In Rome, the newsstands "have increasingly become like mini-shopping malls, to a degree that would surprise even New Yorkers," reports Michael Kimmelman in the New York Times (6/4/10). At Campo de' Fiori, Fabrizio Zanchi runs "a sprawling kiosk ... with a marble-floor interior ... Narrow shelves rise to the forest green ceiling like angels toward heaven in a fresco by Pietro da Cortona. Except, in lieu of angels, the shelves heaved with piles of Sudoku puzzlers, knockoff Barbie dolls, tidy balls of wool and dusty books."

Fabrizio says he stocks about 20,000 items and agrees that his kiosk "looks artful." Meanwhile, Massimo Fioretti "runs the stand between the Pantheon and Sant'Eustachio ... an orderly, beckoning cornucopia of maps, guides, reading glasses, clocks, diaries, souvenir medallions, playing cards and other tourist paraphernalia, amid the various archaeology numbers, foreign newsweeklies, lads' magazines ... and Italian dailies. High Baroque, you might call the kiosk."

It's not so much that the kiosks are so different from each other in terms of what they sell: "The stands start out more or less the same. But artists have proved for eons that in sameness there can be variety." And as Fabrizio says, "I feel surrounded by culture." But Massimo says he misses the days when his kiosk was a kind of community center, "a place where neighbors left messages for one another and lingered to chat over the daily newspapers." He blames the web and mobile phones for this decline, saying, "Eventually we'll just sell gadgets."

McDonald's is introducing cupcakes at its McCafes in Germany, naming them after "four famous Manhattan neighborhoods," reports Nicholas Kulish in the New York Times (4/12/10). The Chesea is chocolate, the East Village is cappuccino, Central Park is strawberry and SoHo is vanilla (images). As McDonald's explain on McCafe paper placemats: "All of New York is crazy about the cult cupcakes and McCafe brings the hip little cakes to you."

To help the idea along, the German McDonald's website elaborates on the meaning of Chelsea: "Chelsea was once terribly hip, then not again, and then once again it was. Was that too fast? Well, that's New York." The site also suggests consuming Chelsea's chocolate cupcake in a waterfront setting to "enjoy your personal Chelsea feeling." Few Germans have ever tasted cupcakes, but many are familiar with them from watching American television shows.

Simon Forster, 26, tried one of the McDonald's cupcakes and said it was "not bad" but perhaps "a little artificial." Daniel Bader, owner of Cupcake Berlin, has been selling cupcakes for three years now, and says some Germans are confused by them. "Someone came in once and asked if they were candles and whether you could eat them," he says. But Daniel's bigger concern is that McDonald's doesn't spoil the party for cupcakes in Germany. "I just hope they don't taste so terribly that people say, 'cupcakes suck,'" he says.

The City of Light is going underground, with a "new crop of eating spots, crash pads, galleries and salons ... that hover below the tourist radar," reports Seth Sherwood in the New York Times (3/28/10). These include Hidden Kitchen, "a private supper club," tucked away in "an elegant 19th-century apartment building," and La Reserve, "a spread of 10 luxury apartments that occupy an anonymous upscale building." They are easily found online, if not onland, and often are the creations of enterprising proprietors like Olivier Magny, founder of O Chateau, a "wine-tasting operation."

Oliver was a business student with a passion for wine who "began organizing events in ... his parents' apartment." He soon "upgraded to his own apartment" and now runs his business in a "subterranean space, known as Les Caves du Paradis, long ago ... the private wine cellar of Louis XV." Says Olivier: "I like the fact that it's off the main tourism track in Paris." Others are taking a similar approach to health and beauty, such as "a lovely six-room apartment housing a wellness institute known as L'Appartment 217." It's located behind a "vast wooden double door" and "up a few flights of stairs."

Then there are galleries, like the Box in Paris, found beyond a "cobbled and tree-planted passageway" in the city's "notorious red-light district," which "melds art, food, hospitality and performance." Aline Geller calls it a "polydisciplinary space" which combines art exhibitions, film, literary readings, concerts, and bed-and-breakfast. "I didn't want to just do another gallery, because that's a dead concept," says Aline. Grace Teshima, whose apartment/gallery is known as Chez Grace, agrees. Her goal was "to create a space without the posing and attitude that often creeps into the Paris gallery scene," and she says, "It's the opposite of smoke and mirrors."

It's a rude awakening when the Abercrombie & Fitch billboard goes up on London's legendary Savile Row, reports Nancy deWolf Smith in the Wall Street Journal (2/12/10). The moment is captured in a documentary called "Savile Row" which aired recently on the Sundance Channel. The giant, garish billboard heralds the arrival of an A&F flagship store, and "the irony -- that A&F used to have a nice pedigree as an outfitter of the sporting man" is not lost on the tailors.

They still think of their 'hood as "the tribal home of the gentleman ... a tiny community of craftsmen (who) make the best men's suits in the world." A place where, as the documentary narrator says, "The Hunchback of Notre Dame emerges looking like Justin Timberlake." Maybe that's the problem. But Savile Row, which earns 70 percent of its income from American customers, do indeed have "a record of dressing the world's most glamorous and discerning people." No need for billboards, then.

"We're a household name in the households you want to be known in," says one tailor. Here's hoping, when suits run about $4,000, with those in superfine wool costing upwards of $15,000. But certainly not when the neighborhood is "being invaded by a huge American jeans and T-shirt retailer whose magnetic presence may drive rents up and them out." The Savile tailors must hope the documentary narrator is right when he says, "Labels say you're one of the boys -- but a bespoke suit says, 'You are the man.'"

Five years ago, Stefan Strumbel of Offenburg, Germany, gave up graffiti and began making cuckoo clocks instead, reports Gisela Williams in the New York Times (2/4/10). "When I did graffiti, it was all about marking my territory," says Stefan. "But then I started thinking that graffiti itself was more of a New York thing and that I should do something that was authentic to where I come from, the Black Forest."

He's referring to a German idea, "heimat," which basically means "homeland," and how it relates to his art. "For so long after Hitler, Germans haven't been able or allowed to reclaim their heimat," says Stefan. "I wanted to ask the question, 'What is heimat?' and make it something fresh, ironic and dynamic." He found his answer in cuckoo clocks, which are, of course "quintessentially German" as well as "symbolic of the Black Forest region."

So, Stefan "began buying clocks from local stores and transforming them into street-inspired pieces with spray paint." The clocks "are based on traditional models but are adorned with grenades and handguns instead of rabbits and antlers" (images) They are priced anywhere from $1,200 to $35,000 each. Mon Muellerschoen, a curator, thinks the clocks capture a new German spirit, a "Germany that is aware of its past, but ready to take new, lighthearted and colorful paths -- a Germany that can accept its cliches with the wink of an eye."

Ukrainian disaffection has deepened to a point where a presidential candidate calling himself "Protyvsikh" -- or "Against Everyone" -- could change an election, reports Ellen Barry in the New York Times (11/20/09). Vasily V. Humenyuk, who legally changed his last name to "Protyvsikh," in advance of a presidential election currently involving some 18 candidates, as well as the option to vote for "none of the above." The field likely will narrow to two candidates in a runoff -- former prime minister Viktor F. Yanukovich and current prime minister Yulia V. Tymoshenko -- but for now Mr. Protyvsikh seems to be striking a chord.

"Everyone's disappointed in politicians," says Vladimir Zuyenko, who is currently unemployed and feels left behind after the so-called Orange Revolution that brought Ms. Tymosheko and her predecessor, Viktor Yushchenko, to power. "They made this revolution, but they didn't solve anything. We were poor then, and we're still poor. The only reason to vote is that if we don't, someone else will vote for us." Darya Lobachevskaya agrees: "People had hope then," she says. "It lasted for a year, maybe two years. But then, wherever it came from, it went back there."

And so Mr. Protyvsikh is stepping forward, saying simply, "Elect me, and I'll explain everything." He isn't even bothering to take a campaign swing, saying that "these trips cost a great deal and the people are sick of them." But a protest vote could prove decisive. Polls show "none of the above" rising from four to eight percent, and as high as 18 percent in a two-way runoff. Even if just 10 percent choose a protest vote, it could change the results. But Andrei Mikitin, a journalist, doesn't think that will happen. He predicts that Orange sympathizers ultimately will not vote "against everyone" but against Viktor Yanukovich, "if only because Moscow backs him."

A confluence of German engineering and sausages is sparking an entrepreneurial bonanza for the Grillwalker, "a one-man mobile sausage-cooking machine," reports Nicholas Kulish in the New York Times (9/24/09). It's really pretty clever. Bertram Rohloff came up with the idea back in 1997 when he couldn't get the permits he needed to open a sandwich stand. The rule in Berlin was that a permit was needed if his stand touched the ground, so Bertram figured he could just wear a grill like a cigarette tray and strap a small propane tank on his back like a knapsack (image).

Today, he has "15 employees selling sausages around the city in teams of two; they take turns wearing the grill and reloading the sausages, rolls and condiments." He is also renting Grillwalkers via subcontractors "in cities around the country" and "has sold the equipment, at $7,100 a piece, to customers in Bulgaria, Colombia, South Korea and elsewhere, including one to a man in Nebraska." There's even a Grillwalker on its way to South Africa, in advance of the World Cup.

Bertram says the Grillwalker not only gives him access to prime tourist locations, but also enables his team "to follow the crowds." He uses bright orange umbrellas to stand out -- although the Grillwalker's novelty attracts plenty of attention by itself: "Tourists unaccustomed to seeing a kitchen stroll around on two feet gawk, gape and take pictures." The Grillwalker sausages also cost much less than those sold by traditional vendors, who say their quality is higher and hygienics are better. But Lydia Eiglsperger, a Grillwalker customer disagrees: "I don't think it's unhygienic," she says. "Standing out there, they can't hide a thing."

With France's GDP shrinking by about three percent, French President Nicolas Sarkozy thinks it's time to find another way to measure prosperity, reports David Gautheir-Villars in the Wall Street Journal (9/15/09). Sarkozy says it's not enough simply to measure economic output, and of course he's not the first to say so. Back in 1968, Robert F. Kennedy noted that GDP "counts napalm and counts nuclear warheads." His point was that these weren't exactly leading indicators of economic health. Sarkozy believes that well-being should also be measured, somehow.

Hm. Maybe if he counted Carla Bruni ... Sarkozy actually has been working with a group known as the Stiglitz Commission, led by Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz to come up with ways to measure well-being. So, far, the commission recommends "tracking household income and consumption." The commission also suggests that, over the long-term, "governments must pay more attention to sustainability to determine what level of well-being can be maintained for future recommendations."

Of course, adding in a "well-being" factor "would likely paint a rosier picture of the economy in France, where workers take long vacations and have generous social-security benefits." But Joseph Stiglitz says the real key is to figure out what to measure. "What we measure affects what we do," he says. "If we have the wrong measures, we will strive for the wrong things." The commission therefore suggests "that each country comes up with its own basket of indicators" based on its objectives, rather than create a universal "composite indicator to replace GDP."

Germans -- children and adults alike -- "see a richness and complexity" in Donald Duck "that isn't always immediately evident to people in the cartoon duck's homeland," reports Susan Bernofsky in the Wall Street Journal (5/23/09). "Donald is so popular because almost everyone can identify with him," says Christian Pfeiler, president of D.O.N.A.L.D., a Donald Duck fan club. "He has strengths and weaknesses, he lacks polish but is also cultured and well-read." In other words, the German Donald Duck is not exactly the same as the American one.

"Donald quotes from German literature, speaks in grammatically complex sentences and is prone to philosophical musings, while the stories often take a more political tone than their American counterparts." In other words, something is gained in the translations. Back in the 1950s, the Ehapa publishing house hired Erika Fuchs, a PhD who "had never laid eyes on a comic book before the day an editor handed her a Donald Duck story." Erika was told to "crank up the erudition level of the comics she translated, a task she took seriously."

She soon had him quoting from literature, and using more colorful language When Donald spoke in English, he'd say: "I'd do anything to break this monotony!" In German: "How dull, dismal and deathly sad! I'd do anything to make something happen." She wove warnings about totalitarianism into storylines, "and a newly politicized generation ... saw the comics as illustrations of the classic Marxist struggle." Erica passed away four years ago, at 98, but her Donald continues to help move some 250,000 comic books at German newsstands each week.

"American commercials go from the head to the wallet, British ones from the head to the heart, French from the heart to the head," reports Michael Kimmelman in the New York Times (2/19/09). Michael is actually paraphrasing an observation by Jacques Seguela, chief creative officer for Havas, the second-largest ad agency in France. "Clearly French commercials speak to French culture no less than French literature or music does," writes Michael, who also notes that while French ads are "long on sensuality, style and poetry, they are notably lean on facts and nearly allergic to the rough-and-tumble of commerce."

In France, advertisers aren't allowed to attack competitors and typically cannot include a direct-response phone number. Jacques Seguela says this is because "we have always had a very unhealthy relationship to money ... To us, money implies corruption, and moreover, because we consider ourselves the inventors of freedom, never mind if that's not true, we still consider advertising as a kind of manipulation ... This explains why television commercials started so late here -- essentially because leftist opposition saw ads as corrupting the soul."

It may also help explain why French president Nicolas Sarkozy, a conservative, enjoyed a "public relations coup" recently by ordering a ban on commercials on four "public television stations ... during evening hours." The funny part is, some believe the French actually like TV commercials but "prefer not to admit it." Stephene Martin, director of the French Union for television advertisements comments: "We're not a Protestant culture ... So we have difficulty accepting successful people and embracing advertising as a means of selling. And there has always been such a strong sense that the state should be responsible for public services, like television." ~ Tim Manners, editor.