In Europe

begun work paving yet another stretch of the sandy road, perhaps even with a layer of tarmac this time. And the bell-ringer was sacked; he had stolen a pension cheque that belonged to the mayor's mother. That, too, was 1999.
    In the café I met them all: the mayor, Crazy Maria, the toothless man (also known as ‘the Spy’), the village lush, the Gypsies, the postman's wife who lived with her cow. There was no getting around being introduced to the veteran, a big friendly man in a camouflage outfit who kept his nightmares at bay with alcohol and dubious toadstools. He spoke French, everyone said, but the only word of it I ever heard him utter was ‘Marseille’.
    Later that same evening, the new bell-ringer and the man who collected the rubbish sang songs from long ago, and everyone beat out the rhythm on the tables:
    We laboured in the forest,
High upon the crack of dawn
With the day still full of foggy dew
We worked among the fallen trunks,
High on the slopes, the horses strained
    and:
    We worked on the railroad from Budapest to Pécs
The bright new blinking railroad
Blasted through rock, the tunnel at Pécs
    Travelling across Europe, all those months, had been like peeling off layers of old paint. More than ever I realised how, generation upon generation, a shell of distance and alienation had developed between Eastern and Western Europeans.
    Do we Europeans have a common history? Of course, everyone can rattle their way down the list: Roman Empire, Renaissance, Reformation, Enlightenment, 1914, 1945, 1989. But then one need only look at the enormous differences in the way that history has been experienced by individual Europeans: the older Polish truck driver I spoke to, who had been forced four times in his life to learn a new language; the German couple, bombed out of their home and then endlessly driven from place to place throughout Eastern Europe; the Basque family that fell apart one Christmas Eve arguing about the Spanish Civil War, and never spoke to each other again; the serene satisfaction of the Dutch, the Danes and the Swedes, who have usually avoided catching the full brunt of History. Put a group of Russians, Germans, Britons, Czechs and Spaniards at one table and have them recite their family histories: they are worlds unto themselves. Yet, even so, it is all Europe.
    The history of the twentieth century, after all, was not a play performed before their eyes, but a major or minor part of their – and our – own lives. ‘We are a part of this century. This century is a part of us,’ Eric Hobsbawm wrote at the outset of his magisterial history of the twentieth century. To him, for example, 30 January, 1933 was not only the day Hitler became chancellor, but also the wintry afternoon in Berlin when a fifteen-year-old boy walked home from school with his sister and, somewhere along the way, saw a newspaper billboard. ‘I still see it before me, as in a dream.’
    For my own elderly Aunt Maart in Schiedam, who was seven at the time, 3 August, 1914 – the day the First World War broke out – was a warm Monday that suddenly took on something oppressive. Workers stood around in little groups in front of their houses, women wiped their eyes with a corner of their aprons, and a man shouted to a friend: ‘Hey, it's war!’
    For Winrich Behr, one of those whose story is included in this book, the fall of Stalingrad was the telegram he received as a German liaison officer: ‘
31.01.07.45
Uhr Russe vor der TÜr. Wir bereiten Zerstörung vor/ APL 6. Oa/ 31.1.07.45
Uhr Wir Zerstören. AOK 6
.’
    For twelve-year-old Ira Klejner of St Petersburg (Leningrad then), 6 March, 1953, the day Stalin's death was announced, meant a kitchen in a communal household, her fear that she would not be able to weep, and her relief whena tear at last rolled down her cheek, into the yolk of the fried egg she was eating.
    For me, a nine-year-old, November 1956 smelled of red peppers, strange dishes brought to our sedate, canal-side home in Leeuwaarden by Hungarian refugees, quiet, shy people who learned Dutch by reading Donald Duck comics.
    Now the twentieth century has itself become history, our personal history and that of the films, books and museums. As I write, the backdrops to the stage of international affairs are changing quickly. Seats of power shift, alliances break down, fresh coalitions arise, new priorities take pride of place.
    Vásárosbéc is preparing for its country's entry into the European Union. Within