In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

c h a p t e r 8 Europe, 1945–2008 or, A Short Study in Hope and Frustration The long summer of 2007 began early in Europe. High temperatures were registered in April and May throughout the Continent. In June, July, and August, as the schools were closing down for holidays, many millions went on their annual leave from north to south and from east to west. Paris and Rome as usual were almost empty in August, but there were long queues on the routes nationals, the Autobahnen and the autostradas (all of which had become more and more expensive ); hotels in seaside resorts and mountain villages were fully booked; even those rowing on the rivers of Europe and the bikers and the ramblers in the forests complained about lack of solitude. The coffeehouses and bars were full and so were the local shops in the holiday resorts. The euro went from strength to strength (and continued to do so in 2008 until the fateful month of October). We had the good fortune to spend part of the summer in a village of Haute-Savoie attending a wedding, traveling through Upper Italy in all its glory, crossing the Brenner Pass and Innsbruck, and staying for a few weeks in our favorite resort, Elmau, a castle high up in the Alps facing the Zugspitze that has been turned into a hotel, spa, and cultural center. And there in the middle of forests near the border between Austria and Germany, in a lovely landscape with a strong sun shining in a blue sky, with some glaciers and remnants of snow still visible through the large windows, it was my assignment on a fine afternoon to open a debate about a recent book of mine entitled The Last Days of Europe. It could not have been more incongruous, given the time, the location, and the general mood. It seemed so far-fetched, so unlikely; I felt like a spoilsport and hoped for very few attendants. But many came, and the debate lasted for a long time. Some came from Duisburg, some from Antwerp. As far as they were concerned, they said, the last days of Europe (as they had known it) were already a thing of the past. They lived, they said, in a post-European age. A Grand Tour of Europe I was thinking back. When I left Europe at age seventeen, I had seen very little of it. I had been to Berlin and to Copenhagen and Prague, but Paris and London 202 best of times, worst of times were wholly unknown territory. My curiosity was great but there was no money. My father had never been to France or Britain, my mother had never been outside her native country, and I doubt whether my grandfathers had ever even been to Berlin, the capital of the country in which they were born and spent their lives. There was in those days no particular reason to travel. It was expensive , and the urge to broaden one’s horizon by traveling abroad was limited to relatively few people—and those among them who could afford it. I began to travel in Europe and to explore it, more or less systematically, only in my thirties. For a while I regretted not to have known more of prewar Europe, but on second thought I realized that I may have not missed much simply because I would not have been prepared. I did not know the languages and knew very little about the culture and history of the countries I had missed. In later years, as a historian I became familiar with the phenomenon known as the Grand Tour. Up to the late seventeenth century few Europeans traveled except if there was stringent necessity to do so. Traveling was uncomfortable, even dangerous. It was only in the years that followed that young British noblemen , having graduated from Cambridge or Oxford, usually accompanied by a somewhat older tutor, set out on a journey that led them to Paris and subsequently , sometimes by way of Switzerland, to Venice—at the time the most popular destination in northern Italy—and on to Rome. The Grand Tour took never less than year and frequently much longer. Diplomats traveled, but this was part of their job. So did scientists and philosophers—Gottfried Leibniz in Hanover, John Locke in London, or Anton van Leeuwenhoek in the Netherlands. Baruch Spinoza lived in seclusion and did not travel, nor did Isaac Newton, but...

Share