Winds and Breezes

The European

When I was in first year at university some years ago - I am reluctant to say "many years ago" at this stage of my life, but it was neither today nor yesterday, although my hair is still all its natural brown/blond and not a strand of it is grey - I used to get the train from Dublin back home every Friday. My train of choice was the 1.35pm train to Cork, because on that, you didn't have to stand, whereas on the next two, it tended to be rather crowded.

Heuston Station looked a lot different then to how it looks now: there was a tiny old Easons in the back right hand corner, and the main sweetshop was at the end of platform three. Before I got on the train, I always used to buy a newspaper for the journey down. That newspaper was "The European". It was one of Robert Maxwell's babies although at the age of 17 I hadn't too much of an interest in the English press barons. But I liked it because it was a pan-national paper without being overly institution-centric or Brussels-centric. I can't remember all the details, except it was like almost any English broad sheet at the time, with the usual news and editorial pages, travel, features on different European customs, comic strips (Hagar, and an English translation of a brilliant German one called Die Sturmtruppen which was about national service in Germany).

When Robert Maxwell and Robert Maxwell's empire fell overboard, the European was an early casualty. It had never been particularly wealth generating, and although it tried to survive on its own for a while, it was ultimately doomed.

I spend a lot of my time wandering around French and English newspaper websites in addition to Irish news sites. At the back of my head is the idea of setting up some kind of a weblog not unlike the European in content or style...the primary problem I have at the moment is one of time. I just don't have enough of it.

For that reason, I particularly respect euronews which is available online in German, English, French, Italian Portuguese and Russian.

posted by Winds and Breezes @ 2:28 PM