Today we drove (through five European countries on our way) to Italy, including through the original Switzerland, and so had the time to talk through some of our conclusions from that coast-to-coast trip. It’s a cliché, but the country is still so young (when we went to Johns Hopkins it still hadn’t celebrated its bicentenary) and there is still a strong sense that anything is possible if you put your mind to it. This time I had a stronger sense of the loss of America’s original peoples, whose latest migration across the Bering Strait landbridge probably took place only some 12,000 years ago (compare that with the 17 million years it took to carve out the Grand Canyon). We also had a better sense of the relative youth of America’s political institutions and of the evolution that is still underway. For a bit of fun, we tried to imagine what sort of President Europe might have one day. It would have to be somebody recognised throughout the member states, with some linguistic ability, and with a lot of money. A sportsman, then, like Michael Schumacher or Michel Platini or Christian Ronaldo or ‘the special one’ (José Mourinho)? And then the true meaning of ‘I’ll be back’ suddenly came to me – for Arnie still has his Austrian passport, doesn’t he? Could it just be?
I guess you need a vacation after your American vacation, the US has that effect on people.