SO BEAUTIFUL!

So beautiful, simple, and efficient... How bad there is a verruca and a beauty spot right on the nose. Don’t worry I’m not talking about a person but about the Place des Nations.
Congratulations to the city of Geneva that transformed a wasteland into a friendly square where children can shower in summer time and ice-skate in winter.
Why efficient? The authorities of Geneva have managed to build up an incomparable and attractive antiriot system including 72 water streams to discourage the fiercest demonstrators. Coming to the verruca, I’m referring to the iron pile standing just in front of the Place des Nations gate. It is supposed to be mobile but it will probably never move. It is as inelegant as it is useless. Indeed the demonstrators can jump over a wall 20 meters further on. The alternative is simple: either we remain in an isolated camp and surround the Palais with barbed wire, or we privilege aesthetics and get rid of that inefficient dangerous scrap iron thing. Another beauty spot on the Place: the chair. A new colleague asked me last week if it was meant to advertise the furniture industry in Geneva or to mock the United Nations in a graceful way, by portraying an organization with wobbly negotiations. As I told her about the symbol representing the antipersonnel mines, she looked extremely surprised and stressed that there is no plate to explain.
No doubt the cause is a good one. It is only unfortunate it is symbolized by a disproportionate sculpture that breaks off the harmony of the square. The chair would have been equally explicit at the other end of the Place, freeing the view to the flag file.
I would suggest that other Nobel Prize winners should be honoured in his turn. What about the UNHCR which was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize twice and is not so far from the Place des Nations!