Latest posts
Message in a bottle: do you know what MSA is?
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Today is Rare Disease Day. I saved the date months ago and thought I absolutely needed to write a post on that day. A relative of mine suffers from one of these diseases. A blogpost is not much. Just a little message in a bottle thrown into the sea h...
Brussels, je t’aime… moi non plus
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Like many expats, Brussels was not a choice of love but one of reason. I came here for work. I had tried first to find a job in which I would combine my passions for Europe and for politics in Amsterdam, a city I fell madly in love with at first sigh...
Do you need new business-ish cards?
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I’ve been a long-time fan of Moo mini cards. I have business cards, which my employer gives me. That’s great in a business context. But when I’m having a chat with someone nice in a non-professional context, I just want to give them...
16 years of terror
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22 July 2011. I’m in Brussels. Tweets of Norwegian friends inform me that a bomb has exploded in the centre of Oslo. Another tweet from them later informs me that there’s also been a shooting at the Norwegian Labour party youth conference. At t...
Quote of the Week: Cory Doctorow
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Once in a while, someone will say something that’s so self-evidently true, and so unexpected, that you’ll spend the rest of your life working through its implications. Read in the Guardian...
Why my blog was offline for 3 weeks
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Some of you may have noticed that my blog was offline for 3 weeks. You didn’t? No worries, me neither… at first. Readers noticed it for me. At first I thought it was a tiny server problem, usually solved by my host in no time. Then I realised...
Quote of the Week: Marilyn vos Savant
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Success is achieved by developing our strengths, not by eliminating our weaknesses.
Europe, Mitterrand and I
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Last year on May 9, I wrote about the origins of my passion for Europe. I originated it in the story of my family, partly through that of my grandfather -born during World War I- who fought during World War II. In his last speech to the European Parl...
From Etterbeek to Ixelles: the story of an intra-Brussels move
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I’ve been quite silent on this blog in the past two months… This is because I’ve moved from one commune of Brussels, Etterbeek, to another commune of Brussels, Ixelles. In Paris the town’s districts have numbers; in Brussels they have names.
That’s one small step for the Council, one giant leap for the blogosphere
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Or is it the opposite? Last week with fellow Blogging Portal editor Ronny Patz, we became the first bloggers to be granted an accreditation from the Council. Actually, it was also the first time bloggers got press accreditation to a European institut...
EU diplomats wear trainers too
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The spokespeople of the Hungarian presidency have reached out to the Blogging Portal editors to start a discussion on how to use online media to talk about the Council’s work. It has to be said that they got in touch with us long before the controv...
The e-bubble inside the EU bubble
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There were lots of familiar faces at the Butterfly Europe event this afternoon. When you are an EU geek -by that I mean a person who is both active in EU affairs and in social media- you tend to attend any single event that talks about both. And as s...
Quote of the Week: Aunt Lola
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Go for Excellence, sweetie. It’s not a crowded field. It’s from Aunt Lola on Twitter. She’s older than you and she knows better. Tweet This! Share this on Facebook Post on Google Buzz Email this to a friend? Add this to Google Bookm...
All you ever needed to know about Belgium
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I’ve found this amazing video on Macarena’s blog, La oreja de Europa. In just a few minutes it tells you what the hell is going on in Belgium and it’s also incredibly funny. Good stuff, Belgium! Do you want to know more about Belgiu...
The Hungarians invented everything… and they also have beautiful women
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I’ve found on Un Européen jamais content this promotional video of Hungary, sponsored by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Hungary. According to that footage, the Hungarians invented a lot of useful stuff such as the automatic g...
Quote of the Week: Hugh Barton-Smith
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The euro blogo/twitter/facebook sphere is a resonance chamber for sufficiently switched on EU institution actors to assess just how hollow their words can sound. Can Web 2.0 help save the EU from itself?, posted on the IABC’s Ning Next Web2EU...
If you’ve never failed, you’ve never lived
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This is an incredibly motivating video and all of that in only 1:18 minutes. I’ve found it on Céline Camoun‘s blog, which I’ve just discovered and that I highly recommend! Tweet This! Share this on Facebook Post on Google Buzz Emai...
Paris: je t’aime… moi non plus
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I was born and raised in Paris. I speak Paris slang called “verlan”, which consists of putting word syllables upside down. I have a Parisian accent. I swear and grumble a lot. I am an intellectual; I can talk about politics and films all night lo...
