Hello all and welcome to the Europeans podcast, your weekly look at the weird and wonderful goings on

in this strange continent of ours. I am Dominic Kramer, the Amsterdam half of this podcast,

and I'm speaking on Skype to Katie Lee in Paris. What's up, Katie? Hello, I feel a bit weird

because I've just eaten the leftovers of them. I made a massive tartar flet last night, like a good immigrant trying to integrate.

And it was basically 50% cheese.

And now my pulse is racing.

I feel really weird.

Oh, you poor thing.

I also, I baked cookies yesterday and ate three before I went to bed and then felt really sick for the first few hours.

So we both have

had bad culinary experiences this week. Let's make this a nice gentle episode. Let's. But how's

your week being otherwise? Pretty good. I've been writing about fringe European politics,

which is always fun. And the Gilles-Jon protests are still going on. Wow. Which is kind of

amazing. But going on much less sort of vigorously

than they were. And in the meantime, Macron has been kind of going around the country doing these

town hall meetings and talking for hours and hours and hours, which has been interesting. Has he put

his foot in his mouth that many times? Not too many times. He's been a bit sort of smug and patronising,

but generally the thing about Macron that's really interesting is that he really knows his stuff.

Like he knows all kinds of weird things about any number of like really niche policies.

It's not like people like him anymore, but he's managed to earn back respect. I think more people

are saying, you know what? This guy is a really deeply flawed

leader, but at least he's trying and he's really earnest and he really knows the policy of the

...