The European Commission published its own language guide. In terms of English it's only a small deviation from en-GB, but my first thought was indeed: when can I set en-EU?
HSR is more towards airfare than metro-like train services though. The latter which is basically the Dutch rail situation: it's more of a national metro service than a method for voyaging. The fact that 95% of all travels are commuters underlines this.
Now I know some commute on the TGV, but the airfare model works really well for a lot of people, and I think it makes sense for longer journeys. Alas, the Netherlands doesn't have any (national) long journeys.
That said, Dutch rail has a discount system in off-hours now, where you can get sizeable good discounts if you book a few days in advance. You get a ticked valid not for a specific train, but a 4-6 hour timeslot.
That means you never leave your town of residence. I am Dutch too, and I walk and cycle (of course), but I have friend and family elsewhere too, want to visit other nature, cities and countries as well.
I mostly use a car since it's so much cheaper and faster than public transport, but I bought this ticket in order to do some longer distance journeys as well. I don't really like driving.
Fragmentation isn't really there in science and development, fragmented financing (basically the main point I'll cede) is being worked on, and markets will always have to deal with European diversity; we're not all going to speak English tomorrow and eat the same, dress the same, etc.
Comparative GDP based on more current methods (well, decades too at this point) rather than the graphs you are probably seeing show a stable co-trend over the past quarter century.
> Europe is fucked by both high debt, and lack of innovation
Spoken like somebody who has no idea what they are talking about.
Apart from the large share of fundamental science which Europe has always been bigger in and better at (I mean, there's a huge tunnel in Texas to show that Americans at some point understood this and tried to compete), Europe is funding the military tools of the next generation in Ukraine.
Americans used to be excellent executors, then China took that role. What's left?
This in itself is a problem. I only need a credit card for car rental. (Been refused a debit card, which would technicallt work, but reasons?) Why? Because it's a poisened industry.
Ryanair are not fine for people who arent short (me), and for the dark patterns mentioned here. Also, I don't like they have a lot of MCAS aircraft, I prefer Airbus.
That's a whole new can of worms though. Their scams can be a lot more expensive, and are usually after the fact (although they'll try them at the pickup counter too).
It's one of those things I will specifically always arrange through a third party that covers insurance as well, which is really an insurance against the rental companies scams.
I've bought Ryanair tickets twice, but never flown with them. I used _them_ as insurance for possible issues on my preferred connection or for having a minimum viable travel path while I have time to look for a better flight.
Because they're the only option for certain airports I expect to actually fly with them at some point. May that day never come though ;)
My son does not care about video (yet?), which is good. But sometimes when I'm alone and I just must do the chore and they just won't play on their own for 10 minutes (which thankfully they often do), I don't see another way. I mean, I don't feel safe handling hot pans when a toddler just glues itself to my legs. I can lock them in their rooms, but that does not seem better to me (they'll be very upset).
> We understand that some parents in our milieu rely on YouTube for when they need to get stuff done
Certainly is, I can't get around this sometimes in order to do chores either. This is why I have a variety of kids movies, shows, series on disk. Plenty of variety, but all vetted.
Somehow finding the Frontpage HTML editors down at the bottom makes it feel slightly better. At least it bring a fond memory while navigating our corporate Sharepoint horrorfest.