"The basic idea is that an entire, small country plays host to a conference with all the various possibilities at its disposal," said Roland Buechel, director of the state tourism agency in Liechtenstein, which covers an area of 60 square miles..."It is not envisioned to include the prince or government officials," Buechel said.
If the price is right, the prince will probably co-operate.
I once had the very odd experience of visting Astra's head office in Luxembourg - it felt just like a Bond villains lair. Astra is the company that operates the Geosynchronous satellites over Europe for BSkyB and others.
I flew into Luxembourg, and was driven out into the countryside. We went though manned security guards, then automatic security gates, and then parked in front of a nice old-looking country house. Inside, we were ushered into a Philippe Starck-style shiny glass and metal conference room, where we met the smooth european executives of the company.
Then they gave us the site tour. We went into a huge room with over 200 TV screens on the wall - this was the broadcast ops centre, showing the TV channels going to and from the satellites. In the next room there was a big screen showing satellite schematics, and orbital parmeters. They have 12 satellites in the same slot, all within a few hunderd yards of each other, and they have to manouver them so they stay pointed at all those dishes from this Mission Control centre. Finally, we went outside and saw the 12 hundred-foot high dishes that send the uplink streams.
I complimented our hosts on the place and its location. "Oh yes" said one "this is a nice castle - it used to belong to the Prince; he was born here".
Of course, if I wanted to rent a samll country, I'd pick Seborga
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