Oxford, Paris, and other things

 This is my second part of my (brief) reflection on Germany after my travel there (Rheine and Hamburg). It's called 'de l'Allemagne' after Madame de Staël's book. I have always wondered about the difference between a state and its limits and the official language of that state, during conversations made with complete strangers in trains or other places, I've discovered there are Swedish speaking communities in Norway and Finland - not to mention the USA, Hungarian speaking communities in Slovakia and Serbia, Russian speakers in Ukraine and Belarus (and of course Paris!), and so many others. But the one European speaking community that I have found a bit everywhere is... the German speaking one. They are, or they were, everywhere: Belgium, France, Russia, Ukraine, most other countries in East Europe. Some were invited by countries, some invited themselves. This is well explained in MacGregor's Germany: memory of a nation (chapter 3: lost capitals) Walking in ...

 No no don't worry I'm not going to redo a madame de Staël, a noble (well as far as I know) lady from France who wrote books at the beginning of the 19th century and is remembered mostly for her book de l'Allemagne.                                                               Bismark monument, Hamburg   (with panels explaning its history and controversy) I vaguely remember her from my highschool as she was included in the Lagarde et Michard , the annual textbook for French literature and culture. Each year was a new century and we started with medieval time when we were in first year so I believe XIX century arrived when I was a teenager. I vaguely remember, from the year before, the walking into nature of monsieur Rousseau, the spleen from the North (England? Scotland?) and the Sturm und Drang...