Friday, October 15, 2010

ELDR Congress: pretending to be important

I had to bail out of our evening delegation meeting early, as I was unexpectedly in possession of an invitation to a reception for Parliamentarians. Given the prospect of pleasant conversation and a glass of something sparkling, a discussion on the congress resolutions paled somewhat in comparison.

We were treated to an entertaining speech from one of our Finnish hosts, the highlight of which was her assertion that Finns don't have sex. There was a comment from the back along the lines of "that explains why you have such a demographic problem"*, before it became clear that she was referring to the Finnish language and not the people.

The speaker from the other host Party, the Swedish People's Party, was quick to point out that Swedish-speaking Finns do have sex - not necessarily a surprise to those of us who know them - in their language.

And then, we were all invited to proceed to the 'walking dinner', basically a buffet meal without tables. The wine flowed freely, and there were meatballs (not for the last time, I suspected). I'm beginning to get the hang of talking to other delegations, and was able to talk to the Swedes and Croats, both of whom were looking for support for their candidate.

Finally, I ran into an old acquaintance, Mechtilde von Alemann, a former ELDR Secretary General and MEP from the German Free Democrats. Many years ago, when I was young and rather gauche, she was very kind, tolerating my rather scattergun approach to policy making, and it was good to catch up.

* Yes, this was funny. Remember, the Congress theme is 'Demographic Change - Moving Beyond Boundaries'

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