Ok I had my first taste of what it is like to have a binational work place... And I love it! Moi j’adore
Monday night my fellow dedicated Eurocrats and I went straight to the parliament to work without checking in to our hotels first. I have an absolute horror (j’ai horreur) of finding the place I will be staying in an unfamiliar city so rather than go out to dinner with colleagues I opted to go find my hotel first, as it would get rather late otherwise. I didn’t relish the thought of wandering the streets of
I was trying to find the tram stop (which is actually outrageously far from the parliament. At least a 20 minute walk. Very bad transportation planning.) I asked one of the security guards at the parliament for directions and he happened to be getting off duty right then and…walked me all the way to the tram stop. He also carried my extremely heavy bag for me! Wow.
I can imagine exactly how it must have felt to be a maiden rescued in the African jungle by French Legionnaires.
So then I took the tram and got to my hotel which was great too. After putting up with awful
And then if things couldn’t get better, my room had…a television (yeah, pathetic thing to get excited about I know, but it’s been tough living without one in my apartment). They carried BBC World and I got to watch John Bolton being taken to the cleaners about
I went to bed and the next day Tuesday was very busy. Lots of meetings. Lots of coffee. Interesting to watch lobbyists at work. Some are very smooth. They are just chatting like any of do with our friends but at the same time they are managing to make political points. Other lobbyists are much more blunt in their technique.
In the afternoon my MEP gave a press conference on his "written declaration on racism in football" that is a bit of a mouthful and at one point I accidentally said "racism against football" to someone.
I was given the all-important job of bringing the soccer ball down to the photo op after the press conference. I’ve found out it really annoys Brits when you say "soccer" instead of "football' I am going to tuck that bit of knowledge away for a day when it might come in useful;)
In the evening I went first to a parliament reception featuring Bulgarian culture. Then later I went to a really cool local restaurant with about 15 other parliament staff. I had tarte flambé-a local dish. It was cool to have a local delicacy and all but that was about its only charm.
The company was fantastic, though. The interpersonal dynamics are very interesting. Another staffer and I gave a rousing rendition of Dolly Parton’s “Jolene.”
There was lots of
One guy remarked that the types of English persons who move to
Of course Nancy Mitford moved to
I didn’t get to bed till late and then next day Wednesday there were more meetings. I was absolutely persecuted by some German lobbyists who needed someone to meet them at the door to sign them in since they didn’t have full parliament accreditation. I was called 3 times by their office hyperventilating that I had to “guarantee” that someone would be there to meet them. That sort of ticked me off. Honestly, it’s a fallen world what kind of guarantees can I give? I said I’ll be there so I’ll be there.
I wanted to quote the scene from “The Godfather” when Sollozzo tells Michael “What guarantees can I give? I’m the hunted one!”
I was hanging out in my friend Sarah’s (the one I went to Brugge with) office for awhile. Her boss deals with lots of foreign affairs issues. The Ambassador from
I was choking with laughter in the corner. I could barely hold it in.
Oh yeah, speaking of Israelis…President Abbas was supposed to come address the parliament Tuesday. But then at the last minute Israeli troops stormed some jail and Abbas cancelled to go deal with the crisis. You can’t imagine my delight when I realized that this would open up an hour in Chris’ day-thus neatly solving a scheduling conflict I had been stressing about. So you see, there is a silver lining to every cloud. I was quite grateful to the Israelis for storming that jail right then.
Wednesday night there was a huge birthday dinner for a UK delegation stafferI was exhausted and plagued by a headache but terrified of being branded with the scarlet “A” for asocial by my peers so I went along anyway(yes, Michaela, I know: I’m a sheeple.) We went to a Chinese restaurant. Everyone had duck. I had…fried rice.
Oh well.
I had a lovely chat with one of the Members of the European Parliament who has a wonderfully posh public school boy accent. I could listen to him all day. He explained to me why he believes
After dinner everyone else went out for drinks, but I decided-asocial or not-I had to get to bed.
Look what I found on the square outside the restaurant. (I thought it was so unusual I just had to have a photo)...
Thursday was a short day. In the morning i went down to the members bar with my boss and we drank coffee and different other MEPs and lobbyists floated by our table. It was quite fun to listen to all the different topics discussed.
Mussolini’s granddaughter was visiting the parliament for some reason. She walked by where we were sitting. She is politically active and I'm told she shares grandpa’s political views….She is quite short and wears LOADS of makeup.
After my boss left to go vote at noon, I headed in to the city with an intern from another office. She is British, but studies law in
I think whenever I am traveling I am really just searching for that "Before Sunrise" moment and this was certainly as close as I have ever gotten.
She likes to come sit by the river to chill out. She pointed out a very interesting old tree and we discussed how one could easily imagine Robin Hood sitting up in its branches whistling down to the sheriff of Nottingham who he is about to rob.
We visited the amazing cathedral. As Victor Hugo remarked when he visited Strasbourg, "It is a gigantic and delicate marvel." There are so many nooks and crannies too it. I would love to be free to just sneak around its corridors some afternoon and see what I could find (my philosophy of tourism: “if the door is not locked it's ok for me to go in.”)
And then…guess what I did? Perhaps you have seen on the news that there are big student protests going on in
My logic: in 1968 student protests brought down the government of
We then went on to this fantastic tea shop. All the walls were painted red and there were paintings of ladies in Alsatian costume. The chinaware was lovely. All different but all painted with little flowers. They also had these sort of cool “floral” garlands made of Christmas lights (the brits call them “fairy lights” how cool is that!?) with red or orange tissue papers bunched up around each individual light to look like little roses and then this was intertwined by fake ivy. I thought it was ingenious. I may have to try to make something similar myself.
The tea was wonderful and we had scrumptious berry cake to go with it. We talked about the books we like. So of course that was a fantastic finish to my week.
This girl lives in
Then it was time to hit the road again. I regaled my carmates with tales of Patrick Henry College. They were amused and not a little bit amazed.
The journey home was marred by the fact that I thought I had lost my keys. Fortunately I found them again the next day, but not before I woke up my Dad in the US (thanks to the time difference, it was 5 a.m. there) with my usual protestations of wishing I were dead etc. My longsuffering father is an oldhand at this after the agony and the ecstacy of my 2004 internship with a news program in the Netherlands. I have to say he deals with it very well.
Well, I think I will leave off here. This post has taken me 2 hours and 6 cups of tea to write. I am so relieved that I am not at my parent's house writing this on my Dad's computer as he would start asking me if I was rewriting "War and Peace." (that is actually not such a bad idea...I would change the ending. just kidding!)Well, perhaps we will have time for my thoughts on that book in another post.