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And I thought it was just me...  The first time I travelled abroad, I landed in Frankfurt, and I remember looking out the plane window and feeling like I'd landed in weird cartoon.  Those strange, cute little cars...

In France, it wasn't the service vehicles so much as the surreal number of bunny rabbits witnessed upon touching down that gave me that "feeling" of Europe.  Again ... the cute factor.  

I decidedly did not feel like I was in Europe when I arrived at Sheremetevo ...  

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. -Voltaire

by p------- on Tue Feb 14th, 2006 at 11:40:56 AM EST
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William Gibson calls this feeling "the mirror world" (in clear reference to Carroll's through the looking glass) in his nover Pattern Recognition. It's "all the little differences".

A society committed to the notion that government is always bad will have bad government. And it doesn't have to be that way. — Paul Krugman
by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Tue Feb 14th, 2006 at 11:48:41 AM EST
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Poemless you brought back found memories. The Charles de Gaulle Airport rabbits were quite amazing. There were just hundreds of them happily living in the grassy areas between the runways. The last few times I landed however I didn't see them so I wonder if they were seen as a terrorist threat and chased away.
by Alexandra in WMass (alexandra_wmass[a|t]yahoo[d|o|t]fr) on Tue Feb 14th, 2006 at 09:18:17 PM EST
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I do remember reading a few years ago that they had become such a problem, airport officials were looking into way to ... curb the rabbit population. :(

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. -Voltaire
by p------- on Wed Feb 15th, 2006 at 08:33:55 AM EST
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I always wondered how they got there in the first place. I've been to many airport and that CDG was the only one with such fauna. Oh well the end of another French exception ;-)
by Alexandra in WMass (alexandra_wmass[a|t]yahoo[d|o|t]fr) on Wed Feb 15th, 2006 at 09:30:41 AM EST
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