*Content warning: This episode contains some colourful language and a discussion of what happens to letters to Sinterklaas*

It's our final episode of 2022! This week we're getting into the festive spirit with Berlin-based historian Kathrin Schwarz, creator of an entire series of Christmassy European podcasts. We're also talking about Belgium's Sinterklaas postal failure, and why a 1970s Eurovision hit has gone viral in Ukraine.

This episode was recorded live on Zoom in front of an audience of our supporters! Thank you so much to everyone who chips in so that we can keep making The Europeans. You can join us at patreon.com/europeanspodcast (many currencies are available). You can also help new listeners find the show by leaving us a review or giving us five stars on Spotify.

Kathrin's podcast, available in German, is called 'Have yourself a very European Christmas - Adventskalenderpodcast'. You can find all 24 episodes here on Spotify, as well as on Apple. You can also follow Kathrin on Twitter here or Instagram here, and find her latest work on witches in Brandenberg here.

This week's Isolation Inspiration: @balthazar_theblackmagus and 'Limbic' by Peter Scapello.

04:01 Good Week: Goeiemorgen, morgen

09:56 Bad Week: The great Sinterklaas postal failure

18:03 Kathrin Schwarz on Christmas in the EU

29:13 Isolation Inspiration: @balthazar_theblackmagus and 'Limbic' by Peter Scapello

31:11 Happy Ending: Fighting loneliness at the supermarket checkout

Thanks for listening! We'll be back in January.

Hosts: Dominic Kraemer and Katy Lee

Producers: Katy Lee, Wojciech Oleksiak and Katz Laszlo

Music: Jim Barne and Mariska Martina

This podcast is part of the Are We Europe family. You can find more like-minded European podcasts at areweeurope.com/audio-family.

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Kathrin's Recipe: Sardine sandwiches with Christmas cognac

Ingredients

200 ml béchamel sauce*

4 slices of toast

50 g grated Gruyère cheese

1 tin of sardines in olive oil (115 g)

1 teaspoon mustard

1 tablespoon lemon juice

1/4 teaspoon chopped thyme

salt

black pepper

*Melt butter, mix with flour, then steadily milk in at medium temperature

Preparation

Bring the béchamel sauce to boil in a small saucepan over medium heat.

Add the mustard, thyme, lemon juice, salt and pepper. Stir only briefly and remove from the heat. Place 2 slices of toast in a small ovenproof dish.

Spread half of the resulting mixture on the toast slices in a bowl, then arrange the drained sardines and half of the grated cheese on top.

Top with the remaining slices of toast and pour over the remaining béchamel sauce and grated cheese.

Place in the oven preheated to 220 °C and bake for 10-15 minutes until the surface is lightly browned and the cheese melts.

Tip

Before baking, place a lemon slice on each sandwich as a garnish or sprinkle with chives.

In 1932, Poland became one of the first countries in Europe to decriminalise homosexuality; today it's one of the most hostile on the continent when it comes to LGBTQ rights. This week historian Kamil Karczewski joins us to discuss Poland's little-known history as a queer pioneer, and what has changed since. We're also talking about France's crackdown on domestic flights and Ireland's amazingly successful experiment with the four-day week. Oh, and we pay a visit to the EU metaverse, so that you don't have to.

You can follow Kamil on Twitter here, and visit the EU's Global Gateway metaverse site here. Good luck, and let us know if you make it inside!

This week's Isolation Inspiration: Règle 30, TechTrash, and Inside the Mind of a Cat. You can follow the Savitsky Cats on Instagram here.

Don't forget to sign up to support the podcast this week if you'd like to join the live recording of our Christmas episode on December 12! We're hugely grateful to everyone who chips in so that we can keep making the show. You can join us at patreon.com/europeanspodcast, and many currencies are available.

Producers: Katy Lee and Wojciech Oleksiak

Music: Jim Barne and Mariska Martina

This podcast is part of the Are We Europe family. You can find more like-minded European podcasts at areweeurope.com/audio-family.

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When reports emerged of Chinese 'police service stations' operating in Europe, alarm bells began ringing across the continent. But what exactly is going on at these sites, and how worried should we be about them? This week we ring Yuan Yang, Europe-China correspondent at the Financial Times, to get a better understanding of how China works beyond its borders. We're also talking about Viktor Orbán's controversial scarf and the right not to be 'fun' at work.

You can follow Yuan on Twitter here and read her reporting on China's offshore police stations here.

This week's Isolation Inspiration: 'The White Lotus', Season 2, and The Playlist. Our interview with newly-minted astronaut Dr Meganne Christian, from February 2019, can be found in this episode: The Most Isolated Place on Earth'.

Thanks for listening! If you enjoy our podcast and would like to help us keep making it, we'd love it if you'd consider chipping in a few bucks a month at patreon.com/europeanspodcast (many currencies are available). You can also help new listeners find the show by leaving us a review or giving us five stars on Spotify.

03:04 Bad Week: Scarfgate

08:09 Good Week: The right to not be fun

15:35 Interview: Yuan Yang on China's 'overseas police stations'

29:20 Isolation Inspiration: Season 2 of 'The White Lotus' and 'The Playlist'

32:22 Happy Ending: Europe's new astronauts

Producer: Katy Lee

Mixing and mastering: Wojciech Oleksiak

Music: Jim Barne and Mariska Martina

This podcast is part of the Are We Europe family. You can find more like-minded European podcasts at areweeurope.com/audio-family.

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The first episode of The Europeans aired five years ago this week! To mark this very special occasion, producers Katz and Wojciech join Katy and Dominic to look back on how Europe has changed in the half-decade we've been making this podcast.

Many thanks to the amazing people who've taken the time to speak to us over the years. In this episode you heard:

Franz Kubacyk - 'Translating Trump, Defending Deneuve', January 2018

A video of friendly wolves can be found here.

04:10 Good Five Years: Solar energy

Artwork for this episode by our lovely listener, Luisa Balaban.

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As the COP27 climate talks wrap up in Egypt, we’re turning our attention to an issue that got less attention at the summit than you might expect: the growing number of people having to flee their homes as a result of climate change. What role does Europe have to play in all this, both in terms of finding solutions and as a major driver of climate change in the first place? This week we find out with the help of Alexandre Porteret of the European Commission’s Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations department, and François Gemenne of the Hugo Laboratory, the world’s first interdisciplinary research centre focusing on how climate change impacts migration.

This episode was supported by the European Commission, with coordination from Are We Europe.

Producer: Katz Laszlo

Scoring and mastering: Wojciech Oleksiak

Music: BlueDot Sessions and Epidemic Sounds

Thanks for listening! If you enjoy our podcast and would like to help us keep making it, we'd love it if you'd consider chipping in a few bucks a month at patreon.com/europeanspodcast (many currencies are available). You can also help new listeners find the show by leaving us a review or giving us five stars on Spotify.

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This week we're wrestling with a big idea: time, and the lack of it. Most Europeans have experienced burnout, or felt close to it, at some point in their lives. What if we redesigned policies to give citizens their time back? To find out more, we called up Ariadna Güell Sans, one of the coordinators of the Barcelona Time Use Initiative, about how the city is using time to try to make life easier and fairer. We're also talking about incomprehensible euro-speak, and healing Franco-German relations with train tickets.

You can find Christian Rauh's study on the European Commission's unintelligible press releases here and Sarah Wheaton's reporting on it here in Politico. The European burnout survey can be found here.

This week's Isolation Inspiration: 'Something to Do' from Zadie Smith's 'Intimations', and Katy's Notion planner.

Thanks for listening! If you enjoy our podcast and would like to help us keep making it, we'd love it if you'd consider chipping in a few bucks a month at patreon.com/europeanspodcast (many currencies are available). You can also help new listeners find the show by leaving us a review or giving us five stars on Spotify.

02:35 Bad Week: Impenetrable euro-speak

Producers: Katy Lee and Wojciech Oleksiak

Music: Jim Barne and Mariska Martina

This podcast is part of the Are We Europe family. You can find more like-minded European podcasts at areweeurope.com/audio-family.

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Last weekend, we took over the European Parliament (kind of) along with more than 1,000 young activists from across the continent. This week we hear from some of those activists as well as from President Roberta Metsola, in a conversation recorded live on stage inside the Hemicycle. We're also talking about Germany's plans to legalise cannabis, and how to steal a Polish tram.

Katy and Dominic were hosting Level Up!, a two-day activism bootcamp organised by the European Parliament, the European Commission and the European Youth Forum, whose president Silja Markkula also spoke to us on stage.

Thanks for listening! If you enjoy our podcast and would like to help us keep making it, we'd love it if you'd consider chipping in a few bucks a month at patreon.com/europeanspodcast (many currencies are available). You can also help new listeners find the show by leaving us a review or giving us five stars on Spotify.

This week's Isolation Inspiration: Greta Thunberg in conversation with Björk on the New Statesman's World Review podcast, and Adam Buxton in conversation with the Irish novelist Marian Keyes.

02:58 Good Week: Germany's plans to legalise cannabis

Producer: Katy Lee

Mixing and mastering: Wojciech Oleksiak

Music: Jim Barne and Mariska Martina

This podcast is part of the Are We Europe family. You can find the first chapter 'Mohamed' here, and more like-minded European podcasts at areweeurope.com/audio-family.

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What does it feel like to know that your government has been able to access every single message on your phone? Last year, the Hungarian investigative journalist Szabolcs Panyi found out that he'd been hacked using Pegasus spyware. This week we hear about his latest investigation, which looks at how the Orbán government managed to get hold of this incredibly powerful surveillance tool in the first place. We're also talking about last weekend's mysterious German train sabotage and growing European protests against World Cup hosts Qatar.

You can follow Szabolcs on Twitter here and read the inside story of how Pegasus was brought to Hungary here via Direkt36. A background read on the spyware scandal currently rocking Greece can be found here.

Thanks for listening! If you enjoy our podcast and would like to help us keep making it, we'd love it if you'd consider chipping in a few bucks a month at patreon.com/europeanspodcast (many currencies are available). You can also help new listeners find the show by leaving us a review or giving us five stars on Spotify.

This week's Isolation Inspiration:

The latest visual episode in This Is What A Generation Sounds Like, our series with Are We Europe: Denisa

Scottish crime drama Karen Pirie

'Les années' (The Years) by Annie Ernaux

00:22 Welcome!

Producers: Katy Lee and Wojciech Oleksiak

Music: Jim Barne and Mariska Martina

This podcast is part of the Are We Europe family. Find more like-minded European podcasts at areweeurope.com/audio-family.

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With fourteen governments and a three-person presidency, Bosnia and Herzegovina's political system is often described as the most complicated in the world. It's a system that was designed to keep the peace after a devastating war. But three decades on, is it still working? This week we give Aleksandar Brezar the near-impossible task of untangling the weekend's elections for us. We're also talking about Malta's golden passports and a chess scandal involving anal beads. Yes, you heard that correctly.

Aleksandar is a journalist mostly covering the Western Balkans. You can find him on Twitter here.

Thanks for listening! If you enjoy our podcast and would like to help us keep making it, we'd love it if you'd consider chipping in a few bucks a month at patreon.com/europeanspodcast (many currencies are available). You can also help new listeners find the show by leaving us a review or giving us five stars on Spotify.

This week's Isolation Inspiration:

'Born in Blackness: Africa, Africans, and the Making of the Modern World, 1471 to the Second World War', by Howard W. French

The ZOE podcast: 'How to control blood sugar spikes', with Jessie Inchauspé

02:42 Good Week: A challenge to Malta's golden passport scheme

09:33 Bad Week: Anal bead scandal strikes the chess world

18:44 Interview: Aleksandar Brezar on the Bosnian elections

30:46 Isolation Inspiration: 'Born in Blackness' and Jessie Inchauspé on the ZOE podcast

34:41 Happy Ending: The power of cow poo

Producers: Katy Lee and Wojciech Oleksiak

Music: Jim Barne and Mariska Martina

This podcast is part of the Are We Europe family. Find more like-minded European podcasts at areweeurope.com/audio-family.

Twitter | Instagram | [email protected]