The New Europe: Wroclaw and Cottbus

More from the Globe and Mail on the new Europe, following from the previous article from Lithuania:

One country, two views of history

For Poland's young, waxing nostalgic for the bad old days of communism is a fad, DOUG SAUNDERS finds; not so for the older generation

By DOUG SAUNDERS
Monday, May 19, 2003 - Page A8

WROCLAW, POLAND -- Europe's most dramatic division these days may not be between the "old" west and the "new" east. A far more painful fissure lies between generations and livelihoods, the kind one can find in a visit to Eva and Zdzislawa, two Polish women who live only a few kilometres apart but represent deeply polarized visions of the continent's future.

( Read more... )

And Barren city an ominous warning to rest of EU

Cottbus, Germany, is a victim of 'shrinkage,' a crisis of depopulation now afflicting all of Europe, DOUG SAUNDERS discovers

By DOUG SAUNDERS
Tuesday, May 20, 2003 - Page A11

At first glance, Cottbus looks like an orderly and prosperous old German city, with cobblestone streets and brightly painted 18th-century buildings along a winding stretch of the river Spree.

As you stroll through the city's squares and laneways, though, something begins to feel amiss. There are surprisingly few cafés, and a lot of the buildings, while bright and neat, seem unoccupied. You begin to wonder where all the people are.

( Read more... )

Formosa Tea House

Work again. I just came back from lunch; I used the last six dollars (Canadian) in my wallet to go lunch at the excellent Formosa Tea House, where I had a green iced tea with dumblings and bamboo rice. Quite fine.

While I was there, I glanced over the Spring 2003 issue of Cultural Survival Quarterly, a magazine that has been active for more than a decade, detailing fragile tribal societies worldwide. The Spring 2003 issue was devoted to reindeer-herding peoples in northeastern Asia, in the area where Mongolia meets Russia and China. Not surprisingly, given a bit more than a half-century of intrusive state controls via Communism and paranoid frontier nationalisms, these cultures are all declining to various degrees. It's an unfortunate story, and I can't help but be certain that despite the hopes for revival they are doomed: In a densely-populated and relatively modern area of the world, how can a few tens of thousands of reindeer herders scattered across vast areas of land with little to bind them hope to survive as distinctive cultures? It might well be better to try to make the assimilation process as easy as possible.