The good news: President of the European Parliament Martin Schulz seems to have confirmed his commitment to a single seat for the European Parliament in a Swedish radio interview (very short summary from EUObserver here). Problem: he wants the seat to be Strasbourg and not Brussels. While such an arrangement […]
All was going so well. Eurostar 9156 departed on time from St Pancras at 1904, and arrived at around 2057 (local time, as scheduled) at Calais Frethun. Then nothing. No departure. Silence. Then the announcement that “for service reasons” we were to wait 10 minutes at Calais. At 2108 a […]
I’ve just arrived home, having taken Eurostar 9133, the 1256 departure from Brussels Midi to London St Pancras. The security paranoia on the route is now so absurd it’s worth a blog entry. The first check at Gare du Midi is a ticket check, where the QR code on a […]
There’s been a bit of discussion on Twitter this morning with @megankenna and @thefashioncloud at the prohibitively high cost of Wifi in and around the EU quarter in Brussels. Many conferences are organised in hotels and the cost for wifi can be up to €25 per day. This, I fear, […]
As part of my relentless pursuit to be green with my travels, I’m always taking the train. But for a trip I’m planning 3-6 December to Berlin, my patience is really running low. To get to Berlin from London I have 2 options – Eurostar to Brussels, on to Köln […]
Back a couple of years ago when I lived in Brussels I was struck by the lack of good quality information online in English about life in the city. Too many people in Brussels for work in and around the EU institutions never see the best of Brussels, and the […]
NOTE: this system has been replaced in 2022 with a new “De Connect” ticket. You can find out how that works in this new post! I’m a regular traveller on Eurostar, and I often travel onwards from Brussels to Germany by train, so much in fact that I am used […]
Yesterday and today NATO Foreign Ministers have been meeting in Berlin, no doubt an important meeting in light of the problems facing the mission in Libya. I also do not deny that these ministers are important people and are a possible target for extremists. But is it really necessary to […]
Here we go again. The next stage of the UK government’s effort to get more Brits into the EU institutions… is to try to skew the application system to assist Brits. Today’s FT has more on the story here. There’s more here about the government’s previous efforts. The essential gist […]
A pedestrian bumps into another pedestrian who is blocking the pavement. The pedestrian gets a wet foot from a loose paving stone and clambers over bags of rubbish on the way to the Métro. The same person takes the Métro, and when leaving the train at Gare du Midi he […]
In Brussels it’s reasonably easy. There I was (and indeed still am) the EU politics blogger nerd. So if there are events and conferences to attend I go to ones about EU politics on the web first and foremost. Then I will go to ones about institutional reform or centre […]
Exactly what waste can be easily recycled in municipal recycling schemes? It’s a question that perplexes even the most committed recyclers. Plastics are usually the most complicated, as only certain types of plastic (normally plastic drinks bottles) can be recycled, and other types of plastic cannot be put in the […]