Normal and Boring
The Europeans | European news, politics and culture
Katy Lee and Dominic Kraemer
0.0 • 0 Ratings
🗓️ 22 April 2020
⏱️ 30 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The superstar illustrator Christoph Niemann is on a mission to better understand Europe. 'In Praise of a Normal, Boring Country', the latest installment of his New York Times visual essay series, took him to Estonia. We rang him up in Berlin to talk about his trip and a bunch of other stuff. Also this week: Dominic gets to grips with debt mutualisation, and Katy gets to grips with mittens.
Thanks for listening! If you like our show, you can help us keep making it at Patreon: https://patreon.com/europeanspodcast
Read Christoph's lovely visual essay about Estonia here: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/03/25/magazine/dispatches-estonia.html
Isolation Inspiration: Sunday Sketching by Christoph Niemann | Unorthodox on Netflix
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | I'm a bit worried that the bell concert hasn't happened. |
| 0:20.0 | The saga continues. |
| 0:21.4 | Will we never be free of the bells? |
| 0:23.0 | I don't think so. |
| 0:23.9 | They've been tuning all morning. |
| 0:26.5 | What do you mean tuning? |
| 0:27.8 | They like bong certain notes over and over again |
| 0:32.0 | to like make them in tune, |
| 0:34.1 | although I still think they always stand out of tune |
| 0:36.3 | because of the harmonics. |
| 0:37.9 | So I feel like at this point, every angle of the coronavirus crisis has been covered, apart from |
| 0:43.3 | what it's like to be one of those people that lives really near a bell tower. |
| 0:48.2 | Yeah. |
| 0:48.7 | Maybe I should write that. |
| 0:49.7 | I think you should. |
| 0:50.3 | And also, it's interesting because they are basically the only concerts that are still |
| 0:54.7 | happening and also it's king's day in the netherlands next monday which is the big celebration |
| 1:02.8 | of the king's birthday normally like a massive thing in the street yeah and it's called |
| 1:07.9 | koningsdach but they've renamed it this year to Voningstach, which means like house day. |
| 1:13.9 | Because everyone has to stay at home, but one of the things they are doing is getting all the church bells to have a little old party. |
| 1:20.8 | Oh, God. |
| 1:22.1 | So, yeah, Monday's going to be great. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Katy Lee and Dominic Kraemer, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Katy Lee and Dominic Kraemer and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.