World's best cities to travel to during summer

I just read the title of this Lonely Planet article and had hoped and guessed it was Sydney (hey I'm not biased or anything! ;) ). I was close. Sydney came second. Barcelona came first.

Crap crap crap. That reminds me I am sooooo behind in my blogs I still haven't written about my Italy, Barcelona or Germany trips :(

Anyway, I can see why Barcelona would come first. It is an all-round incredible city. I don't know what it'd be like in winter but when I went the weather was largely perfect. Sunny, but not boiling hot, and with a nice sea breeze.

1. Barcelona
2. Sydney
3. Montreal
4. London
5. Chicago
6. Stockholm
7. Edinburgh
8. Berlin
9. Amsterdam
10. New York
11. Lisbon

Notice how most of them are in Europe and Sydney is the only one in the southern hemisphere?

When friends of mine told me that they wanted to visit Europe in the summer I could never understand why. Don't they realise it can be stinking hot and a lot of things are not open since the residents themselves have gone on holidays?

Also something else about Europe in case you didn't know already: They don't use air-conditioning as much as in Anglo countries. Just yesterday I nearly died on the bus with no air-conditioning and the other day I was standing next to a guy with really bad body odour and swear I was going to faint and throw up at the same time!

In Barcelona also it was horrific on a bus without air con. It's not that they're not equipped with it, the bus driver just doesn't turn it on!

Oops, as usual I've gone off topic..

anyway to all my northern hemisphere readers, enjoy your summer holidays! :)

(picture from here)

My French level

On Thursday I went to Payot bookstore (previously mentioned briefly here) and went through their entire collection of French learning textbooks. To my surprise, almost every single one I leafed through was too easy! There were very few I wanted to buy since I realise I was already past that level. That was a pretty awesome feeling, I must say :)

I think I mainly just need to improve my speaking, since my reading, writing and listening are all pretty decent. But when I try to speak quickly I know I sometimes use the wrong tense or the wrong conjugation.

Anyway, I have decided to start learning German soon. I would much rather learn Italian or Spanish but it would make far more sense and be far more useful for me to learn German. I'm going to use the EXACT SAME self-taught method as I used for learning French as it worked really well for me. I'll be documenting it over on my Swiss blog.

Wish me Viel Glück! :)

Algerian man has been denied French nationality

An Algerian man has been denied French nationality because of his sexist attitudes towards women.

The man's application was refused because "his idea of sexual equality is not that of the republic", according to a high-ranking official quoted by French radio station Europe 1.

The man, who has not been identified, is married to a Frenchwoman, but does not allow her to leave the family home freely, it was claimed.

The French constitution states that the government can refuse nationality or strip nationality for a "lack of integration".

A spokesman for the interior minister, Claude Guéant, told the Guardian that the man had failed to accept the French way of life.

"His behaviour showed a lack of assimilation into the French community; it was incompatible with the values of the French republic, notably in respect to the values of the equality of men and women.".....

Hahaha! I have to say that I agree with this policy but disagree with the one about ending the right to dual nationality!