—France, Germany, France again, Belgium, The Netherlands, the UK, Ireland, the UK again—by train, car and ship, how ya doin’ Europe?

Seems to be okay. People are going out, eating in restaurants, drinking wine. No one is being bombed.

But some are really ‘pissed off.’ They’re not happy with what their elected politicians are doing. Germans aren’t happy that they are going to have to bail out the other countries in the Eurozone. And the other countries in the Eurozone aren’t happy about the Germans being the ones to save them. And because the UK isn’t in the Eurozone they’re not happy about everything else they have to do to be in the European Union. So they may leave.

One of my fellow Americans, Tim Dowling, who writes for my favourite British newspaper, The Guardian, said that, living in the UK, you read the papers and think that all hell is breaking loose outside. Then you look out the window and a dog is walking down the street. And basically everything is okay.

Just before we docked in Dover, the incredibly efficient Institute for Shipboard Education machine went into disembark mode. We put our suitcases outside the cabin door the night before and by morning they had miraculously disappeared. BFF Marie and I made our way through to the terminal and I easily picked Buddy out of the crowd of waiting luggage. An incredibly efficient hunky young Brit put Buddy on a trolley and followed me to the taxi rank [no tipping!]. Marie was in a British black cab before I had a chance to say goodbye, so I banged on the window and we had a BFF hug.

On my way to the train station, the taxi driver warned me that it would be crawling with Germans. The European Champions League [Don’t ask—I don’t know either] football final was being held at Wembley stadium that night, and, for the first time in forever, TWO German teams were playing [So Germany won]. The ferry was bringing thousands of fans over to take the train through London and on to Wembley, if they had tickets. Or even if they didn’t.

As I gave the taxi driver an American tip, and got a Semester at Sea receipt, I said ‘Don’t mention the war!’ reprising a British favourite line from John Cleese’s Fawlty Towers TV show.

Sure enough, throughout the small train station, and on the train, and into London Waterloo station—thousands of Germans. A lot of beer cans for 9 am, but basically well behaved.

Another German invasion. But a big improvement over the Nazi blitz of England in the 1940s.

So. Maybe Europe is working after all.

Keep reading. I’ll be back.

Wednesday, 22nd May, 2013: Who Is Europe?

We’re back in Dublin, my second hometown after Pittsburgh. No Super Bowl rings, but great pubs. Even in crap weather.

Before we docked I did the ‘Cultural Pre-Port’ for my assembled fellow Semester at Sea participants, to alert them to the best places to eat and drink and just hang out during our two days in port. BFF Marie and I head for one of my lunch recommendations, Gallagher’s Boxty House in the funky Temple Bar area. On the way I pull her into one of my favourite old Dublin pubs, the Palace Bar, to show her the snug, one of the last remaining in the country.

I first went to Gallagher’s Boxty House just a few years ago, because my mother was a Gallagher. Good food, hearty chowders with crusty bread, beers, cider, friendly waiters. Best lunch in town, if you ask me.

So Marie and I settle in to a corner table, just as it starts to rain. Go figure. And I pose my question to her, Is Europe working?

I am interested in Marie’s opinions, not just because she is ‘Hey Marie! Let’s go back on Semester at Sea!’ but also because she is Dr. Marie Hooper, chair of the History Department at Oklahoma City University, whose research topics are modern European history, identity formation, mobilization and nationalism. How perfect is that?!

So, Dr. Hooper, er…BFF Marie, Is Europe working?

‘It might. I have hopes. I’m a bit disappointed to see that national identities still aren’t breaking down. This undermines the whole idea of having a “European identity.”’

How do you balance the two?

‘If they don’t merge into a common European identity, they seem to become more chauvinistic. When times are good they all want to be Europeans. But when times turn down, like now–Look at the National Front in France, the neo-Nazis in Germany, the popularity of Silvio Berlosconi in Italy. The Greeks are calling the Germans “Nazis” and saying “Heil Angela” to the German chancellor,’ she said. ‘Even the academics tend to see Europe in nationalistic terms.’

‘But,’ I point out, ‘at the academic conference I attended in Frankfurt, there seemed to be a feeling of European identity. Most were there because of funding from the Erasmus program, and were looking for more partnerships with other European universities.’

‘But they were all from business schools, right?’ she asks.

‘True. Business sees it as one big market. Bigger than the US,’ I say.

‘And politicians respond to the business community more often than not,’ Marie added. ‘But they still emphasize their own national identity. Identities are evolving things; but instead of evolving into a larger European identity, the current trend is to emphasize national differences.’

So, do you think it is working?, I ask Dr. Hooper.

‘I think the euro is a wonderful idea. Greece might have to drop out if the politicians follow the bankers; and then there will have to be a change in the basic understanding of the European Union. This is a particularly bad time to be re-negotiating all those treaties because the nationalists of all stripes will try to write protectionist stuff into them.’

‘We were both here in Dublin on Semester at Sea in 2002,’ I remind her. ‘The euro had just been introduced. What changes do you see in Ireland in the past 11 years?’

‘It’s certainly been revitalized. The area on the River Liffey is a great example–that development has been amazing. The new bridge and convention center are stunning.

‘Our tour guide on the bus yesterday was interesting. He said that the country needs the Catholic church “for values.” Hard to imagine what values the Catholic church is imparting, given their track record. It might be generational; he was in his late 50s, and was obviously nostalgic for a stable past. Even if that stability is largely fictional in terms of historical fact, it was real to him. His “good old days” were the pre-scandal 1990s, the boom times. It seemed that, in his mind, the abuses of the clergy didn’t count as long as “we” didn’t know about them. And he completely dismissed the tragedies of the Magdalen laundries [See my blog, http://suchfriends.wordpress.com/2013/02/05/the-magdalene-women]. That was sad.

‘When we were in France a few weeks ago, the French didn’t seem to be as phobic about the Germans. But the French National Front has passed into new leadership with a much more nuanced and clever anti-immigrant platform. The German government isn’t adequately addressing the popular hostility to helping the community within the Union. The Europeans need to think of the current situation as a European economic bailout, not a “German bailout” of Greece and the others.

‘The biggest problem right now in all of these countries is unemployment, and most of the politicians are making it worse. People are basically pissed off. They all need to get past their “us against the world” thinking and focus on Europe, within the larger world.’

So, the big question: Would you live here?

‘In a minute.’

Permanently?

‘In a minute.’

Keep reading.