In the middle of the Charles De Gaulle park in Toulouse, a group of spit-and-polish young Mormons from Seattle is singing hymns in French. Their heavy American accents make it hard to understand the words, but one old man on a bench nearby is straining to hear them. "It's good for Americans to come here," he says. "America suffers because it doesn't know Europe well enough."
He is Colonel Georges Bastien, 90, an ex-military instructor at St. Cyr military academy, former prisoner of war in Germany and a veteran of the Algerian war. "I saw every horror you can imagine in Bergen-Belsen," he says, tugging at the brim of his white cloth cap to shade his watery eyes from the sun. "But I don't hate the Germans. I want to understand them better. I've always believed in mutual understanding among people. If people don't know each other, they will inevitably fight."
Bastien is a committed European who is impatient to see the E.U. get on with political integration. "I have always fought for a federalist Europe, but I'm a little disappointed today," he says. "It's all well and good to start with the money, but it doesn't go far enough. We need all kinds of exchange — political, military, commercial, university exchange."
It happens that Toulouse itself is one of the most fertile breeding grounds for the kind of exchange Bastien is talking about. As a major hub of Europe's aviation industry, an important university town, the site of numerous French and multinational firms, and a prolific generator of high-tech startups, the Toulouse region draws students, researchers, workers and businesspeople from all over the world. As a result, Toulouse today is the fastest-growing region in France.
The region's single-biggest employer is Airbus Integrated Company, the European firm that produces a line of wide-bodied jets ranging from the 107-seat A-318 to the future super-jumbo A-3XX, which will haul 550 or more passengers. Apart from the company's commercial success — they outsold Boeing last year for the first time — it is a fascinating microcosm of European society. "From the human point of view," says Airbus press officer Alain Dupiech, "this is where Europe will be in 20 years. Thirty-three nationalities live and work here. Our social life is totally international. The experience of our kids is much richer than if they had just been English, French or German. They learn foreign languages, surf the Internet, watch foreign TV. It's a new generation with a passion to move and discover new things."
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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
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Firm Foundation
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Next Revolution
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Speaking in Tongues
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Fascinated by Fire
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A Greek Sojourn
TIME's Paris bureau chief Thomas Sancton discovers the old and new Greece
Songs of the South
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City of the Future
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The City That Always Sleeps
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Pasta Bella
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My Dinner with Claude
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Thinking Outside the Sandbox
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Mind Trails
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A Brief History of the Higgs Hunt
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People To Watch: Nadia Magnenat-Thalmann | Amélie Nothomb | Mirko Nesurini | Michel Meyer | Neil Barrett
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