Another milestone reached: today is the seventh monthiversary of Us Europeans. The slight midtrip crisis I reported about a month ago faded out in just a few days, and I quickly got back to the task at hand: browsing through the future history of Europe.

It`s the first of February today, which means that I am exactly halfway the `Us Europeans` projects. It`s quite a strange moment, in a way even scary, and I will try to explain why.

The Hague, NL (View on map)
I`m a few days ahead of schedule, inserting another `personal reflections` article into the Us Europeans archive. The reason is fairly simple and straightforward. I have been following the news in The Netherlands quite closely while travelling, and am quite worried about what`s happening. Politicians are messing around [...]

It took me four months of traveling to get to my favourite European city: Paris. I will take this achievement as an excuse to dedicate the fourth edition of `personal reflections` to ? my own project. Many people have been asking me what, how, where and why questions about `Us Europeans`, and upon completing one third of my itinerary, I feel confident giving some insight in it. Here`s the Us Europeans FAQ, I hope you will find it interesting reading material.

After three months of travelling, I have now covered 25% of my itinerary. I am happy and grateful that I have the possibility to get to know so many different people, different places and different habits. I think Europe is unique in the endless diversities it offers on such a small piece of land. So many languages, philosophies, cuisines, landscapes all within a few hours reach. But so many gaps to bridge if you all want them to work together in a sensible way.

I`ve been on the road for about two months now. On the first monthiversary of the Us European trip, I chose to write about regional and international conflicts and how each country seems to have its own problem between different layers of the population, whether the reason be in language, religion, ideology, history, nationality or something else. These conflicts seem to have a significant influence on the way people organise their lives. During my stay in Estonia and Finland, I came across another element that seems to be decisive in the mentality of people wherever they live: nature.

Instead of interviewing people today, I thought it would be a nice idea to write about what I have seen so far. It`s the first of September, and I am planning to write similar reports again on the first of each other coming month.