CaféBabel Lisboa

Report from Lisbon by Diane Halley

Climate change was certainly an apt theme for this year's European Development Days in Lisbon, if only for the very reason that we left Brussels on a Tuesday evening of five degrees, and arrived to a balmy Lisbon where temperatures rose to their mid-twenties during consecutive days of abundant sunshine. Something is up with our weather in Europe, let alone globally. Every Portuguese person I met remarked that the weather was extraordinary for the month of November. However, whereas our seasons appear to be merging in Europe, we are not suffering from climate change to the same extent as those in Africa and on other developing continents.

In a joint initiative from the Union of European Federalists and the Young European Federalists, a campaign was launched targeting the gathering of one million signatures to demand a referendum to the European Constitution.

By Maria Alcaparra

The river involves your shore, hugging you each morning, leaving your streets with the comforting presence of the sun rays that illuminate the faces of the passers-by who pass through you in hurried step. Almost never without time to stop. Almost never without time to lose themselves in the infinite stories that your lanes and paths conceal beneath times’ devir tissue.

“Europe is made of coffeeshops, of cafes. These include Pessoa’s favourite cafeteria, in Lisbon, to the Odessa cafes frequented by Isaac Babel’s gangsters. Include Copenhagen cafes, where Kierkgaard stoped by on his focused walks, to the Palermo counters […]. May one draw the map of cafeterias and one will get one of the “Idea of Europe” essential markers.”

George Steiner, The Idea of Europe