A Town Hall with President Obama

I promise that I'll get back to food blogging soon, but a few people requested pictures from the Town Hall meeting in Strasbourg, so I'm sharing a few here. Yes, we did get to go to the Town Hall meeting, but we didn't get to meet or even get near the president. He's a busy man, and had to leave directly for Baden-Baden after the meeting.


Strasbourg didn't have an easy time of it with the NATO Summit being held here, and it showed with its police presence. I was told that 10,000 police officers were brought to town to help with security, and with the amount of police in cars, vans, motorcycles, bikes, on foot, and even on horses (!) here, I believe it. This barricade was set up just a block from our apartment:


Some citizens felt a little uneasy with the security measures, and we found this spray-painted on the ground near our apartment. (I have to say, though, that even if the police presence made me feel uneasy, I'm sure glad that they were here once the protesters started fires on the outskirts of town.)


Back to the Town Hall...here's a picture of our ticket!


And a picture from our seats. We were in a small basketball arena, and we were about a basketball court away from President Obama. We had the chance to sit behind him, but although those seats were closer, our seats were better to watch the speech from...


I caught a short video of President and Mrs. Obama entering the arena:

And pictures of the man himself:




From what two of our French friends told us afterward, they liked his speech. It was geared toward Europeans, so was a little different from what I had heard on the campaign trail. I found the links to the speech, both written and in video form, if you'd like to read/see what he had to say...