European citizenship saves me from a fine

I am on the verge of tears when the ticket controller finally decides not to fine me. A man in his late forties at the table next to me is on his fifth beer (I’m estimating), since the train leaves Gdansk for Warsaw at 9:25. He's looking at me less and less discreetly. I'm shouting, louder and louder. It must be around noon. More

Follow-up article in Polish Gazeta Wyborcza

The freedom to seek a better life - migration and the EU

Nous sommes tous des immigrés, il n'y a que le lieu de naissance qui change.

We are all immigrants. It's just our birthplaces that change. [anonymous, from evene.fr]

A l'immigration subie, je préfère l'immigration choisie.

I prefer chosen migration to imposed migration. [Nicolas Sarkozy, in an interview with Le Figaro, January 2005]

A main source of frustration when exploring policy-making at the EU level is the feeling that the main stakeholders are often left out of the debate. Decisions are elite-driven, policy analysis takes into account the substance of directives and regulations, but only briefly glosses by the consequences on the people they affect.

Why was Sarajevo the Jerusalem of Europe?

Why did it work? Why did Christians, Jews and Muslims live there peacefully for such a long time?

Nobody in my class answered my question. (Top: Srebrenica massacre commemoration in Sarajevo - summer 2007.)

Let me put this into context: we are talking about conditionality, EU accession as an incentive for "Western Balkans" to reform their justice systems and to bring war criminals to justice and models of democratization. Which models of democratization should be adopted in the region?

Folks, Friends, Faeries

Folks, Friends, Faeries

We’re up and out the door, and you’d better catch us while on the move. www.cosmopolitanreview.com is shaking things up and out.

In the Spring issue, walk the line down 25 Nobel years with Lech Wałęsa, reach out to what it was growing up Polish in Tanzania, put historian Georges Mink on the hotseat, learn how to find treasure in a lump of coal.

From Paris to Kilimanjaro to Rome, Siberia to Paris, Baku and back, and an oracle of elsewhere thrown in for good measure -

Gombrowicz crossed the Atlantic before us with words. Today we ride on the backs of giants –

From Warsaw, Montreal, New York

With love

CR

Oh, PS: If you like our work, or an article, or anything about CR, send us out to your friends and colleagues. We love your feedback, but if you really want to pay us back for the love put into this, pay it forward. Get friends talking, writing, engaging. Use us as a forum for debate. That’s how initiatives like CR keep levitating, defying forces of time and gravity.

Spread the word about Canada's best kept secret... it's Polish.

The second number of the Polish transatlantic quarterly, the cosmopolitan review, will be available by the beginning of March @ cosmopolitanreview.com.

From the world to Poland, and Poland to the world... The next issue of CR will bring you Baku's richness, Tanzania's Polish connection, the hustle and bustle of New York through poetry, a British take on Polish cinema, a magical childhood in Germany... and much, much more.

Stay alert. Travel the world with the cosmopolitan review. And spread the word... about today's best-kept secret. It's cosmopolitan. CR

Six-minute romances: speed-dating in Paris (also in Deutsch, Polski, Italiano, Français, Español)

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A literary child is born...

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