A town in Europe
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Poland: The Russians who shop gaily in Gdańsk
20 May 201321211 Gazeta Wyborcza Warsaw -
Belgium: Brussels enjoys an artistic awakening
18 April 20133172 NRC Handelsblad Amsterdam -
Poland: Katowice mining the past
7 December 20121853 New Eastern Europe Cracow -
Belgium: Brussels, a refuge for young French people
18 October 20122156 Slate.fr Paris -
United Kingdom: Bye bye Cool Britannia
2 May 201217940 La Repubblica Rome -
A town in Europe: Sibiu – could almost be Bavaria
14 June 2011173 Adevărul Bucharest -
Museums: Antwerp bets on the MAS
20 May 201185 De Morgen Brussels -
A city in Europe: Nostalgia for Bucharest's golden age
13 April 201139 Dilema Veche Bucharest -
Denmark: End of line for Christiania’s flower children
7 March 20112107 Gazeta Wyborcza Warsaw -
A town in Europe: How Palomares survived the bomb
28 February 201175 Público Madrid -
Two towns in Europe: Valka-Valga, two sides to the story
16 February 201189 Postimees Tallinn -
Travel: Krakow and Warsaw, sibling rivals
2 November 201050 Dziennik Gazeta Prawna Warsaw -
Urban planning: The metamorphosis of Prague
25 October 2010137 Hospodářské Noviny Prague -
A town in Europe: Berlin, the new Tel Aviv
7 September 2010150 Süddeutsche Zeitung Munich -
Germany / France: Can a city live down a dark past?
25 August 201035 La Vanguardia Barcelona -
Hungary-Slovakia: Two towns divided by a consonant
23 August 2010261 Libération Paris -
Portugal: Lisbon, the empty capital
6 August 20102001 El País Madrid -
Heritage: Istanbul, all a facade
27 July 2010951 Süddeutsche Zeitung Munich -
A town in Europe: Oberammergau, a passion for the Passion
2 June 201039 Die Zeit Hamburg -
Morocco: Has Marrakech sold out to Europe?
24 May 201074 De Volkskrant Amsterdam -
Italy: Vampire haunted Volterra
27 April 20101951 Der Spiegel Hamburg -
Norway: Bergen, rain and booze and rock ’n’ roll
31 March 2010120 Politiken Copenhagen -
Belgium: Bombay on Scheldt
23 March 201037 De Morgen Brussels -
A town in Europe: The Ruhr - from coal to culture
5 March 201069 Der Spiegel Hamburg -
A town in Europe: Cieszyn, a border run through it
5 February 2010241 Polityka Warsaw -
Hungary: A kvetch about Pécs
22 January 201020 Hírszerzö Budapest
There have probably not been so many Russians in Gdańsk since the spring of 1945. Most are Kaliningrad residents, crossing the border to shop. It’s largely a one-way trade that sees about €20m a month flow out of the Russian exclave into Poland. 
Brussels seems to be all the rage for contemporary art galleries. Less expensive, less saturated, and blessed with a new cultural dynamism, the town is in the midst of an artistic boom. But not everyone is convinced it will last. 
How does a city reinvent itself and build a new identity on a lost industrial past? By betting on culture and architecture to attract tourists. This Silesian city is following Bilbao’s footsteps and will open a rejuvenated museum in January. 
Billionaire Bernard Arnault is not the only one leaving France to set up shop in Belgium. Every year, thousands of young French graduates, attracted by a more accessible job market and better living conditions, are emigrating to the country. 
It is official, the UK is in recession. Formerly cool and generous, London, which will elect a new mayor on May 3, has become inegalitarian and cynical, notes La Repubblica. Although it boasts a record number of billionaires, the prosperous years of the Tony Blair era seem very far off. 
Persecuted during the Romanian Revolution of 1989, Sibiu has since bandaged its wounds and today it has become one of Romania’s leading cultural cities — a metamorphosis hailed by the editor in chief of Adevărul. 
Inaugurated on 17 May, Antwerp’s new metropolitan museum has become a talking point for its architecture. But will it, as its designers have hoped, bring lasting change to the Flemish city? Planner and columnist Filip Canfyn is not convinced. 
Nicknamed "Little Paris", the Romanian capital is getting a little uglier every day, carved up by building sites that are as mammoth as they are meaningless. But some parts of the town have retained their charm, and it wouldn’t take much to give the city a human face. The architect Teodor Frolu reports. 
Freetown Christiania is no longer free. After forty years, the last hippie enclave in Europe is bowing to the laws of the free market, writes Gazeta Wyborcza. 
Victim of the accidental fall on its soil of four American nuclear bombs in 1966, Palomares in Spain is trying to make a fresh start and to get back onto the tourist trail by opening a museum. But a question remains: what to do with the irradiated earth? 
A walk from Valka to Valga not only takes you from Lativa to Estonia, but you also have the impression of traveling from one era to another. Postimees reports on a quarrel between the old guard and the new in one of Europe’s far-flung border towns. 
The eternal rivalry between Poland’s former and the current capitals has lead to intense competition in the field of tourism. It is a hard-fought battle in which visitors to the two cities will be the main winners. 
Environmental activists devote much of their activity to protecting the countryside, but in future preserving cities from aesthetic pollution will become an even greater priority, argues British philosopher Roger Scruton, citing Prague - the "spiritual centre of Europe" - as the perfect example. 
"You’ve never experienced a city like this one before,” they say. Berlin is the European city of choice for Israelis. Above and beyond bitter remembrances of expulsion and extermination, what they seek there now is, first and foremost, fun. 
How does a city that symbolises Nazism or French collaboration bear such an enduring burden? Nuremberg and Vichy are each struggling in their own way to live down the past. 
Komarno and Komarom are twin towns divided by the Danube and centuries of rancour between Slovaks and Hungarians. But this flashpoint of nationalist tension that spilled over into an international incident last year is not all what it seems... 
Rundown buildings and the high price of a square metre are driving away young people and transforming the Portuguese capital into a ghost town to the point where it would be completely devoid of life were it not for the annual influx of students brought to the city by the Erasmus programme. 
For years the Turkish government has been deliberately gutting Istanbul’s old town rather than restoring it, writes the Süddeutsche Zeitung. UNESCO now intends to strike Istanbul off the World Cultural Heritage list, seeing as politicians have done nothing but stymie efforts to preserve its historic monuments. 
For nearly four centuries, the inhabitants of this Bavarian village have performed a Passion Play every ten years to ward off the danger of the plague: a highly colourful event, which attracts tourists from all over the world. 
8,000 foreigners, for the most part Europeans, have moved to Marrakech over the past few years. Their very presence and purchasing power are changing the face of the age-old Moroccan city. 
For many years this small Tuscan town has attracted visitors drawn to its Etruscan past and medieval monuments. But in the last few months, it has become the haunt of thousands of teenage fans of the Twilight saga, whose fictional vampires are supposed to live here. 
Rainy Bergen has seen the likes of Röyksopp, Sondre Lerche and Kings of Convenience promote interest in the Norwegian music scene. In the shadow of Oslo, the port city cultivates its independence. 
The Orthodox Jewish monopoly on the cutting and distribution of gem stones in the world diamond capital Antwerp is now a thing of the past. Since the 1980s, the industry has been increasingly dominated by the Indian Jain community: a change reflected by the transformation of the Flemish city. 
The Ruhr region has seen the rise and fall of the coal industry in the space of 170 years. Now, during its stint as 2010 European Capital of Culture, it aims to complete its modernisation process. But its cities are running out of funds, reports Der Spiegel. 
It is not easy to celebrate a common past in a town that has been divided by history. However, in spite of tensions between Poles and Czechs, life in Cieszyn and Český Těšín is beginning to benefit from the border that separates the two towns. 
The Hungarian city of Pécs, this year’s European Capital of Culture along with Istanbul and Essen, is having a hard time getting out from under Budapest’s long shadow. Is the country incapable of staging an event worthy of Europe’s interest? wonders the Hungarian news portal Hírszerzö.