Within minutes, confusion was worse confounded by a Barroso bomb. The latest wheeze from the president of the European Commission has a splendidly Titanic-like quality. As the good ship euro lists alarmingly in heavy seas, the captain’s contribution is a proposal to design another boat.

Read the article, it is full of win. I guess Itanic now refers to Italy-Titanic and Intel may finally get to set that ghost to rest! Another quote below

UK gilts are obligations on the British government, which has the longest record in the world of meeting them, albeit in devalued pounds. The euro depends on a disparate collection of highly variable European countries, some of which are clearly in no state to honour any obligation.

Probably not the sight most people remember in Madrid. but this one was really good in a silhouette.

It was at a fantastic location. Very close to the Puerta del Sol (the plaza which houses the famous bear and tree statue) and the Plaza Mayor, it is at the very center of the old city. Bounded by the Gran Via (Broadway) to the North, the “golden triangle” of museums to the East and the Palacio Real (royal palace) & Cathedral to the West. The second night I was there, I walked up to the Espana square – a 15 minute walk even in the freezing conditions. I did not realize it then, but I was just one block away from the palace itself.

Espana houses a fountain and a column dedicated to Miguel de Cervantes. The column has a statue of Cervantes and he looks upon statues of two of his most famous creations – Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. Not too far from this is the temple of Debod. This temple was to be a victim of the building of the Aswan dam in Egypt. Anwar Sadat offered the temple to Spain and it was shipped stone by stone and reconstructed in Madrid. It is a beautiful monument.There is something incongruous about an Egyptian temple surrounded by modern European office buildings, though.

My taxi driver informed me that the monument at the entrance to the the garden that houses the temple was erected in memory of the people killed in the terrorist attacks in Madrid on March 11, 2004.

PS – photo above taken with my N900

Update: Fixed a typo “s/wound/would”

The politicians, especially the ones on the conservative end of the spectrum, have won the battle to confuse the issue completely. No one really seems to care for the science in any case. The really interesting thing is that the so-called conservatives don’t seem to want to conserve the environment. Forget the global warming / anthropomorphic climate change, isn’t it worth it to spend some efforts to clean up the environment of pollutants just so that we have clean air, water and land; and are in a position to leave that as a legacy to future generations?

In this context, I also wanted to highlight a wonderful piece in the Guardian I read yesterday on the flight (the Guardian and the International Herald Tribune were the only English language newspapers available in Madrid): Irrational fears give nuclear power a bad name. It is a wonderful report on how fear-mongering by politicians, contractors and media have led the world to ignore nuclear power as a source of energy.

Back on topic of the freezing cold, if there were to be a global decline in temperatures, I wish that leads to a little cooler clime here in Bombay. At a time the entire northern hemisphere is struggling with the cold, Bombay is almost sweltering at 30 degrees C plus temperatures.

Geneva airport had a lot of luggage lying around when I landed. Now I know why: there has been a baggage handlers’ strike going on! They are trying to break the strike by bringing in handlers from Zurich.

The other crazy thing here is that the airport serves France and Switzerland and is located at the border (question to self: is this near CERN?). So to get into this flight, I had to go through French customs and check-in on the French side of the airport. When I landed also I noticed the split, but this was really interesting since they have two sets of check-in counters and all…

Today was indoors completely, but for the hotel to office and office to airport. Cold yes, but not exposed to it.

My flight boards in 6 minutes, so I will sign off here.

It is the end of the holiday season and tickets were hard to come by, so I was put on a route through Paris CDG on Air France. The flight was nothing to talk about, but Paris CDG almost put LHR to shame this time. Firstly it is freezing weather (at the 8 am landing time, it was -6 degrees C). And they asked everyone to get into buses, which meant alighting on the tarmac in that cold. Not having anticpated this, I had my warmest stuff (and consequently heaviest) inside the check-in bag.
Still had some warm stuff. Got on the bus and on to terminal 2C. Flight to Geneva leaves from 2F. Okay another coach. Again brave the cold and get to new terminal.

As if this was not enough, the boarding gate was changed at the last minute. Right, things have not gone well with CDG so far, but it seems to be looking up. The old departure gate would have taken us through a bus (cold again – getting the theme?) and the new one had an aero-bridge! Yay! Not so fast. They make us climb down the aero-bridge and into a bus. So there you have it, in one of the coldest winters in years, CDG decides to shunt me through the open air at every opportunity possible.

Part 2: First impressions

Geneva is a lovely town. My hotel is at the edge of the old town and near the private banking district. The lake Geneva is just around the corner and I had a lovely walk in the afternoon along its bank watching the Jet d’Eau – a 140 feet tall fountain. Later I walked in and around the old town walking up to the Plainpalais, Place de Bastion and the University of Geneva, past the St Peter’s Cathedral. One very interesting sight was the Eglise Orthodox Russe – the Russian Orthodox Church.

Being Switzerland, everything is maintained well. The roads are cleared of snow properly. Nevertheless there was so much snow that I slipped several times – one time on a slope when I was certain I would take a tumble. But my luck held and I was on two feet all along!

More: I wanted to get this post up quickly in the time before heading to a business dinner. Photos and more will follow.

PS: The couple of recent travels to France has really improved my French. I am able to understand aircraft announcements now!