About the anti-NATO violence in Strasbourg
Apr. 6th, 2009 03:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pseydtonneIf you've been in Europe, you've stayed at an Ibis hotel. They're the Holiday Inn Express of Europe. Are you ready to shoot yourself after a long day of travel and rejection? They have a room for 70 or 80 frickin' euros. I stayed at one in Lannion (a small city in Brittany) for 52 euros and felt I got a bargain compared to other Ibis spots. I still had to find parking on the street but I got a king-sized bed, my own shower and CNN in English. More about the horror of French showers another time...
Protesters torched an Ibis in Strasbourg yesterday. They also torched an abandoned customs checkpoint (Strasbourg is on the Rhine, which forms part the Franco-German border) and smashed a bus shelter (the graffito says "Free Transit") By the way, I love the semi-autonomen trying to read the map that's now under their feet -- we can identify them, but they can't yet identify themselves after a day of being anonymous. "Which bus did we take to get here?" "I dunno... I came from Bayonne."
If you'd like to see all of the colorful photos, the Twenty Minutes site has the best ones -- pretty cheeky and thoughtful research a for newspaper handed out in the subway.
Let's get back to the Ibis. When I first saw the pictures of the burning and later gutted hotel, I felt a little freaked out. All those flames destroying a Mansard roof? Nooooo!
Then I remembered how a lot of Ibis hotels look on the inside. Someone puts fresh drywall in an old hotel. There are stairs in weird places. The building usually has serious problems, such as lack of insulation and crap for hot water. But hey, they'll charge ya!
If you've been to Europe, you too have wanted to torch an Ibis hotel. I'm sure the owners will be pleased as punch to take the insurance money and rebuild their Phoenix to codes.
...unless a black bloc counts as an Act of God.
Protesters torched an Ibis in Strasbourg yesterday. They also torched an abandoned customs checkpoint (Strasbourg is on the Rhine, which forms part the Franco-German border) and smashed a bus shelter (the graffito says "Free Transit") By the way, I love the semi-autonomen trying to read the map that's now under their feet -- we can identify them, but they can't yet identify themselves after a day of being anonymous. "Which bus did we take to get here?" "I dunno... I came from Bayonne."
If you'd like to see all of the colorful photos, the Twenty Minutes site has the best ones -- pretty cheeky and thoughtful research a for newspaper handed out in the subway.
Let's get back to the Ibis. When I first saw the pictures of the burning and later gutted hotel, I felt a little freaked out. All those flames destroying a Mansard roof? Nooooo!
Then I remembered how a lot of Ibis hotels look on the inside. Someone puts fresh drywall in an old hotel. There are stairs in weird places. The building usually has serious problems, such as lack of insulation and crap for hot water. But hey, they'll charge ya!
If you've been to Europe, you too have wanted to torch an Ibis hotel. I'm sure the owners will be pleased as punch to take the insurance money and rebuild their Phoenix to codes.
...unless a black bloc counts as an Act of God.
