Süddeutsche Zeitung 27.06.2007

Swedish author Richard Swartz gives a short description of the train trip from Belgrade to Zagreb, which to his astonishment takes 45 minutes longer than the trip from Zagreb to Belgrade. "Two rather beleaguered women, weighed down by their luggage and their age, get to talking. The one is travelling to Zagreb regarding a few documents concerning property she owns somewhere in Krajina. Because she's Serbian, she had to flee the region when the Croatians reconquered this part of the fatherland. The other woman is Croatian, and comes from the border region. The conversation moves back and forth, touching on official stamps, fees, swollen legs and expensive medication. They agree how thankless, even brazen, daughters-in-law can be. Then back to sickness and medicine. None of the women says that things were better under Tito, but what they don't say is exactly what they think."


Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 27.06.2007

Nikolaj Aaron investigates the myths and mysteries of la femme francaise, and learns a thing or two about kissing in the process. "Nothing is more comical than a German visitor who enters a French salon and shakes the hostess' hand like a stable boy. 'Anyone who didn't see his father kiss a lady's hand will never learn to do it himself,' an elderly count lectures. 'And if you do try to learn it later, you'll end up looking like a cowboy actor from Nevada trying to mime Old Europe in a costume film. But the company here doesn't dance to Yankee Doodle.' At the court of Louix XV it was customary not only to kiss women's hands, but their decolletes as well, which were cut right down to the tips of their breasts for this very purpose."


Die Welt 27.06.2007

Rumour has it that Tony Blair wants to convert to Catholicism after stepping down from office. Hannes Stein considers this not an entirely good idea: "About 350 years ago, this would have costed a king his head. Charles I – like Tony Blair – had a Catholic wife and he met secretly – like Blair – with Catholic dignitaries. The result: zack! On January 30, 1649, the executioner, with a single swing of the axe, laid the king's head before his feet. It was the first time in history that a monarch was beheaded in the name of the sovereign people and not as the result of a palace revolt. (Here again, the French prove themselves to be nothing more than crude plagiarists.)"


Die Tageszeitung 27.06.2007

"Live Free or Die Hard" comes out in Germany today. Dirk Knipphals is glad to see Bruce Willis back, and sees his character John McClane increasingly in the role of analogue hero in a digital world. "Yet again, the bad guy is a smart, well-dressed superbrain whose repressed hysteria is hidden behind a smile, and who wants to use computer technology to plunge the USA into absolute chaos.(...) And the simple New York cop John McClane, who still doesn't know how to use his own mobile phone, strikes back not with digital means but with his instincts and fists. The surveillance computer, whose visual value was an important aspect of the original film, has lost its novelty and has become a real foil to its developer – and John McClane, a creature of flesh and blood, becomes a dissident within a digital reality."