Liverpool meets Providence for 10 Euros: The skies are open.

The new transatlantic open-skies agreement goes into effect in five days.

Michael O’ Leary, as the Chief Executive of Ryan Air, knows a thing or two about flying.

He says he might be spinning of an airline connecting Tier- II Towns transatlantic, so for a base fare of 10 Euros; you could fly between Providence and Liverpool, Baltimore and Birmingham.

Earlier, the United States had to negotiate with individual nations. The negotiations entailed that Airlines could only take off or land in their native countries, and each airlines had specific airports they could serve.

Simply meaning Lufthansa had Frankfurt, and Air France had Charles De Gaulle in Paris.

All that would hopefully be history with this new aviation policy. The Antifits believe more connectivity can only bring people closer and prices lower. Capitalism can sing a sweet tune, if we allow it too.

European Integration would not have been where it is right now, had there been no hoards of the English and the Germans off every available bit of sun, sea and the sand in Europe. And whenever people doubt the functionality of the union, it would be great to look at the Spanish tourists that throng all over Europe. The Spanish have had it good the last twenty odd years being in the Union, and it’s utterly sweet to see that get reflected in the numbers that travel, living a Europe and a reality different from the one their parents lived in.

Dresden is a city of 500, 000 that received 3,000,000 tourists who stayed overnight, and it’s not the biggest secret that a lot of the spanking new transformation of this East German city, something that contradicts the rest of the state of Saxony or the East for that matter, would have not been possible with federal budgeting.

Yes, It won’t be all that bad if Americans moved around a bit more. And that just isn’t a New Yokk yuppie talking.

Kentucky meets Cote d’Azure. Keep your fingers crossed.

Thank You for Old Europe..

Elaine Sciolini in his parting shot as the New York Times correspondent in Paris gave A Guide to the French on March 23d, 2003.

Read it here.

Handle with care.

Sitting in the Cologne Airport having one last opulent French Breakfast counting out the minutes before the much- maligned 757 takes me to Newark and I seal the lid on the Euro Trip Spring '08 edition, I couldn’t agree more.

Donald Rumsfeld, The American Secretary of Defense, once labeled the French and the Germans regarding the opposition to the war in Iraq in 2003 Old Europe.

A Europe that did not matter, and surely wasn’t relevant.

But damn, nothing does it for me better than Old Europe.

And it does not take the falling American economy, a war that should not have been sanctioned, and then gone on for so long, or all that is blatant about being in America at this point of time.

It just takes standing, as in the picture, on the Neustadt on the other side of the Elbe for a view of Altstadt Dresden that stands eternal in time, or just sitting back and letting a Pils do it for you as your train pierces through a countryside that makes the Grimm Brothers come alive.

And Dresden isn't just history. They have a bar- hopping district in the Neustadt with about 200 bars that erupt with nightlife of the very first order.

Europe is special. And the world would do better to learn from it.

Pity Rumsfeld never realized that.

A word of thanks for all the conversations I have had through these couple of weeks and the people I have met, and all that talk from the Euro, to French women being sexually active till late 60's, and to dark Beer being for women.

That's what a German told me. I don't intend any pun at the Irish. I have nothing but the utmost regard for the Guiness.

And yes, I only go to come back.