In Europe

greater cultural unity than it does today, more than ninety years later. Then, a worker in Warsaw led more or less the same life as a worker in Brussels, and the same went for a teacher in Berlin or in Prague, a shopkeeper in Budapest or in Amsterdam.
    Our common disaster can be summarised briefly. Around 1900 there was a tree and an apple, and everyone ate of it. At the heart of Europe lay a young, unstable nation that did not recognise its own destructivepotential. Two hellish wars followed, and we all experienced them in our own way. After that, for the East, began four deadly decades, while for Western Europe the gates opened onto a paradise of mopeds, electric mixers, cars and televisions. Close to the end of the century, the Wall fell, but for millions of Eastern Europeans hard times arrived again, the years of humiliated men, frightened women and broken families. At the same time, the West was celebrating the boom of the 1990s, without realising what their Central and Eastern European kin were suffering. Immigrants from other cultures came and went, closed societies were broken open, there arose a new set of dynamics with new tensions. In short, we still have a great deal to tell each other and a great deal to explain, and all that has yet to begin.
    This winter I was back in Vásárosbéc. In the café, people were whispering that the owner planned to close the place in May: EU regulations demanded the installation of strictly divided men's and women's toilets, and there was no way she could afford that. Lajos and Red Jósef had passed away: sixty is a respectable age for men here. They lay in the churchyard beside the veteran, who had been found dead one summer morning, flat on his face in the road.
    The post office had closed down and the school was about to close. There were houses for sale everywhere. ‘People want to leave,’ our friend had written. ‘Others are dying or already dead.’ The German grocery chain Lidl – long live the EU! – had invaded Hungary with dozens of supermarkets, all of them brand-spanking new, all of them opening at once. By selling vegetables and other products at barely cost price, they were now grinding the small shopkeepers to a pulp. The greengrocer and the little shops in neighbouring Szigetvár were going under. But there was good news as well. The mayor had found a source of European funding: a new cultural centre was rising up in the middle of the village, a big building with shiny roof tiles. Almost all the men had work now, the wages were going up, even the toothless man had a steady job. Everyone had become a little more prosperous, except for the postman's wife. Her cow had died. One of the Dutch people had already offered to buy her house, just to have a little extra space.
    The last stretch of sandy road had been paved. The council had purchased a mowing machine, the Gypsies with their scythes had disappeared, the moments of quiet had become rare. Apples fell from the trees into the grass, no one came to pick them any more, no children even came to gather them; they had never seen anything like it around here.
    I would have liked to finish this story, this story of Walter Rathenau, Harry Kessler, Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Jean Monnet, of Yuri Klejner, Hans Krijt, Anna Bikont, Viktor Alves, Zelimir, of the Winkler family and all those others, with a happy ending. But that ending is still a long way off.
    Europe's weakness, its diversity, is also its greatest strength. Europe as a peace process was a resounding success. Europe as an economic union is also well on its way. But the European project will surely fail unless a common cultural, political and, above all, democratic space is soon created alongside the rest. For let us not forget: Europe has only one chance to succeed.

Acknowledgements
    THIS BOOK HAS TAKEN THE FORM OF A TRAVELOGUE THROUGH TIME and across the continent. Except for the background literature, almost all of the material – interview and articles – was collected during a journey through Europe that lasted throughout nearly all of 1999. In a few cases, I have also fallen back on older material, such as the descriptions of Niesky, Novi Sad and the Russian pop scene. For practical reasons as well, it was impossible to hold all of the interviews in 1999. In 2001 and 2002, therefore, I carried out several interviews and retraced my steps along a few of my routes. But those remain the exceptions. The year around which