“prime minister!”

yours truly in the middle / photo credit: the council of the european union

apparently, my skills at holding a boom while yelling out “prime minister!” at the various eu member states’ diginitaries needs some work…

rather than replying to my shouted-out, but politely intonated questions on whether or not he thought tony blair was still a viable option as the eu’s future president, the prime minister of spain instead smiled & winked at me, while the prime minister of ireland sighed at me & then replied: “don’t you guys ever give up?”

i did, however, score big with luxembourg’s foreign minister, who at first told me he’d answered that question yesterday, to which i replied: “well, i didn’t hear your answer yesterday” (and then had a brief moment of panic, wondering if my candid response might elicit luxembourg’s equivalent to the secret service to pounce on me for insolence). after rambling for a bit, he eventually caved & gave me a great answer about how luxembourg and other socialist countries could not support a blair presidency given his everlasting ties to bush and the iraq war.

all of this banter has consumed my life for the past two days, where i’ve spent rather long hours working at the eu summit held here in brussels.  the main topics of this summit included getting the member states to agree on a climate change course of action before the big copenhagen meeting in december, as well as coming to some kind of resolution in getting the czechs (the last holdout) to sign the lisbon treaty.

today marked my 11th day of work in a row & i have to say: i am wiggity-wacked. covering the karadzic trial in the hague was amazing, but pretty emotional for me – and exhausting. i’ll get down to brass tacks in a later post when i have some more energy to relay what i saw and how i felt. (i’m heading back to the hague on sunday to cover the karadzic trial when it resumes again on monday. word on the street is that karadzic might actually show up in the courtroom on tuesday.)

but, for now, i am putting all things work-related out of my mind & am having a lazy evening in (have the flat to myself tonight, which is a rarity) & am simply enjoying my post eu-summit purchase at the grocery store: a bottle of nero d’avola, as well as an eu-summit goodie bag inclusion – 27 chocolates filled with a specialty from each member state. my first tasting was a chocolate from portugal filled with … wait for it … port. yum. next up: either ireland’s whiskey chocolate, slovenia’s cinnamon chocolate, or lithuania’s honey chocolate. bonsoir for now…