GENEVA - Mid-November brought another dense week at the Palais des Nations, with human rights reviews and humanitarian pledging overlapping. Hotels between Cornavin and the lake raised their weekday rates without needing to advertise.
For the canton these weeks justify a diplomatic identity that is expensive to police and lucrative to cater. For neighbours they justify noise complaints that never quite become a movement.
A city that translates for a living
Interpreters remain the hidden infrastructure. When they are fully booked, the rest of the machine is too. That is as good a measure of Geneva's year as any tourism statistic.