Ten things we should be talking about instead of Same Sex Marriage
It was with great lack of joy that I came back from five weeks in Europe to find out that the public debate in Australia remains exactly in the same …
Read MoreMonth: September 2017
European notes
I love the airports. I know that many if not most people hate them, finding them tiresome and often chaotic, a nuisance you have to put up with on the …
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Take the knee (to the political groin)
Everyone who know me knows I don’t play sport, I don’t watch sport, I don’t write about sport, and I don’t care about sport. God bless you if you do …
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The Germans go to the polls today
Spelling matters. The Germans have been going to the Poles on and off for about a thousand years, which generally has not been a very good experience for the Poles, …
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Warsaw, Lest We Forget
During the night of the 20th of November, 700 Home Army soldiers from the district of Zoliborz (named Jolie Bord or Beautiful Embankment by the French monks who bought land …
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A giant, Star of David-shaped hole in the heart
There are two tragedies of the Polish-Jewish relations. The first one is that through the centuries of coexistence with each other we did not make for better neighbours and friends. …
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Polish Governments Gone Wild (Not On Tinder)
So Tinder turned out to be a disappointment, especially for The Daily Chrenk readers who will not get to see the local edition of “Girls Gone Wild on Tinder”, largely …
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Booze, girls and the Polish economic miracle
Poland is a land of mystery. Perhaps the biggest mystery is how the country has somehow managed to survive to the present (albeit far from intact) while being stuck for …
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Egyptian notes
Much of Egypt looks like it has suffered through a decade of civil war bookended by powerful earthquakes. It hasn’t either; that’s just Egypt, a country so in love with …
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On the way to Lubenia
With an impeccable timing, The Daily Chrenk will arrive in Warsaw only hours before one of the largest joint Russian-Belorussian military exercises directed against Poland and Lithuania is about to …
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How I didn’t get busted for doing a nude photo shoot in Egypt
The short – and boring – answer is that I didn’t try to do one. Not that you would think this is a particularly controversial lesson, but doing nude photo …
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What I learned about the German election from the polling – and the election signs
If you believe the polls, Angela Merkel is cruising to her fourth term as Chancellor. This is somewhat surprising on our contemporary political scene, where politicians no longer enjoy longevity …
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Luxor Massacre – 20 Years On
Almost exactly twenty years ago, in the morning hours of 17 November 1997, six Islamist terrorists slaughtered two guards and 56 foreign tourists at the mortuary temple of Queen Hatshepsut …
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Tony Wanker and the Woke Chocolate Factory
Contrary to what you might think, chocolate in general contains very little caffeine; no matter how much you eat – whatever other consequences might be – no jitters will keep …
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Looking at Australia from Europe
Sometimes you just don’t know what to blog about. But you can still blog about not knowing what to blog about, which seems like the digital age’s version of Epimenides’s …
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The country that shouldn’t exist
I have a modest proposal to rationalise Europe (well, in just one small way; possibilities – and needs – are endless): let’s abolish Belgium. If nations are, in Benedict Anderson’s …
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September 1
The war started 78 years ago today, in the darkness of a late summer morning on the Baltic coast, as German navy vessel “Schleswig-Holstein”, supposedly on a friendly visit, fired …
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