Europe! When I was younger I remember being fascinated by the fact that there were different countries with different cultures. Going to a new country would mean learning different new things and experiencing a different culture. I have always been a big supporter of the European Union, isn’t it wonderfull to have all that diversity in your own world without exchange rates and being able to go there without the waiting lines at the borders?
The European ideal is slowly becomming reality and suddenly I am starting to wonder if that’s a good thing. Ofcourse I know it’s a good thing, it has many advantages which we all enjoy but slowly my old fascination with the diversity in cultures is dissapearing.
This last year I have been to Lisbon, Oslo, London, Cologne, Prague, Milan and Paris and what has struck me is how much these cities are starting too look a like! Ofcourse you will find McDonalds and Starbucks everywhere but it goes further! In all of these cities I have seen the standard restaurants for tourists with flags on the windows of the languages of which they have menus. You will find the same type of tourists crowding historical sites where you hear a mix of people speaking Spanish, Italians being loud, Russians following a guide holding an umbrella. It doesn’t matter if you are on the great market in Prague or at the Sacre Coeur in Paris. Along with the tourists you will find the immigrants from Africa selling the same souvenirs, a little Eiffel Tower, a small Big Ben or who doesn’t know the t-shirts Good Girls Go To Heaven and Bad Girls To Amsterdam, Prague, Oslo, or any other tourist place in Europe.
It doesn’t stop there! I have come to realize that a French household and let’s say a Dutch or a Czech does not differ so much anymore! Especially in the cities! The parents both work, the kids go to school and in the evening when they are home they all have dinner together and watch TV! Ofcourse this happens all over the world but what makes it European and not Portuguese or Czech is the fact that they bought their groceries at a Carrefour, are eating Grande Italia pasta, drinking Amstel beer and eating Vienetta icecream for desert. After that they go watch Big Brother on Cable TV and then the kids brush their teeth with Colgate and off to their Ikea bed.
What do I want to say with this? I ain’t sure! It’s a good thing that we share a lot of things all throughout Europe but our ways of consuming are looking more and more like eachother and I am afraid that what once made us so unique, our diversity is now slowly dissapearing. Ofcourse we all speak a different language still, but we need a Lingua Franca to communicate in and that is English! Wether the French like it or not, it’s English. Internet made us more international and therefore in this blog I am communicating in English as not all my friends speak my language.
So to conclude I believe that the European integration is already further than many of us realize. I also see that on Facebook for example, I am now able to follow my friends lives across Europe and see that in the end they do the same things, like the same things and face the same problems. In my opinion it is a good thing but I feel that our generation is the end of the strong cultural diversity we had before…pasta bolognese is not just Italian anymore, neither is Edam cheese Dutch. It’s European food eaten across the continent. Maybe you realize these things as you get older and travel more or maybe the old Europe is really fading away.
