Will the Luxembourg summit end with a new treaty?

It looks like the EU foreign ministers meeting in Luxembourg may end without a document, after the leaders spent the weekend desperately trying to revive the EU constitution.

The meeting, which by dint of EU regulation must take place in this horrible building in Luxembourg nicknamed the “padded cell” (see photo, right) had a lot riding on it. To recap, the EU constitution, which would have given the EU a single constitution and framework of government, was voted down in referendums in France and the Netherlands in 2005, after many other countries had passed it in similar referendums. The constitution required the approval of every member state, so essentially the French “non” was the end of the road for it.

Now German chancellor, Angela Merkel, who now holds the rotating presidency of the EU, is trying to revive it, but in a different form. Gone is the talk of a “constitution,” and the nations are now trying to work out a “treaty” that will appease the eurosceptics but still have some teeth. The key objective for this week’s meeting was to give clear instructions for a symposium in the fall which will hopefully draw up a treaty to replace the constitution. The main sticking points that needed to be ironed out:

Swiss weekend

I had a very nice relaxing time visiting the family in Switzerland this weekend. I definitely needed it, as the last few weeks have been not entirely pleasant.

Saturday we spent just lounging in the lake. My dad got this hilarious big inflatable gazebo imported from the states that he can put outside the house in the water and take a little raft out to. The Swiss going by in their yachts seemed to react to it with a mixture of befuddlement and horror, which we found quite amusing. It just needed a big American flag at the top. But it was nice to lie out there with the geese and the ducks, it was eerily quiet on the lake Saturday, maybe everyone was at the Caliente festival in downtown Zurich.

Sunday we took a little road trip to the Italian section of Switzerland, which just drove home how truly bizarre that country is. The Italian section is the canton of Ticino, which is the part of Switzerland below the Alps. It’s right at the exit of the mountain pass that people from Northern Europe have used to get down to Italy for centuries. During the height of the Swiss consolidation period in the late 15th century the Swiss confederacy obtained it through conquest, attracted to its strategic location as the north-south crossroads of the Alps. It was actually the last area the Swiss obtained through conquest.

Tube vs. Subway

A lot of people here ask me how London compares to New York. I usually answer that I like it here, but there are two things that really bug me about this city and make me miss New York.

The first is how decentralized it is, how it’s really more of a collection of little villages than a core-oriented metropolis like NYC. I’m still really the only person I know who lives in central London, everyone here lives way out in the middle of nowhere, miles from the city center. Everyone says it’s because central London is so expensive, but honestly I don’t think it’s any more expensive (compared with the outskirts) than Manhattan is compared with the outer boroughs. The difference is in New York, people are willing to grin and bare it. They’ll put up with living in a shoe box and paying an exorbitant rent because it’s worth it to live in Manhattan. So, when I lived in New York I always lived in Manhattan (Roosevelt Island still technically counts!) and most of my friends did as well. And if I called a friend at 9 pm to see if they wanted to grab a drink, they could do so easily because they didn’t live too far away.

Sweden

I'm now on the plane from Gothenburg to London, flying over the Northern tip of Denmark at the moment. No the plane doesn't have wireless (I wish), but I'm just writing this offline and I'll publish it when I get home. The Gothenburg conference was very fruitful, I made a lot of contacts and it gave me a clearer picture of our magazine's ideal target audience, which will be helpful for the conference we're planning on organizing in San Francisco early next year.

Gothenburg itself was nothing special, pretty small. It is the second biggest city in Sweden, but I guess that's not saying much. One amusing anecdote from the conference, during one of the main sessions someone's cell phone went off, and I think they get the prize for the most embarrassing ring tone to go off at a very bad time. The speaker was in the middle oh a rather passionate speech about IP reform when all of a sudden a blaring police siren went off somewhere in the room. Everyone looked around a bit confused, thinking maybe it was a fire alarm. Then a familiar tune started, and I realized it was, I kid you not, the theme song for the cartoon "Inspector Gadget." It begins with a police siren. And I thought my ring tone was embarrassing! (It's Mason's Exceeder).

Copenhagen-Malmo

I’m now on a train from Malmo to Gothenburg in Sweden. The high-speed trains here have internet access which is VERY nice. Especially since I’ve had a hell of a time getting access to internet the last few days. Copenhagen was fun, it’s a lot more cosmopolitcan than I would have imagined. The town hall square is just packed full of neon lights, kind of like Times Square as a medieval centre. I hit all the requisite sites, including the little mermaid statue, which yes, is very small.

Here are some things that there are a lot of in Copenhagen:

-7/11s
-bicycles
-squares
-Americans

There really were tons of Americans there, you couldn’t shake a stick without hitting one (and not just because they’re so fat). Even beyond just Americans, you hear tons of English there. So much so that there’s no need to ask if someone speaks English before you just start speaking, as opposed to France or Germany where that would be rude and somewhat presumptuous (I did ask the Danes I met if they were ok with that). 7/11 seems to have taken over all of Scandinavia, it’s almost eery. Literally there’s one on every corner.

Cologne-Hamburg

I’ve just arrived in Copenhagen, I’m at a café on the harbor with my laptop. It’s a bit cold to be sitting on the harbor for this long, but it seems like something one should do when traveling across Europe in the 21st century. The train ride here from Hamburg was really cool. Long, but cool. The train actually goes right onto a ferry and then the ferry crosses over to Denmark, then continues making its way on to Copenhagen. You can get out of the train and walk around too, it’s nice. Here’s a photo of the ferry.

Cologne did not dissapoint in its debauchery. Me and Hale went to this huge party at a club under the bridge that leads to the zoo. It was quite far but apparently there was this gay bus full of the gays picking people up and bringing them there. I thought the bus was just about the funniest thing I had seen in my life. Of course by that point we had finished off a whole bottle of rum so I was pretty amused by just about anything. The club was pretty crazy, here’s a picture of that too (love that cameraphone). Thursday was a holiday in Germany, the day of the ascension, so noone had work the next day. After that club we went to another club somewhere (who knows) and ended up staying there till 7:30 in the morning, at which point I realized my plan to catch a 9:10 train to Hamburg didn’t make a whoile lot of sense, so I decided to just head right to the train station and get the next train to Hburg.