Milan, Italy, Europe
by Gareth Harding 09/12/2007
In the passport queue at Vienna airport a young Italian girl asks her mother why they can’t join another line. “Because this one is for members of the European Union,” says her mum. “But I’m from Milan,” replies the girl with impeccable logic. “You are my dear,” says her mum. “But Milan is in Italy and Italy is in the European Union.”
The girl nods her heads. She understands.
So why do so many Brits – especially the nostalgic colonialists, insecure supremacists, frothing-at-the-mouth Little Englanders and editors of almost all British newspapers – fail to grasp what a nine-year old girl grasps: that just as Milan is in Italy and Italy is in the EU, so London, Liverpool, Brighton and Oxford are part of Britain and Britain is part of Europe.
It’s child’s play really.
Europe, Schengen & More!
A wonderful post, Gareth. But why were the mother and daughter from Milan waiting in the passport line at all? Surely if they flew Milan to Vienna direct, it was Schengen all the way. Or were they de-Schengified en route by changing planes in Zürich?
Your comment on older conservative Brits' often appalling attitude to Europe is exemplified also in their abject inability to understand the beauties and benefits of Schengen. So often I hear Brits complain that flights from London are singled out for passport checks here in Berlin whereas no-one bothers about planes coming in from Madrid, Paris or Rome. They simply don't seem to be able to understand that, in electing not to join the Schengen group of nations, they ensure that arrivals from the UK will rightly be treated as some sort of European pariah.
Nicky Gardner (Berlin, Germany)
editor / hidden europe magazine
www.hiddeneurope.co.uk