Special Reports

With every day’s news, Wolfgang Radlegger was getting more and more frustrated: the Euro crisis, underfunded universities, misguided immigration policy, rampant corruption – the list of pressing issues was getting longer and longer and public decision-making ever more paralysed.

“If philosophers are being consulted, the crisis must be deep indeed,” Konrad Paul Liessmann, professor of philosophy at the University of Vienna, quipped in the packed glass-roofed courtyard of the Haus der Musik. It didn’t need explaining that the crisis in question was that of Austrian politics, engulfed in burgeoning corruption scandals; indeed, Der Standard, an Austrian daily, found it sufficient to entitle its panel discussion that Sept. 19 – the first in a series of “Monday Talks” (“Montagsgespräche”) – “The State of Austrian Politics: Philosophers take position”. Everybody knew. 

“It went up brick by brick” said a blonde woman, her eyes red as she recalled the scene she witnessed as a little girl fifty years ago. “From time to time, the people on the other side waved to us.” She stops and stares down Bernauer Strasse.

Although she celebrated her 29th birthday only a week ago, Alina looks as if she is in her forties. Her straggly hair, bitten nails and swollen, constantly blinking eyes do her no favours and give the impression of a haunted person.

“All he needs to do is to make sure the girls are clean, fed and do their homework, but it’s still too much for him,” she says of her husband. “It’s easier to whore around, drink and gamble. With my money.”

In the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, there hangs an obscure painting that speaks volumes about the modern dilemmas of government, about the natural tension between individual freedom and the ties that bind us together.

It was a few months ago, on a grey day dominated by the freezing Bora wind that I saw Croatia with its holiday make-up removed. The bus route down the Dalmatian coast never deviates far from the shoreline that is so loved by the yacht and sailing crowd.But it already felt like a different world.

It began as a grey and muddy spring day, like so many others in my homeland. It ended in dread and mourning.

Brussels might be the "capital of a united continent" but it is also the capital of a deeply divided nation. Belgium is split along linguistic and cultural fault-lines. Recently it became the holder of a world record of dubious merit - it's the global-leader in political paralysis.