posted 11-16-2015 02:17 PM
I took the plunge, flew to Switzerland and attended the "Conférence-spectacle." Well, a spectacle it was!Buzz had brought a rock-and-roll band (I think the one in which Christina, his PA, usually sings) and Alexei Leonov was accompanied by the Russian Army Choir. So, the tales of these two legendary astronauts were interspersed with music to accompany some short movies, highlighting special moments in space history. Most memorable perhaps: the Russian national anthem was played as images of Yuri Gagarin's were shown. Alexei Leonov obviously stood up and it was almost as if you could see him reminiscing about his friend and colleague as the music played.
The setup was such that Buzz and Alexei took turns in taking us through the various steps in their careers and space flight in general. Alexei's Russian was directly translated into French. In the original announcement it was suggested that translation in English would be provided through headphones but this didn't materialize and although my French is good enough to get the general gist some of the finer points were lost to me.
Bertrand Piccard, of SolarImpulse and first balloon circumnavigation fame, briefly spoke about witnessing, as a boy, the Apollo 11 launch, quipping to Buzz that he had seen the launch whereas Buzz hadn't.
A woman who had known Yuri Gagarin when she was a young girl offered a few memories.
Obviously many of the stories are not new to space geeks but to hear, e.g. Leonov talk about his space walk is rather different than reading about it!
It took a lot longer than was scheduled, which left me with two problems: my camcorder's battery was not nearly adequate for the evening so if anyone can point me to a compete registration I'd be very grateful and I had to rush out of the building for the last metro back into the city centre at about midnight... so I missed the finale.
All in all a memorable evening and despite missing out on headphones and finale it was well worth the effort!