Strasbourg, France and the Swiss Alps

I'll start at the beginning with our trip to Strasbourg last Wednesday.

We left around noon for Strasbourg, France, which is a city in the Alsace-Lorraine region near the border with Germany. It is also home to the European Parliament, which was our destination for the day. As a debater, I was naturally very excited to witness the plenary session and see some real lawmakers in action. We got to the city and discovered that it was ridiculously cold (not as cold as Berlin, but nothing could ever be). Even still, we went on our tour with a funny French guide who explained various features of the town's main cathedral and guided us around the Petite-France section of town. I unfortunately didn't take many pictures because of the cold and the fact that we only had an hour, but it was great to walk around and see lots of half-timbered houses and little inns (very European).



We then headed over to the European Parliament building. This is pretty much the only major EU institution that isn't in Brussels, which means that Parliament has to travel back between Strasbourg and Brussels every month with documents, translators, and aides in tow. France didn't want to lose the Parliament seat and invested in a multi-million Euro new building to ensure it wouldn't move away. Now, "Parliament's monthly road show" annoys a lot of EU citizens, and some consider it representative of the general inefficiency and bureaucracy they see in the EU.

Regardless, the building was beautiful and we went straight inside to witness the current debate. That day, it was about SWIFT, which is legislation that is basically designed to allow the U.S. to continue access bulk banking data for anti-terrorism efforts within this worldwide banking network. The U.S. and the EU had had an interim agreement about the issue before, but the EU is now much more concerned about EU citizens' privacy rights and how they are basically ignored when the U.S. can access all of their banking data. It was fascinating to see the debate for about an hour, and by the time we left, it was unclear whether the resolution would be delayed to allow "more time for discussion" or whether the vote would take place as planned the following day. The next day, it was rejected, which obviously didn't make the U.S. very happy.

During the debate, some parliamentarians had stated that the U.S. didn't make any concessions to the EU when it asked for agreement on accessing the data. I was curious to see what this meant, so when we had a chance to sit down with Mr. Elmar Brok, a German MeP and member of the Christian Democratic Union and European People's Party, I decided to find out. One of my friends and I always sit in the front row during our academic sessions (we're "those people"), but it turned out to be a great idea since Mr. Brok spoke really quietly. The people in the back couldn't even hear when he first announced, "I'm too lazy to make a speech - I'll just take questions." OK then. I asked the second question: "During the session we just witnessed, it was often said that the U.S. failed to make any concessions to the EU. What type of concessions is the Parliament looking for, and does it consider the U.S. a willing and equal partner in the fight against terrorism?" While Mr. Brok ignored the second half of my question, he said that the U.S. failed to cooperate on any privacy measures for average EU citizens and insisted on accessing ALL data. That pretty much doesn't fly in the EU and was the central reason for the no vote the following day. It was really fascinating to hear about the balance between security and rights from a non-U.S. politician, and it was even better when he had to leave to go give a major speech involving the Ukraine. IES is pretty good about getting us into meetings with important people and it's always fun to see them go about their official business when they're done with us. We read about the no vote in the paper next day - wish I could have been there to see that! Some of us are interested in heading back there sometime this semester to spend more time watching debates on different issues. Even though any of the EU's 20 official languages can be spoken at any time, there are hundreds of translators who translate every word into English (or whichever language). It's a huge expense for the EU, but it's fascinating to see the translators in their little boxes and to hear the different options on the headsets.

After that, we went out to eat as a massive group at a Flammkuchen restaurant. Flammkuchen looks like pizza, but it uses whipped sour cream and bacon as the base instead of cheese and tomatoes. It was all-you-can-eat and we were starving, so there was very little concern about the massive amount of calories it must have contained. It was delicious and a great way to wrap up the day.

The real highlight of the week was our trip to the Swiss Alps yesterday. We all made dinner at my flat on Friday night and then went to bed early(ish) to prepare for the 5:50 am departure time. I woke up with a really sore throat, but there was no way I was missing the trip. We had a relatively uneventful bus ride to Grindelwald, Switzerland, which is where we dropped off the skiers in our group. I would have liked to go skiing, but it would have been extremely expensive since I didn't bring my own gear. Plus, sledding in the Alps sounded like an absolute blast. The rest of us headed over to Bussalp on the bus, which is the sledding area with a magnificent view of the Eiger, Monch, and Jungfrau. We were super excited when we got off the bus partway up and saw how beautiful the whole area was. It was a perfect sunny day, too.

Can you tell how excited we are? I'm in the jeans in the middle.

We got there and learned that sledding in the Alps is not like in the U.S. where you repeatedly climb a short hill and sled down on a saucer. Here, you hike for three hours to the top of a 2,600 m mountain and then sled down a crazy steep and winding path on a sled that looks like a luge. And oh yeah, the path is 12.5 kilometers long (longest in the world!). We began the hike in earnest, but unfortunately, none of us made it the whole way to the top in our limited time frame. Perhaps it would have helped if any of us had had the foresight to bring water, but that didn't happen. We relied on eating snow (which of course doesn't help) and sucking on icicles.

Here we are after about 45 minutes of hiking. We started in jackets and ended up in T-shirts.

It probably would have taken us another hour to reach the top by the time we stopped, but we unfortunately had no more time. Plus, we were excited to finally start sledding. One of my friends and I went first, but it soon became apparent that we had NO IDEA what we were doing. We started in a really steep area and quickly learned that we didn't know how to stop or slow down. We were literally flying down this narrow course and trying (but failing) to steer. After a mere two minutes, my friend somersaulted off her sled. I somehow managed to stop and help her pick up her stuff, but then our other friend ran into us. It was a total fail moment, but it was so exhilarating at the same time.

After we got going again, I felt like I was beginning to get the hang of steering. That all changed around the corner of death. There was this one sharp switchback turn, and for some reason, the trail leading down to it had become extremely choppy and bumpy. I was sledding on the verge of control and ended up flying off the edge. I bailed on the sled before I went too far, and when I looked up, I saw at least three other people also digging themselves out of the snow and a group of Germans/Swiss clapping and cheering for us. It turned out that NO ONE was making that turn, so the Germans decided to camp out there and cheer whenever anyone crashed and boo when anyone (rarely) made it. It ended up being hilarious instead of tragic as we all wiped out into waist-deep snow. I was covered in snow and ice by this time, of course, but we still had many kilometers to go and we were too excited to care about being freezing.

I finally learned how to steer and made all of the remaining turns. I unfortunately don't have any pictures of the sledding itself, but it was truly fantastic to race down a course, sometimes up to 35 mph, and see the view the whole way down. We made it the bottom and returned our sleds a little late and soaking wet, but we were all euphoric nonetheless.

To sum up, I returned home exhausted, still with a sore throat and with sore muscles, soaking wet, sunburned, severely dehydrated, covered in bruises, and looking like death. It was one of the best days I've had in a long time.

Here's a link to my Alps photo album. I'll post others that my friends put online when I get a chance. http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=155005&id=599810215&l=c93311591c