Thinkerr's Fun Blog

The ongoing G8 summit is being held in Coppito in mountain town of L’Aquila. The police may have smartly kept away the protest demonstrations from the world leaders, who are camping in barracks of the financial police of Coppito, but they could not do anything to hide the message ‘Yes, we camp’ in giant plastic letters above the motorway taking world leaders to the venue. Even those who are going by helicopters cannot miss the message written on a hill. It was put up by the earthquake victims to tell the world that they were still in camps.

In preparation this summit, Italian government had constructed a luxurious compound in La Maddalena island in Sardinia. But in April they decided to change the location to L’Aquila, which was heavily damaged by the 6 April earthquake. Prime minister Silvio Berlusconi has said that holding the G8 in L’Aquila would keep the world from forgetting about the earthquake-ravaged area and provide world leaders with an opportunity to see examples of the architectural and artistic heritage their contributions will help to restore.

The government spent 50 million Euros to renovated the facilities, expand the nearby helipad and reconstruct the road leading to the camp. One 5-storey building was converted to a hotel, providing the living spaces for leaders from G8 countries.

The camp is not luxurious at all. All presidential suites, consisting of 4 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms, are much smaller than those in the ordinary hotels. Each delegation can only arrange 25 members to stay inside the camp. Rest of delegates have to stay in Rome or other east coast cities.

Nevertheless, Berlusconi did manage to setup a small basketball field for President Obama.

In order to ease the anti-government sentiments from public, Berlusconi has said all hotel rooms in the camp would be open to the homeless earthquake victims after the summit and, every single item used by G8 leaders, including Obama’s bed, would be auctioned publically to raise fund for disaster relief.