“Va bene”: Discovering a Continent with Goethe
Travelling under European conditions: Severgnini and Spörrle in Austria (Photo: Goethe-Institut)
25 May 2011
Columbus discovered America. So what? After all, Beppe Severgnini and Marc Spörrle discovered Europe. They travelled for two weeks from Moscow to Lisbon. They visited eleven cities and covered 6,000 kilometres. Their conclusions: All of the clichés are correct and they are also entirely false, but most of all, Europe really does exist.
Marc Spörrle takes stock: “How well do we really know Europe? That was our mission. Are the clichés that we have about other countries and their inhabitants correct? What do we experience when we, as rolling reporters, rush crossways through Europe in new high-speed trains, ancient sleeping cars and tourist railways? Of course, those who seek prejudices will find them: unfriendly Russian waiters, calculating Swiss taxi drivers and noisy Spaniards. But, it’s the idiosyncrasies, the peculiarities and the diversity of the people and the regions, the cuisines and the culture that make our Europe as a whole so interesting.”
Read Spörrle’s entire conclusions here.
Beppe Severgnini takes stock: “An Italian and a German traverse Europe together and observe whether and how it changes from east to west. Europe celebrated its Europe Day on 9 May. Let’s be honest: did anyone notice? Yet there are plenty of reasons to celebrate. Europe exists and it demonstrates commonalities. Naturally, Cracow is not Barcelona, nor is it Zürich. Still, these three cities are more similar that Cracow and Phoenix or Rio de Janeiro. Any Chinese person will confirm that.”
Read Severgnini’s entire conclusions here.
You can review the entire journey in the blog “Moscow-Lisbon.”
