Whirlwind

I just came back from a whirlwind tour that took me from Edinburgh to Wasshington, and then immediately to Chicago, Portland, Las Vegas, Washington, Brussels, Thionville, Paris, and back to DC!
The US tour with the French-American Foundation was very interesting. It was a fact finding tour destined to find new solutions to social housing, or, as it is called here, "affordable housing". You can easily imagine that solidarity based systems do not compare easily with market based ones. Yet, the French group I accompanied was very interested by the innovtive solutions they found in this country. In the end, both countries have the same problem and the waiting lists for decent housing are just as long in Chicago as they are in the Paris suburbs.
In Thionville, I found a very hot and sunny Lorraine. The entire family gathered to honor my parents for their 60th wedding anniversary. A great feat in this day and age. Thionville was even on the first stage of the Tour de France, and we saw Hincapie in his yellow jersey.
We managed a day trip to Paris, thanks to the French High Speed Train network.

Lucky for me, I missed the inglorious end of the World Cup. We just landed at Dulles Airport as France lost to penalty kicks. As to Zidane's loss of cool, I attribute it to the racial taunts the French team had to undergo for a month. Part of the solution to the difficult ethnic mix of French society is to be found in its multicolores soccer team. Oh well!