At the turn of the year, the Western media, like latter-day Columbuses, suddenly discovered that Europe was speaking with an increasingly strong German accent. Their surprise was surprising.

It is a pleasure to watch, on both sides of the Atlantic, the professional prophets of "evil empire" now forced to perform their "agonizing reappraisals."

Some events carry an exceptional symbolic charge.

Maastricht--shorthand now for the speeding up of the European Community's financial integration--is both an eye-opener and a mystification.

The French socialist saga makes awkward reading for left-wingers. It has a wistful air of déjà vu.

Four drunken Polish youths, four distant, misty figures, acrobatically avoid a fall, then vanish mysteriously into the fog.

Capitalism is re-entering Russia dripping with blood. Whether Boris Yeltsin's successful putsch will extend his reign remains to be seen.

Paris

Friday, February 15. It's getting dark. My wife, Jeanne, and I land at Okiecie, the Warsaw airport. The temperature is 19 degrees below freezing.

For the next weeks and months the eyes of the world will be focused on Poland, where events are now unfolding at an unexpectedly dramatic pace.