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ABOVE IT ALL: Floating over the Alps with Swiss balloonist Bertrand Piccard
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The scariest place in Europe is the top of Barcelona's Sagrada Família church. It's not just the height that frightens, but the closeness of the bizarre spires designed more than a century ago by the visionary Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí. Topped by clusters of mushroom-like balls, they resemble surreal, otherworldly stalactites.
Yet this is as good a place as any to begin a five-nation voyage through Europe to assess where this old Continent has come from, and where it is headed, as it spins into the 21st century. The Sagrada Família is a perfect metaphor for that transformation: conceived by one of Europe's boldest avatars of modernism yet founded on an age-old tradition, it remains a work in progress. The modern-day cathedral builders who are carrying the project forward are using technologies — like computer-assisted design and 3D imaging — that Gaudí could never have imagined. Yet he always knew that others would finish his project with the tools and ideas of another era. What better symbol for the work in progress that is Europe, or for a fast-forward gaze into its future?
I never expected to be standing on this scaffolding, 60 meters in the air, touching the vaulted, mosaic-encrusted ceiling with my hands. My adventure began on terra firma, when I approached one of the builders to ask a few questions. Next thing I knew, I was wearing a hard hat and riding up a precarious construction elevator next to Jordi Faulí, the deputy chief architect on the project. (I didn't dare tell him that I have an acute fear of heights.)
Faulí, 41, who has been working on the project for the past 10 years, has a real passion for Gaudí's vision. "All the elements are geometrical, based on hyperboloids and parabolas and straight lines," he marvels. "That's why we can use computers to complete the design that he left unfinished."
Gaudí himself, who started working on it in 1883, completed only one façade before he was killed by a tram in 1926. The plans he left behind were fragmentary, but his approach was so logical that successors have been able to pursue his grandiose project based on 18 towers reaching as high as 170 meters. At the current pace, they should have the job finished by 2040. Says chief architect Jordi Bonet, 75: "Gaudí's synthesis between structure and form, with the help of geometry, points the way to the architecture of the future."
From Barcelona, I drive through the duty-free enclave of Andorra and Toulouse en route to the Bordeaux wine country. It is the beginning of the harvest season, and already winemakers here are calling this the "vintage of the century," thanks to an exceptionally dry, sunny August. Nowhere are spirits higher than in the medieval village of St. Emilion, home to some of the Bordeaux region's best-known — and most expensive — wines. This year's harvest celebration took on the air of a triumphal march as the red-robed members of the ancient winemakers' guild, whose roots go back to 1199, held their traditional Jurade pageant. There was something new this year: for the first time in nine centuries, the guild admitted women members. Béatrice Ondet, director of Château Chauvin, and Françoise de Wilde, director of Château Ripeau, donned scarlet gowns and took their place in the ancient procession. Ondet called it "a long overdue recognition of the role of women in the wine business."
There are other novelties in St. Emilion. Age-old methods have been renovated by techniques like concentration — limiting the number of grapes on each vine to boost their quality — and temperature-controlled stainless steel fermentation tanks. One of the most interesting innovations is the use of the Internet to market St. Emilion wines. "It is an extraordinary medium," says Count Eric d'Aramon, director of the prestigious Château Figeac. "For 20 years we aimed our publicity at importers, salesmen and somelliers. The Internet is a means to contact the consumer directly. The only thing you can't do is taste the wine." Or buy it: Figeac, like most St. Emilion producers, continues to sell only through traditional distributors.
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New Heights
From virtual life in a Geneva lab via a bird's eye view of the Alps to a pavement perspective of old and new in Greece and Rome
Photo Gallery
Check out the photos from this leg of TIME's Fast Forward Europe voyage
Insect Power
Software that imitates the behaviour of ants could make highway and telecom traffic more efficient
Firm Foundation
Scarred by war and restoration, the Parthenon gets a facelift
Next Revolution
The Palais de Tokyo, site of Paris' first modern art museeum, will re-open to showcase young artists
Italy's Future
Will center-right media magnate and former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi regain the title in the spring? He's up against Rome's Mayor Francesco Rutelli in the center-left corner
Speaking in Tongues
Films in local Italian dialects are a surprise box-office hit
Sky's the Limit
A sneak preview of Airbus' three-decker superjumbo with its casinos, shops and piano bars
Fascinated by Fire
Public spectacle designer Yves Pepin on the need for fireworks, fountains and mass celebrations
A Greek Sojourn
TIME's Paris bureau chief Thomas Sancton discovers the old and new Greece
Songs of the South
TIME explores the Italian-speaking Ticino region of southern Switzerland
City of the Future
Toulouse could well be a model of multi-culturalism
The City That Always Sleeps
A visit to Geneva's wild side
The Mouse That Roared
TIME travels to Andorra, one of Europe's smallest countries
The Eternal City
>A trip through the glory that is Rome
Pasta Bella
A visit to Barilla, pasta purveyors to the world
Top Gear
TIME test drives a Ferrari | Photos
A Second Life
TIME meets Hollywood star turned restaurateur Leslie Caron
My Dinner with Claude
TIME dines Claude Nobs, the founder of the Montreux Jazz Festival
Thinking Outside the Sandbox
Innovative teachers in northern Italy are integrating technology into classroom life
Mind Trails
Forget Al Gore: TIME Speaks with the inventor of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee
A Brief History of the Higgs Hunt
Scientists in Switzerland may have solved one of the great mysteries of particle physics. Why should we care?
People To Watch: Nadia Magnenat-Thalmann | Amélie Nothomb | Mirko Nesurini | Michel Meyer | Neil Barrett
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