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On the Brink: Streets of Gold, Streets of Rubble
Written by Christian Diemer |
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Photo: Christian Diemer
En route to Chernivtsi earlier this month
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In this first installment of E&M's new special series On the Brink, Christian Diemer shares a Ukrainian driver's views on Putin, women and Europe. A word of warning, though: it does contain some colourful language.
"Ukrainians should erect a golden memorial to the sprinter"
For more than twenty hours, with just a few ten-minute toilet breaks, Andri has been sitting behind the steering wheel, hulking neck, bald skull, tracksuit bottoms. A golden sun set over the endless plains of eastern Poland hours ago, while the white van was sailing along towards the end of Europe. Past it, beyond the border, the sailing has turned to trudging, rolling, shoving. Deep potholes, ruts, clefts, rifts, lengthwise and right across, make the paved road an obstacle course, forcing the speed down to almost zero every few metres. Dawn is still far off. Howling diesel in a lightless night, curving in erratic wavy lines, the sturdy Sprinter fights its way to where it looks as though the fewest bumps and traps lurk (and that is, if at all, on the opposite lane, where else). "What would Ukrainians do without the Sprinter!", shouts Andri. "What those cars have to endure on our Ukrainian roads, and still they never break!"
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Photo: Christian Diemer
Morning in Goshiv, near Ovruch, Zhytomyrs’ka region, Central Ukraine, back in 2010
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Ready to get to grips with the real situation in Ukraine? E&M is launching a special series of on-the-ground reports that go far beyond the geo-political struggles that have been grabbing the headlines in Europe.
"Isn't it dangerous there?" "Mustn't it be very unpleasant at the moment?" "Why on earth Ukraine?!"
E&M author Christian Diemer regularly hears such questions when asked about his current whereabouts. And it is certainly true that Ukraine is unlikely to be topping many people's holiday destination lists any time soon. But while the conflict in Ukraine has been dominating the daily news for more than half a year and has long become a war of propaganda, the actual atmosphere and goings-on in the country remain vague and largely undifferentiated to much of the western European audience. Though not for any longer, thanks to Christian's on-the-ground reports from Ukraine, written especially for E&M’s Sixth Sense.
Christian has been working on his PhD about traditional music and national identity in Ukraine since 2012. He started travelling through the country when it was still unimaginable that the spectre of war would be seen again so close to Europe. Back then, Yanukovych was was firmly in the saddle and, despite some people’s frustration, the prospect of another revolution seemed remote.
Discrimination against Eastern Europeans: still a European attitude
Written by Ana Maria Ducuta |
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Photo: John Nakamura Remy; Licence CC-BY 2.0
Many Europeans are still fighting against discrimination
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The concepts of "integration" and "otherness" have been interpreted variously in EU countries, with differing perspectives shaped by local cultural and political contexts. Policies against discrimination have been avidly pursued in an attempt to make immigrants feel home wherever they go in Europe. But social exclusion is always lurking. Ana Maria Ducuta, a Romanian student of Comparative Politics and contributor to the Centre for European Policy Evaluation, gives her personal experience of discrimination and reflects on immigration and related EU actions.
Even in our modern Europe, xenophobia is still a plague. Eastern Europeans such as Bulgarians or Romanians who go abroad are regular victims of xenophobic feelings. Eastern Europeans are regarded by some Western societies as barbarians and in some cases criminals too. On many occasions when I went abroad, after people got to know my Romanian friends and me, they have affirmed "we are good people despite the fact that we are Romanians" and that "we know more foreign languages than they ever will". You never get to understand the harmful nature of xenophobic stereotypes until you are faced with a real situation in which you are made to feel unwelcome before you have done or even said a thing.
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They say a picture paints a thousand words, so we've set out to discover what photography might be able to tell us about today's Europe.
Here at E&M, we don't just want to know what young Europeans think about Europe, we also want to find out how they see and feel the continent. As part of the newly-revamped Sixth Sense, we have introduced a photo competition called Europe Through a Lens and are publishing a selection of our readers' photographic work on a regular basis. All you have to do is submit images that you think best represent our European theme of the month.
For September, we have chosen the theme "On the edge of Europe", but of course it's completely up to you and your powers of imagination as to how you interpret it – anything from natural borders in the form of mountains or bodies of water to political and social frontiers.
Another week has flown away but not without two of E&M's editors sharing some articles that got them thinking about our continent. This time around, Edgar and Veronica have picked up some online pieces about the value of history and the aftershocks of an Italian earthquake, passing through the Scottish referendum, a law in favour of the rights of transsexuals and Europe's immigration debate.
Edgar, Baby editor
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HISTORY AND HUMILITY
In one of the first tutorial sessions of my undergraduate history degree, I clearly remember a classmate nonchalantly reeling off George Santayana's famous quotation about the value of history: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." The tutor was unimpressed. "You're lucky you didn't say that in your interview," he said. His point, reprised by many of my teachers throughout the next three years, was that history is not a crystal ball. If we gaze into the past we do not see the future; only the past.
At the time, these historians' strident insistence on the practical uselessness of their subject was a little deflating. Why were they devoting their lives to such a futile endeavour? They were clearly jaded, I thought, if not outright depressed. Only gradually did I realise that this warning against drawing lessons from history was a valuable lesson in itself. If history teaches us anything at all, it is how little we can control or even predict our own fate.
They say a picture paints a thousand words, so we've set out to discover what photography might tell us about today's Europe and are pleased to be able to announce our first set of winners.
Given the high standard of images submitted to very first edition of E&M's new photo competition Europe Through a Lens, judging was no easy task. This month's theme "Summer in Europe" inspired a number of original images, ranging from sun-drenched picnickers and abandoned sandcastles to more adventurous scenes of exploration and discovery.
After much deliberation, the judges decided to award first place to Tobias Melzer for A lovely day for the beach, praising the incongruity and peculiar innocence of the photo. They were struck by contrast between the drab grey sky and gaudy beach gear and by the fact that it was not a typical image of a glorious summer's day. Tobias, who is from Germany and has been interested in photography since he was a child, captured the image near Whitley Bay in the north-east of England while on holiday last August.
We are pleased to announce a new partnership with Cosmopublic, an exciting and unconventional European news site. Just like E&M, Cosmopublic strives towards shared European media and has set out to work on one of its prerequisites – an informed, cosmopolitan European public with a transnational sense of belonging.
As the lack of mutual knowledge about other European nations poses a significant hurdle to further integration, Cosmopublic has set up a project called What moves your neighbour? to help combat all-too-familiar feelings of irritation and prejudice among neighbouring countries. They believe that integration has to start at the level of the individual, hence the emphasis on raising awareness and sympathy between readers of different national backgrounds. The European Cosmopublic Project (ECP) provides readers with quick overviews of their European neighbours and publishes country reports on a fortnightly basis.
Here at E&M we are looking forward to productive cross-fertilisation of ideas between the two organisations. We invite our readers to consult the Cosmopublic pages for their breaking news fix, while continuing to enjoy the latest issues of our magazine for more personal or essayistic takes on Europe.
IN -1509 DAYS
