The Hague, NL (View on map)

After one year of seemingly endless travelling, I am proud to be able to say just that: mission completed. I am happy about how I have been able to put this project together, excited about how I made it come true and grateful to the people and circumstances that allowed me to fulfill this dream. What else is there to say, looking back on one entire year of travelling?

I can`t think of any one year of my life in which I actively and consciously learned as much as I did during this trip. The total number of pages on the Us Europeans website by themselves would be largely sufficient to release an encyclopedia-size print edition. Still, it`s peanuts compared to all the ideas, insights and impressions that I collected throughout this year.

Friends
I have been amazed by people`s willingness to help me on my way. By they support to the project, in whichever way they contributed. By allowing me to stay over at their place, by telling me – a complete stranger – about their lives, by showing interest in the project and by more than once praising my initiative to undertake this project.

Leaving home also meant that I had to leave friends, family and colleagues behind. Still, I am sure that I would not have been able to collect courage for this project without their support and confidence. My attempts to keep regular contact with everybody have not always been the most successful, but I have tried my best. Having a different rhythm of life from just about everyone I know didn`t always make it easy to keep up with people at home, or with people I met on the way. I hope this will serve as enough of an excuse to those I may have disappointed with slow responses.

Rhythm
I have never run a marathon (only a half one, back in 2006) but think the concept of a marathon is in many ways similar to the Us Europeans project. Both require courage and mental strength, followed by a good physical condition and some healthy discipline. If anybody doubted that I used this marathon to run away from daily responsibilities: I can tell you I did not. Never before in my life have I been forced to be responsible as I had to be this year – up to the point that it must have bored some of the people I met. I don`t believe in travelling as a way to run away from life. Instead, I am convinced that travelling throws life straight into your face. I think it did that to me too, but not in an unpleasant way. Saying that I felt entirely happy and full of energy all along this trip would be a bit of an exaggeration. I can however say that I have felt at ease with myself, with most of the people I met and with the places I visited. I have come across many different people with many different ideas and many different personalities. Feeling comfortable with so many new impressions is one of the biggest achievements I made throughout this year.

My perception of time has changed quite a lot during this trip. Time never flew, it always just passed. The year has been as long as it has been short. I can bring back to life any single day of this trip and think about it as if it were yesterday. There were times when I needed to hurry, others when I had to be patient. Catching a train in the next five minutes, then having to spend no less than six hours on the same train. Making sure I got a good portrait photo before the sun set, making sure that I found enough people to interview and making sure that I did not get behind on the articles. Two hours of writing a day is doable, but if I could`t fit it with everything else that needed to be organised… it quickly turned to four, six or even eight hours a day. Without being able to let go with the regular daily obligations. Think cooking, washing, groceries, trying to get newspapers and politicians to pick up the project, socialising with friends at home and socialising with people who had been helpful in places that I passed earlier on the way.

Consciousness
I believe that the limitations brought about by the project have made me more conscious: of time, of space, of money, of nature, of luck, of people`s intentions and their characters. Traveling like this made me realise that time is I know how much I can do in one day and how much I cannot do in one day. I know how long it takes to get places, and I know how many single Euros together make 30. I also know what things cost in different countries and how annoying it can be to see shop windows full of nice-

I also know that consciousness, even more so than effort, is decisive in how people lead their lives. I am thinking about separating garbage, which barely costs more time or energy than just dropping it on a big pile. I think of people cycling instead of taking a car. I think of destructive habits that go against the people`s personal dreams. I think of people or even entire national cultures who keep biting their own tail – always thinking about some distant future or far away countries but unconscious about the opportunities they could find one step ahead. Coming back to the marathon example: if you think about the number of steps it takes to complete one, it doesn`t even make sense to start. If you think about just falling forward on the next available foot for a couple of hours, the whole challenge already seems a lot easier to handle.

Next steps
I hope that the experience and, arguably, wisdom I collected during this trip will give me confidence to face other challenges in life as well. I don`t mind using this project as a statement or even a proof that my ideas are not as crazy and loose-ended as they sometimes seem to others. I would like to tell others the same: believing in something is the first requirement to get it done. The second one is breaking ambitions down to easy-to-swallow bites and the third one to ask the right questions. The answers all lie scattered wherever the questions take you. Finding them give you the necessary inspiration to keep looking for the main goal. Life is not much different from playing Pacman.

My next objectives will be to find ways to make information derived from the Us Europeans project available in a print release. Apart from that, I would like to dedicate at least a good share of my time to promoting cross-cultural understanding: whether by providing training programs or by simply collecting internationally-minded people around me, make them understand each other, and encourage them to collaborate on realizing their dreams. That may sound vague, but it will all be more practical and down-to-earth than I can describe in a couple of sentences.

Thanks by name
This year of traveling would have been far less enjoyable if I didn`t get so much support from so many people. Here`s a list of people I would like to thank:

People at home:
Katie for supporting me in being crazy and thereby making me come up with this idea in the first place, Sanne for all her support and confidence, Bas for all of the previous travels and discussions, which helped me get to this point, my mum for being so courageous enough to travel along for one week when I was in Austria/Czech Republic, my father for the gradually increasing confidence in my mission, my younger brother who thinks he is cooler than I am for the visits, my sister without any specific reason, Mark for arranging my little wireless device and supporting me along the way, Peter for actually providing it, and for believing in my ideas, Kees for pushing some colleagues to come visit me in Prague, Niels`s parents for taking care of my racing bike while I was away, my grandparents for the mental support.

People I met on this trip more than once:
: Barbora, Anastazia and Marian (4x: Klaipeda, Riga and 2xBratislava), Pavel and Lenka (3x: Killarney, Dublin, Pardubice), Angela (3x: Limerick, Dublin, Bad Breisig), Carmen (2x: Londonderry, Madrid), Charlotte (2x: Cork, Angoulême), Vilda (2x: Kaunas, London), Etienne (2x: Rovaniemi, Paris), Alexandr (2x: Riga, Tallinn), Spiros (2x: Riga, Thessaloniki), Tiberiu (2x: Bucharest, Sibiu).

Friends I visited on the way:
Ireland: Sinéad`s parents. Scotland: Katie, Nikki. Spain: Sigrid, Susana, Enriko, Jalima. France: Diane, Arjan, Olivia, Claire, Claire. Belgium: Fredrik. England: Sipke, Sinéad and Alex. Italy: Lorenzo and Carolina. Romania: Iudith. Poland: Kamila`s parents, Kasia, Gosia, Magda, Natalia. Germany: Eik, Denmark: Camilla, Annemarie.

People who hosted me: (the ones mentioned above are not included again)
Northern Ireland: Mark. Lithuania: Vilda, Latvia: Sandra and Anda, Nils and Lelde. Estonia: Tarmo and Anni. Finland: Teemu, Johanna, Panu, Jani and Trish, Mari, Jussi, Philippe, Leena, Susana. Sweden: Elin, Jenny, Mats. England&Wales: Derek, Bob, Leni. Portugal: Helena, Ivo, Rui. Spain: Willy, Iñaki, Simone, Asier. France: Pierre-Emmanuel, Clarisse, Doudou, François, Elena. Belgium: Caroline, Hatim, Valerie, Damien, Bart, Stef. Cyprus: Dino. Italy: Livio, Andrea, Annie, Federico. Greece: Maria, Maria, Maria. Bulgaria: Stella, Sylviya and Peter, Martina, Melina. Romania: Radu, George the Transsylvanian dentist. Hungary: Dora and Nora, Viktor, Adam, Joszef, Csaba and Anna, Angela. Slovenia: Spela. Croatia: Sorry guys forgot your names but thanks for the wonderful wine and home-grown lavender oil. Austria: Manuel and Yvonne, Michael, Rupert and Evelina. Czech Republic: Martina and Michael. Slovakia: Jan, Katka, Milka. Poland: Robert, Hanna, Mateusz, Piotr. Germany: Andi, Michaela, Leif, Jule and Chris, Daniel and Michaela. Denmark: Samui, Brian and Stinne, Troels.

Other people
Beside this long list of people, I would also like to thank all other helpful, friendly, inspiring and helpful people along the way. Also to the people who created media attention for Us Europeans in the various countries or for those who dedicated mentions to it on their homepages, blogs and websites. For those of whom I have contact details: allow me some time to write you a personal message, I will soon do that.

Thanks also to the more than all the readers of my lengthy reports. Not only visitors of www.useuropeans.com but also the ones who followed my stories on the Blogging section of Euractiv or through any other access method. I don`t know how many unique people visited the PhotoLogix-websites during my trip, but the total number of visitors over the last year amounts to almost 25,000. It`s been encouraging to receive so many positive comments, know that so many people were reading and travelling along with me.

Thanks for all of that! To anyone whose contact details I do not have but who would like to stay in touch with me while I`m not travelling anymore: my contact details will remain the same. I will be happy to hear from you. Also, I will resume the daily reports on www.dailyphoto.nl.

That was really all then… Hope to see you all soon!

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Cologne, DE (View on map)

Cynics might argue that if you leave somewhere and take an entire year to get back to the very same place again, you might as well have stayed there for a whole year in the first place. The funny thing about travelling is that is doesn`t work that way. For today`s article – the one but last of all (!) – I am asking people in Cologne: what was your biggest ever travel so far and how did you experience it?

From the interviews in Hamburg, a week or so ago, I learnt that many Germans would like to go abroad but they often get stuck in planning their adventure and finding ways around challenges. The same is true for most Europeans beside the Swedes and the Dutch, who have almost claimed international travelling as their national property. Most Germans travel abroad for holidays, work or, also a well-respected option: studies. Only some manage to upgrade their experience to traveling and exploring.

Holidays
Spain in general and Mallorca in particular are very popular destinations for Gemans leaving on summer holidays. Bastian (20) once spents four weeks in Spain. `I was in Mallorca with my parents and best friends. I was 16 at the time, so we spent a lot of time partying and hanging out on the beach. I don`t think the differences between Spain and Germany are very big. Instead of missing Germany while I was there, I instantly missed Spain when I got back home.`

Jenny`s (27) longest time out of Germany was a three week holiday in and around Barcelona. `It was not too strange to come back after that. Even the weather in Germany was the same. We had German TV in our hotal room and I could easily follow the German news while I was there.` Christian (27)`s longest holiday took two weeks. `I flew to Greece with my family,. A beach holiday with everything organised in advance. I met some people on that trip, but I`m not in contact with them anymore. I would like to go away for longer than two weeks. Maybe I could leave Germany for three months, maybe to the United States or Canada. It has to be at least a country where they speak English.`

Plans
Sandra (23, photo) once spent three weeks out of Germany: `That was in Spain and I admit that I started missing home when the end of the trip came near. The first thing I did when I got home was to call all my friends. I spoke to them from Spain as well, but not as lengthily as when I got back. The phone calls from Spain were too expensive.`

`I would like to spend some more time abroad in the future`, Sandra says. `I am thinking of doing a work-and-travel program in Australia or Canada, but I think it`s quite a big step, a bit scary even. I have all my friends here, everything is properly arranged: insurances, money, studies and all that. Compare that to having to look for a house in a foreign country, arranging financial stuff, making new friends.. Then there`s the cost of traveling which forms quite an obstacle. Not just for me, but also for friends of whom I know they would like to travel. I think I will miss my friends lots when I am away for six months. I can do without the German food, but not without people close to me.`

Nora`s (19) longest holiday abroad lasted for six weeks and she was quite eager to get home after that. `I was fourteen at the time and we stayed in a cottage in Wales. Very nice and all, but when you`re 14, it`s kind of boring to be stuck in the middle of nowhere. I missed my friends a lot. By now, I think I`m ready to stay away from home for a longer period of time. Maybe to study or to work a bit. But I don`t know how and where. My boyfriend will not be happy about it and there are lots of other things to consider before making any travelling project come true.`

Been there, done that
Lisa (23) spent half a year in Australia, now some two years ago. `While I was there, I traveled the East Coast and a bit of the centre and the West Coast. Within six months, I worked as a car washer, I sorted bananas and I transported furniture. Before going there, I was just fascinated by Australia and very eaget to go there. Organising some combination of work and travel seemed the easiest way. I hope I will be back there one day, although it may not happen soon.`

Lisa often thinks back of the time she spent in Australia: `It was well worth it. I missed the German language a bit and maybe the German cake. But on the other hand, it made me much more self-confident, more open and less scared to be on my own. My stay in Australia made me love nature much more than I did before. I have become less precise about the worth of money or energy and better able to just give without demanding immediate returns. It was quite difficult to re-integrate in Germany. It felt very narrow and well-defined. I love to share my travel experiences with my friends, but I only really do it with the couple of friends who have travelled too. The others don`t really understand the idea of travelling. Or maybe it`s just me thinking that they don`t understand.`

David (27) likes backpacking, and his longest trip was a 5-week journey through Romania in 2001. `It was a great time, very exciting and very refreshing. I was there with four friends and we camped, stayed at hostels, met lots of locals and talked to them. I guess those contacts were the most valuable part of the whole trip. I was also impressed by how tasty their fruits and vegetables are. Really lots better than the tasteless and watery stuff we get served in Germany. I hope the EU will do something to protect Romania from having to surrender to food supplies from the EU. Their home-grown stuff is much better but I guess they will have a hard time maintaining that standard.`

`I was shocked to learn how much work Romanian students needed to do to be able to study, and how they earned 200 Deutschmark (100 euro) for a week of full-time work. It helps you to put things in perspective. I was also happy to get home again at the end of the five weeks. People are more honest in Germany and information is more reliable. You know what`s happening around you and if you buy a train ticket, you know that it will be enough to get you to the place you want to get to. No conductor will tell you that you have to pay another 20 euros because this or that is missing or wrong. Those kind of adventures are alright when you`re travelling, but the attitude of always having to be prepared gets on your nerves after a while. I couldn`t live in Romania or anywhere else in the South or East of Europe. The north of Sweden sounds alright for my retirement, The Netherlands is a nice place and I could do with Switzerland. Everything else is nice for travelling, but not for living. For me, at least.`

David has been travelling lots more since his experience in Romania. `My last trips are not as exciting though. I now travel as a musician in an orchestra. We stay at hotels and perform in posh concert halls. We hardly get to see anything of the country, we don`t meet the local people and it`s not by far as enriching as the backpacking trips I do.`

Learning English
Christoph (20) spent six weeks in a British family when he was 15 years old. I went there to improve my English. I didn`t miss Germany a lot when I was there. I am actually Polish and only moved to Germany when I was 3 years old. My German is better than my Polish, but I feel nevertheless more attached to Poland than to Germany. The change from living in a small German village to living in a big English city was quite big, even though I was only living in a suburb. Anyway, the experience was pleasant altogether and I still have frequent contact with my host family there.`

Melanie (25) spent seven weeks in a college in the United States. `I stayed with a local host family and improved my English a lot. I met lots of nice people and I will see many of them again. During the seven weeks, I missed home quite a bit and I also missed the German way of shopping. I missed my boyfriend, my pets and my other friends. When I got home, the first things I did was go to the cinema with my boyfriend to see Harry Potter, and to go out for dinner together.`

Ben (27) went to bible school in Canada for seven months. `I had a wonderful time there. I learnt more about how to live as a Christian, how to pray for people and how to spread the word that Jesus loves them. I think traveling helps people to see things from different perspectives. It learns you that there`s more than just the rules of the society that you happened to grow up in.` Ben continues: `I only missed home during Christmas. The biggest change after I got back home was the change of the currency. I was in Canada in 2001-2002, which is when Germany switched from Deutschmark to the Euro.`

Projects
Robin (26) learnt a bit of Polish during his time as an Erasmus student in Krakow. `My first choice was to go to Bangkok but two of my friends had been to Krakow and came back with wonderful stories. I gave it a try and, indeed, enjoyed it lots. I got to know many new people from all over the place and to see things from many different angles. I left Krakow in February of his year after having stayed there for six months. Unfortunately, only few of the people I got to know where actually Polish. I had to go back this summer for the Juwenalia festival to really get in touch with Polish people. But it was great fun and I think I will stay in touch with many of the people I met during these two Krakow episodes. I would recommend everybody to spend a short while abroad to experience what I experienced. Or actually: I already recommended it to some of my friends and some of them are now also preparing to leave for six months.`

`Before going to Poland, I was scared that I would feel lonely so far away from home and with none of my friends near. In reality, I never met so many people in such a short time. I didn`t even have time to feel lonely. Arriving back home in Germany was actually harder than leaving it. Learning about all those different opinions and ideas, I ended up finding Germans very strict and rigid. It`s good in some cases, but a bit more flexibility could make many of them a lot happier. In Poland, it would be nice if the shop assistants behind the cash registers could work a bit faster. They are so annoyingly slow and lazy! They would instantly get fired if they dared to work like that in Germany.`

Ben (27) likes to travel `with a purpose`. `Everything in life that fits a purpose makes it more interesting`, he says. My longest time away was five months in Argentina. I was there to organise a film festival together with a friend. I had been in Argentina once before. I met another German student there and we came up with this idea. When I was back in Germany, I tried to get funding from Amnesty International. It seemed to work initially, but in the end they never paid anything.`

`We still went to Argentina and managed to get support from the local government and some local firms. I was very happy about the end result, but also about the entire experience itself. Working in a foreign country is the best way to learn a foreign language, which in itself is already something exciting. The Argentinian people are very warm and welcoming. It`s interesting to learn about how they are different from us. They are similar in a way, because most of them originally come from Europe anyway. At the same time, there are so many differences and it`s great to try and understand those.`

`While we were working, I did not really miss Germany. Only towards the end, when I knew I would be going home soon. Then, all the small things that had been part of the experience all the time slowly started to annoy me. All the half promises, people arriving late or never. At the beginning of the five months, I managed to cope with that quite well, but as home got back in sight, it grew more and more difficult. The same for small things like missing German bread and Gouda cheese. I was excited to go home again at the end, but the first thing I thought when I set foot on Frankfurt Airport was: `OK, this is what Germany was like, right.. It didn`t feel all too special and I instantly longed back for the Argentina that I had despised during the last days of the stay.`



! This is not the final Us Europeans posting yet ! There will be another one tomorrow !

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Bad Breisig, DE (View on map)

German is the most important language of Europe when measured by the number of people who speak it as their first language. The German speaking family has no less than 90 million native speakers, which dwarfs French (65 million speakers) and English (64 million speakers) as native languages within the EU. Still, German is not the most popular language of the continent. Few non-native German speakers learn it as a second language. Most Europeans see English as more practical, French and Italian as more romantic and Spanish as more fashionable. But what about German then?

History has not been favourable to the popularity of the German language. Poles already told me that they thought of German as an army language, and the opinion of many of Germany`s neighbours is not much more favourable. German is easily portrayed as unromantic, overstructured and difficult to learn: good for satire but otherwise not a foreign language to be overly proud of when you speak it fluently.

German for foreigners
Simone (26) is surprised by how well some foreigners have learnt to speak German. `The command of German that some Bulgarians, Romanians and Turks have of our language is just amazing. Some are better at it than a solid number of Germans. Europe also has quite some German-speaking minorities in many countries across Europe. These include Czech Republic, Poland, parts of former Yugoslavia as well as Bulgaria and Romania. German is also wide-spread in Southern America, but the reason for that is not very elegant. Many of the Germanophones in South America are, or descend from, former officers during Nazi reign over Germany. They fled after the war so that they would be safe from getting extradited and trialed for war crimes.`

Simone thinks that it`s quite logical that fellow Europeans will learn English before they think of learning German. `There are so many people in the world who speak English that it just makes much more sense to learn English. For us Germans, it`s a bit of a shame that many fellow Europeans get flashbacks of World War II when they hear us speak. Many of us have quite a strong accent. Even if we speak English, we will still be easily recognised as German.`

`Another downside of speaking German is that most of our neighbours can understand bits of what you say. The Dutch and the Danes understand almost everything. Unfortunately, we Germans have a much harder time understanding them. Even the Swiss and the Austrian are difficult to understand if they don`t switch their local accent for one that is closer to Hochdeutsch, `high German` or the basic German in the way it is supposed to be pronounced.`

Easy recognition
Having lived in Ireland for one and a half year, Angela (20, photo) has become quite aware of the Germans are likely to make when they speak English. `English is quite widely spoken in Germany, especially among young people. But a German`s English is often easily recognisable. Germans often translate sentences word by word, which makes them come up with combinations that do not exist in English or do not make sense. German word order is quite flexible thanks to the different cases. English is not, so word order easily becomes a problem. Accent-wise, they can`t produce the `th` sound, which often changes into `z`. In German, all letters of a word are carefully pronounced, which is not always the case in English. This causes some trouble with words like `Wednesday`, `clothes`, `business` or `worked`. `English first names have become quite popular in Germany during the last decades, especially among people with lower education level. Which can produce funny results, because the parents are unable to pronounce the names properly.`

`Answers to negative questions may also pose problems. The question: `Did you not go swimming last night` is quite likely to be answered by `Yes` if the person did not go swimming. The idea behind this construction is a bit mathematical. Replying `No` implies that you did not not go swimming which would mean that you actually did go swimming.`

Angela continues: `English has no proper translation for the word `mann` or `Leute` which both refer to people in an abstract way and without distinction of any individuals. Also, the expression `Mensch` does not make sense in English. It would have to be translated as `human`, but the meaning stretches way beyond just that. Depending on the context `mensch` can mean anything from just `person` up to a semi-polite insult.`

Abbreviations and exceptional structures
Exposure to English is quite limited in Germany. Foreign films and TV programs are usually dubbed and their titles are translated. When talking with English speakers, it sometimes even hard to know which film each person is referring to. Some people use English words or expressions in their text messages or for instant messenger. Practical abbreviations are much harder to compose in German than they are in English. We do have abbreviations, but most of them are, again, abstract. One German band recently made a song of which the verses consist of only abbreviations. The song is called `Mfg`, which stands for `Mit freundlichen Grüss` (With kind regards). The band is named `Die fantastischen Vier`.

In a way similar to Estonian, German uses capital letters for `You`, `Your` and `Yours` (both formal and informal) in written correspondence. Unlike Estonian, the German use of capitals extends to the beginning of each and every noun. In English, a Sentence written in that Way would look as if Somebody would need to go see a Doctor. The `Scharfes S`, ß – looking like the Greek Beta - stands for a sound of a double S. On top of that, German has four different cases and three different genders for articles. `Those are difficult for foreigners to learn`, says Angela, `but even today`s German school kids have problems with them. They have started to just skip articles altogether, coming up with sentences like `I go to swimming pool`. It saves them a lot of reflection, but it doesn`t sound very pretty. As if they came from another country and had to learn German as a foreign language.`

Everyday language
Richard (22) thinks that Germans often refer to their poo and pee when something negative happens to them. ``Lech mich am Arsch` (lick my ass) is probably the worst. Others include: `Du scheisse` (you piece of shit) `verarschen` (to take the piss), `Verpiss Dich` (get lost), `Ich hab` mir den Arsch abgerissen` (I tore apart my ass, meaning: this is the best I could do), `ein Stock im Arsch habben` (have a stick in the ass: be inflexible or humourless) or `am Arschloch der Welt` (in the asshole of the world: in the middle of nowhere).` They are often used in mixtures with expressions taken from English. `Fuck`, `fuck off`,

`The more polite German expressions typically refer to law and structure. `In Ordnung`, literally translates as `in order` but actually means OK. `Alles klar` (all clear) has a similar meaning. In the same way, German people do not `have` a meeting, they typically are `verabredet`: committed or engaged to meet. Apart from that, there are some German words and expressions that are universal. Leaving the war slogans to what they are, sentences like `Jetzt geht`s los` or `Auf geht`s` (we`re started, we`re off, let`s go..) are quite well known and so are words like `Sauerkraut` (sour cabbage), `Glühwein` (hot wine with herbs), Kindergarten (same in English). The names of the major car brands – Audi, Volkswagen, BMW and Mercedes - are as famous in the rest of Europe as they are in Germany itself.`

Sayings
At the end of today`s article, let me share some of my favourite German words and expressions with you. `Fingerspitzengefühl` is the definitive number one. It translates into `finger tip feeling`, and it refers to a combination of skill, intuition and precision while practicing one or another discipline. The expression `ich versteh` nur Bahnhof` means `I only understand railway station`, which describe how you have no clue of what was just said. Similar to that is: `Das kommt mir Spanisch vor` (that seems Spanish to me). So if you want to make sure that people don`t understand that you don`t speak German: try this phrase: Die Deutsche Sprache kommt mir Spanisch vor. Somebody just might find it funny.

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Frankfurt Main, DE (View on map)

Quitting a prestigious job is not a typical German thing to do. Still, I found somebody today who has made `fun` the most important part is career. Daniel Siegl (27) has worked on graphic design projects of some of German best-known companies, but he has decided that it`s time to move on to work that really pleases him.

Daniel was born in a small village in Austria as the second child of his German mother and Austrian father. `We moved to Germany when I was four years old. Already at that time, I was painting a lot, together with my dad. If I see those paintings today, I instantly remember the moment I was actually painting them. I would go as far as saying that I remember every single stroke. Nothing has really changed since then. I still scribble a lot, make drawings, design things. I think the paintings I made as a child look quite cute, and I also like how they helped me develop the skills I need for the type of work I do now.`

School
`I obviously found art the most interesting subject at secondary school. I thought everything else was mostly boring and annoying. I was quite bad at all the science stuff: maths, chemistry, physics.. Fortunately, my teachers and classmates noticed that I was more talented for other stuff. On top of that, I was really lazy, which was not very helpful either. I always started working on things just before the deadline. Also that hasn`t changed. I need time pressure to get something done, just as much as I need to free my mind before I can come up with nice ideas. If I spend too much time working, I start lacking ideas.`

`My school career was saved by the fact that I was very decided about what I wanted. I it helped my teachers have sympathy for my laziness. I was once late to hand in an assignment for art class. Then the teacher asked me to make a cartoon that she wanted to give to a friend as a present. I did that, and got a pass for the original assignment that I never handed in.` `During secondary school, I enjoyed making graffiti, but I never had enough money to buy all the necessary stuff. Also, I thought I was not very good at the technique of it. Instead of spraying on walls, I pretty much limited myself to blackbooks: a big size book in which people invite others to leave some kind of a graphic signature.`

Career
`After completing secondary school, I don`t think anybody was surprised that I started studying Communication Design. I learnt a lot during these years and I did some cool assignments. I learnt about the rules of graphical design and managed to apply them to my work – or to choose to deliberately leave them aside. Even before I finished my studies, I was offered a job in Stuttgart, for the agency who does all visual communication stuff for Porsche. I don`t know how or where they got my contacts. I guess they just found some stuff that I had uploaded somewhere. Anyway, I was delighted to be invited by such a big agency and I enjoyed the time I spent there.`

`The only downside of the job was that I was based in Stuttgart, while all my friends and family lived in Frankfurt. After one and a half year, one of my colleagues had plans move to another agency in Frankfurt. I was very happy to join him and so I moved back to Frankfurt. I was happy to be reunited with my friends. It saved me a lot of travelling, because when I lived in Stuttgart, I kept travelling back and forth to Frankfurt during almost every single weekend.`

`When I was back in Frankfurt, my colleague changed agencies once more and I came with him once again. That`s how I got to the company that I work for now. They are very prestigious and they have big clients: Adidas, Nintendo and Audi. It sounded like a dream to work on projects like those, but reality is a bit different. The designs we make for them are very conservative in a way. My colleagues now the customers and they know exactly what they want. They also produce exactly what they want. As a result, there`s never anything really new. My colleagues are fine with that, but I am not. I want to do new stuff, not chew on old material and collect more money out of previous successes. And so I quit the job a few days ago. I will just complete the next month and then start working freelance. At the beginning, I will still work for agencies rather than clients. It`s not easy to get your own portfolio of clients, but I am fine working with the agencies for a start as well.`

Getting ideas
`I am not really sure whether I believe in terms like `talent` and `inspiration`. I believe both are most of all the result of dedication and hard work. Some people are confused about their ambitions. They want to `be` somebody instead of doing what they should be doing. They create these in-crowds of people who talk a lot but don`t do much. They are always certain about what they produce, while I am not. I work on something, then like it for a week and then it starts annoying me. I feel quite ambiguous about most of my work, but I don`t think I mind. It keeps my mind flexible. I am not afraid of succumbing to the craziness of my ideas. I actually think that they are not even sufficiently crazy at the moment.`

`Ideas often come unexpected and I know I will forget about them if I don`t write them down. I always carry a small note book with me. I should do the same with a camera, but I haven`t done that up until now. Just last week, I took my camera with me twice. I might consider getting a small camera to take some quick shots. The one I have now is too heavy and too big to keep with me all the time.`

Perspectives
`I am not too concerned about my future. I have a reserve worth three months of salary but I am already drowning in work today. The real work actually starts when I get home from the job. Right now, it`s even a bit too much. I might get a burn-out if it all continues like this. I can spend weeks doing nothing only to spend a couple of days turning at 180%. I can`t do it any other way.`

`I don`t think that I will keep being a graphic designer until my retirement. I prefer to do some more arty stuff, pick-up the painting again, and whatever else comes on the way. One thing is for sure, I don`t want to base my choices on money. I want to work on projects that I find useful, challenging and fulfilling.`

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Frankfurt Main, DE (View on map)

Beside being the financial capital of the European Union, Frankfurt is also one of the main air traffic hubs of the continent. Frankfurt International Airport ranks third in number of passengers, with only London Heathrow and Paris Charles de Gaulle having a higher passenger turnover. Thanks to the holiday season, today is one of the busiest days of the year at the airport. Thanks to the Us Europeans project, I now finally have a reason to ask people something I always wonder about when I am visiting airports.. What are they there for and where are they heading?

The only airport where I asked this question before was the one in Prague, which compares to Frankfurt as a village to a city. Prague only offers a handful of intercontinental flights a day, all of them heading to the United States. The average plane size at Prague is that of a Boeing 737, while Frankfurt is packed with Jumbojets and other wide-body aircraft. Frankfurt connects all corners of the world.

The Americas
Katarina (28) and Albrecht (28) are waiting for a flight to Arizona. `We go there to study for one year. Our university in Leipzig partners with the one in Tucson. We both prepare for becoming a teacher of `German as a foreign language`. It may sound strange for Germans to travel to the United States to learn German, but we are very excited about it`, Katharina says. Albrecht explains that he is not scared of the year ahead. `For now, I mostly feel hungry and tired, and a bit stressed. But also happy that our flight is not cancelled, even though Lufthansa was threatening to go on strike today.`

Hugo (19) from France is also flying to the United States. `Me and my family drove from the North-East of France to Frankfurt and parked the car here. We are flying on Delta Airlines and I am very excited. I have been to the United States once before when I was small. On this three-week holiday, we will stay in New York for 3 nights, in Las Vegas for another three and the rest of the time in a rental car driving around California. The dollar is quite cheap these days, so it`s not even very expensive to go on a trip like this.`

Helmut (27) and Margerita (24) will fly to Isla de.. Margerita with a group of friends. `That`s close to Venezuela`, Margerita explains. Helmut is happy to tell me about the purpose of the trip, which will include a lot of partying and drinking. `The bit of Spanish I speak should be enough to get us by`, Margerita says. `It`s a package holiday anyway, so there will not be much to worry about.`

Africa and Australia
Carolin (22) and Robert (30) from Bayern are the only one of today`s respondents who are heading for Africa. `We are flying to Hurghada`, Caroline explains, `and then head for our hotel/resort. The main purpose of the holiday is just to relax, but I hope we will also be able to make an excursion to the faro-city of Luxor. Sea-diving would be nice too, but we haven`t got anything planned. The main idea is to catch a lot of sunshine.`

Catching sunshine is also what Sylvestre (20) was thinking of when he packed his bags for Newcastle in Australia. `I only just realised that it`s winter over there and as it turns out, it was snowing in Sydney yesterday. My bag is full of T-shirt and short trousers..` Sylvestre is originally French but he lives in Berlin. `My parents, brother and little sister live in Brussels and it was too much hassle to travel together. I will spend the 24 hour trip on my own and it will be a very long journey. This is my first transfer. I will have another on in Hong Kong and then I need to catch a minibus in Sydney to finally get to Newcastle.`

Sylvestre will stay in Australia for one month. `My uncle lives there and I will help him out with some graphical design stuff for his French bakery. I am happy that my parents can afford to pay for the flight, because otherwise I would not have been able to make it.`

China
Philip (29) is also leaving East. He`s going to do an internship in Beijing. `I will fly there with Emirates, so I have to change planes in Dubai. The internship will be in international trade. I have been to China before, thee months, but just for travelling not for work. This time, I will be there for two months. I didn`t learn any Chinese and am not planning on learning more than a couple of polite expressions. I do think it`s worthwhile to create a network of local contacts. China is the place to be at the moment, especially for people who studied logistics – like I did.`

Philip enjoys flying but he does not like the stress of getting to the airport, waiting in line and hurrying up to get to the next place: `My day started quite early today. My first flight was from Hamburg to here. The whole package was surprisingly cheap by the way. 448 euros for the return!`

Christian (30) is not a big flying fanatic. With 10 hours of flying ahead, he tells me that plane crashes he has seen on TV can sometimes stress him out. `I`m traveling to Beijing today, together with a group of colleagues. We work for German TV and we will report about the Summer Olympics. My job is to do the cutting and editing. Quite exciting, although I am worried of whether the Chinese authorities will try to get a say in what we are and are not allowed to broadcast.`

More Asia
Daniel (25) from the UK is waiting for his connecting Aeroflot flight to Moscow. From there on, he will take a domestic flight to Novosibirsk. He is not scared of flying with the Russian state airline. `I know they had a very shaky reputation in the 1990s. Now, the international flights are like any other international airline. Domestic flights can still have their little surprises. The interior of the planes usually looks really bad and it happened to me once that the crew told us that we had landed in Novosibirsk while we had actually arrived in Irkutsk. They were not aware that we would make a stop on the way. I have also been on flights where there were more people than seats. Oh well..`

Daniel got interested in Russia when he first went there a few years ago. `I was part of a Baptist community and they wanted to send people there. I ended up living there for 2.5 year and falling in love with Russian culture. I learned myself Russian and started reading Russian literature. During this edition of my Russia adventures, I will be working in a book shop and assist the local Baptist church with their activities.`

The city of Novosibirsk is not very exciting city. It only started to be constructed at the end of the 19th century. For a long term, it also served as a prison camp. The buildings are mostly grey and very similar to each other. It looks very similar to almost any Eastern European city before 1990.`

Daniel was not sad to leave England. `Everytime you go away from your home country, the barrier becomes smaller. This is not the first time I go away. I experienced a bit of emotional stress maybe, but it`s not a big shock either. I don`t know when I`ll come back to England but I`m fine with that.`

Staying behind
Anni (17) and Louisa (16) did not come to the airport to take a plane. `We are going to Croatia with a group of friends, but we are a bit lost and can`t find the bus we`re supposed to take.` Boris (30) is waiting for his sister and her husband: `They are coming back from a honeymoon in Cuba. They have been away for only two weeks so it shouldn`t be too much a problem to recognise them. Maybe they are a bit more tanned than when they left.`

Mareike (19) is not taking off today either. `I am from Landau, near the French border. I haven`t been to Frankfurt airport before. I flew to Rome once, but that was from Baden Airport. I`m only came to Frankfurt Airport to say goodbye to my friend. She is leaving to the United States for one year, where she will work as an au-pair.`

I meet Stefan (18, photo) at the panorama terrace of Terminal 2 (access 4 euros, no liquids and pocket knives allowed). Stefan tells me that he likes planes and has a miniature airport at home. `It measures 3x2 metres and slightly resembles Frankfurt`s terminal 1. I have about 50 planes on a 1:500 scale, all made of cast metal. My favourite one is an Air Canada Boeing 777. It reminds me of a trip to Canada, and I like the design as well as the model.`

Stefan enjoys spending time at the airport. `I don`t know many people with the same hobby. My friends prefer to spend their time playing video games or doing other stuff. I often go to the panorama terrace for some plane photography and I like to do the same at other airports when I happen to get to one. I don`t know the destination of each and every plane, but I can at least tell the airline from the logo and also the country or origin. I do not specifically plan to see this and that type of airplane, but I have seen quite some exciting ones passing by over time. Today there`s a Boeing 767-300 of Star Alliance, which is quite exceptional. I also remember once seeing a Delta Airlines plane with the `Habitat for Humanity` design or the `Gulf Air` machine in Formula-1 style. I also saw the Airbus 380 when it first landed at Frankfurt Airport, but it was too far away to get it properly photographed.`

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Frankfurt Main, DE (View on map)

To whoever thought that all of Germany looks the same: it does not. Apart from the language and the car license plates, it may be hard to imagine that Munich, Hamburg and Berlin are all in one country. Germany is the one and only country that separates Switzerland from the North Sea, and Czech Republic from The Netherlands. Seen like this, there would not even be a possibility that Germany is less diverse than it is. That`s how I got to today`s question for people in the streets in Frankfurt: which place in Germany do you like most, and which one do you like least?

Michaela (30) is not so convinced about the beauty and diversity of Germany. `I think a lot of places qualify as `average`. They are neither very beautiful nor very ugly, but I must admit that I haven`t seen that much of the country. Everything forever needs to be quiet and wherever you go, there`s potentially somebody looking at you and judging what you do. One of the few exceptions is the bank of the River Main in the centre of Frankfurt. On warm summer nights, the lawns along the river make a perfect place for hanging out with friends. It`s one of the few places in Germany where you can feel free from everybody looking at you – or looking down on you. Hamburg is also such a place where people rather than buildings make the atmosphere.`

Nature
Katerina (25) likes the River Rhine and many of the stretches along it. `They are very nice for walking and fishing. Also, when people visit cities, they often head for the river. That makes the river banks a pleasant place to spend time, especially in summer. I think the part between Frankfurt and Köln is the most beautiful. The scenery is very nice and the best way to enjoy it is by going on one of the many Rhine cruises. They take their passengers along the rocks and cliffs. Lorelei is probably the most famous one of them. It`s a very narrow passage which is known for the legendary siren. The singing of this beautiful lady is said to have distracted ship captains, causing their boats to crash on the rocks.`

`It`s very unfortunate how some people use rivers as waste bins. Another thing I don`t like is how some cities have made their river banks only accessible to paying customers. That`s what they did in Bingen, a village down the stream from Frankfurt. They made a nice garden with butterflies and all, but the end result is nevertheless that people cannot get to the river without paying anymore.`

Like Katerina, Paul (18) is another fan of the Rhine River banks. `I visited some places between Frankfurt and Köln last week. The area is very beautiful: nice cliffs and castles on one side, vineyards on the other.` Chris (25) likes the area around his birth city Eichsfelden. `It`s a very nice area with gentle hills and lots of trees. A nice contrast of the big cities with ghetto-like neighbourhoods.` Anja (20, photo) also likes the sceneries of her birth region: `I was born in the Allgaeu region in the very South of Germany. There`s not much to do around there and for people of my age it`s quite boring. Yet at the same time, the mountains and the many, many cows make it look very peaceful. It`s safe there, nothing really happens and it`s a nice place to disconnect from busy city life. I like returning there every now and then, but I start missing city life whenever I stay around for too long.`

West vs East
Anja continues: `I also like the Black Forest and the surrounding province. There are many old-fashioned Fachwerkhäuser, the ones with wooden bars marking the façades. The opposite of that would be Duisburg or most other cities in the industrial Ruhr Region. The streets are a dirty, the houses are not very beautiful and the area is quite polluted. I was not very impressed by Leipzig either.`

Many of today`s respondents have never been to former Eastern Germany, or otherwise, just in Berlin. Germany`s capital can count on some good ratings, and so can Dresden. Any other part of former Eastern Germany is quickly thought of as a part of Siberia: grey flats with poor and unhappy people. Christoph (24) thinks Berlin is the most interesting place in Germany: `It has a lot of culture and history, it`s trendy and there`s lots happening. It`s much better than most places in the Ruhr Area. Dortmund, Bochum, I think of them as all the same. Only Köln has some excitement over it, thanks to the nightlife. Then about Frankfurt, I think it`s alright but not very exciting. Most people living in Frankfurt move out of the city during the weekend. Frankfurt is a good place to start a career in the financial world. Jenny (29) does not fully agree. She thinks Frankfurt has a very multicultural touch to it, which makes it a very pleasant city to live in. `It`s better than for example Kassel, which has unfriendly people, no nice places to shop. Altogether, it`s the most boring place in Germany I know of.`

More cities
Alex thinks that Hannover is probably the least beautiful city of Germany. `It`s quite boring. There`s nothing special there.` Marie (29) thinks the same of Giessen, a city where she studied for a while. `The city has 80,000 inhabitants and 20,000 of them are students. All that happens there is students making parties, which is something I quickly got tired of. I was obliged to go there because it`s the only city in the German language area where `applied theatre science` is taught at university`, she says. `My favourite place in Germany would be the Offenbacher Hafeninsel, near Frankfurt. It`s a harbour next to an industrial estate and I once went swimming there at night. I`m not sure whether that`s a healthy thing to do. I do know that I very much liked the sight of all the lights, the water, and the idea of swimming in a harbour.`

Pascal (21) is a big fan of Munich, which he calls very clean and well-organised. `I especially like the English Garden, which is the biggest city park in Europe. Another Pascal (also 21) thinks of Berlin as the most beautiful city in Germany: `And it`s also its role in history that makes it an exciting place to visit. I think of the university buildings in Stuttgart and Frankfurt as the ugliest sites in Germany. They are grayish from the outside and orange, green and brown on the inside. Very typical for the 1970s and very outdated by now.`

Islands
Quite a few of the people I talk to come up with one of the islands in the Wadden Sea as their favourite place in Germany. Marc (29) prefers Sylt, which is the last German island before the Danish border. `It`s the only German Wadden Island that is connected to the mainland. There`s a dike with a railroad connecting it to Niebüll. Getting there by car is possible, but only if you load your car onto one of the trains that passes over the dike. I was stationed on the island during my civil service in 1999. It was a good time. I spent some time counting birds and organising wad-walking for people who wanted to walk on the bottom of the sea during low tide. I still try to go there once every year to enjoy the silence of the sea.`

Alex (22) also enjoys spending time on one of the Wadden Islands, but his favourite is Föhr: `It`s just plain countryside, very peaceful and quiet. It`s not as touristic as the island of Sylt is. I prefer the North Sea coast to the Baltic Sea beaches. At the North Sea, you feel like you`re at the ocean. The Baltic Sea is a lot quieter. It usually doesn`t have big waves, or differences between the tides. It`s suitable for families with children, but I find it a bit boring compared to the North Sea.`

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Frankfurt Main, DE (View on map)

After visiting the keep-the-French-happy- capital of the EU (Strassbourg), the two political capitals Brussels and Luxembourg and the most European capital of all, Berlin, I am now reporting for duty from the EU`s financial capital Frankfurt am Main. Or Mainhattan if you wish.. I am surrounded by tall yet unexciting buildings of the European Central Bank as well as headquarters of all German banks. Today`s question also deals with money: how much are the Germans suffering from the financial downturn that is reigning the western world these days?...

Many of today`s respondents to are not worried that economical problems in Germany will get as bad as they currently are in the USA. Jenny (23) says: `We have a well-working social welfare system, which means that people can`t fall down as quickly as they do in the United States. Even people who have no job can count on minimum financial security and a place to live.`

Regional
Moritz (27) thinks that it`s difficult to speak about a German economy: `The differences are huge, even within the country. Some of the Eastern provinces are still marked as `structural areas`, which means that they rely on heavy support by the state. In Western Germany, the region of Saarland is equally unable to keep up with the average. So are different social layers of society. In Germany, not having a respectable education level can make it very difficult to find a job. The other question is: how much influence does Germany have over its own economy? In today`s global world, the economy of Germany can hardly be seen as independent from the French economy or any other national economy in Europe.`

Sebastian (31, photo) thinks that Germany should make it through a global financial crisis without too much damage, provided that China and India are able to maintain their current development: `The United States are an important trading partner for Germany but not the only one. We can deal with lower economic growth in the USA as long as our other trading partners keep doing alright. I am more scared to see differences with other continents grow even bigger. It will mean that immigration issues get ever the more sensitive.`

Personal financial situation
As much as Sebastian thinks that Germany will easily live through this small `economical correction`, he also believes that he will not be affected personally. `It may effect old people whose pensions need to be produced by an ever-shrinking working population. It might also touch people who are employed in manual labour or jobs that require no specific skills. Thanks to my PhD in chemical engineering, I consider myself relatively safe. I should not have trouble finding another job whenever I need one. If I don`t find a job in Germany, I can still go wherever else I want. Engineers are always needed somewhere.`

Sandra (30), who works for the regional government, is less confident. `Prices keep going up. Petrol is getting more expensive, and so is food. People with plenty of money are not affected, but everybody who earns sub-average salaries can feel pain in their wallets. It`s hard to economize on food. Loss of spending power will make people cut their expenses on shopping for clothes, going out and slicing their annual holiday down to one week instead of two.`

Anne (21) is most annoyed by the prices of train tickets, which are increased on a quarterly basis. `I also think that a lot of people are unable to cope with cutbacks on their incomes. Once they have reach a certain standard of living, they will have a hard time to get used to having less money at their disposal. People are attached to their cars. They may use them a bit less, but very few people will be willing to get rid of their car, or to drive slower on motorways. In my case, it`s a bit easier. My sister lent me her car during her one-year stay in Australia. It now stands idle in front of the house. As a student, I can`t afford to drive it with fuel prices at this level.`

Differences
Jan-Marcus (27) thinks that differences between poor and rich are quite big in Germany. `There is a small group of very rich people who will remain largely untouched by any financial crisis. They work in industry or engineering. Economical problems in Germany usually touch unfavoured people first: people working in social jobs. It`s quite unfair. Engineers can show the results of their work and everybody will be happy and pay them lots of money. Primary school teachers somehow provide the basis for new generations, but they get paid lots less.` `I know that it will be difficult to find a job in my area of specialisation: ancient history. But hardly any bit of that difficulty depends on how the economy develops. I have never been walking down the street hearing somebody cream that he needed an ancient historian. It`s more the thinking level that counts than the contents of the study itself. The same goes for most social studies. They can easily be made useful in business environments, and I am happy that the German labour market is quite flexible in that aspect.`

Standard of living
Together with Jan-Marcus, I am trying to find out why Germans seem to be so obsessed with ever-increasing living standards. He explains how he experienced the same when his stipendium increased. `I adjusted my spending patterns accordingly. I am now attached to this new standard and it would be hard to rely on less money. I have this tradition of shopping at the same places, buying the same products in an almost automatic way. I only really adjust my purchasing behaviour on the moments my salary changes. Only those moments force me to be conscious about how much I spend.

Eda (27) thinks that many of Germany`s big spenders would prefer to sell their house over selling their car. `It`s not so much the comfort of the car, it`s the way it extends the personality of the owner. In the same way, it`s not the fact of owning a car, but the expression of being able to afford such car. It`s a confirmation of social status. Managers who work for big company can easily come to work by bike. They will even be appreciated for that, but only in case their colleagues know that they have a big car at home.`

`The recession may make some people scared of dropping out of their social level. They may be more scared of that than of the financial consequences of having less money to spend. Nobody wants to be seen as unemployed or as not progressing in a career. In the same way, many people are unwilling to work for certain types of employers. Ask somebody from Eastern Germany to work for a Polish boss and they will be very unwilling to accept the job`, Eda says.

Laura thinks that she will not have too many problems to adjust if her salary decreased. `I have a job, but I still live with my parents. I do worry about the prices of food and petrol, because they are increasing much quicker than people`s salaries. Studying used to be free of charge but it no longer is. I think that differences between the rich and the poor will only keep increasing over the coming years.`

EU
Germany has not yet forgotten the transition from Deutschmark to Euro. `Many people still blame rising prices on the Euro`, says Laura. Robin (21) says that Germans are not sure what to think of the European Union altogether: `It is helping our country in an indirect way: through international partnerships between countries, facilitated trading and travelling. At the same time, the EU is seen as an indecisive black hole for German money. We pay a lot to the European Union, but we have no clue of where the money ends up. And who is paying us money when we need it? Not the countries to whom our money is being shipped at the moment..`

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