Word: scandinavian
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...world. Today, it stands as a dormant, ice-capped, exquisite backdrop to Hotel Budir, Iceland's newest boutique hotel. Built on the site of an old hippy commune which morphed into a quirky hotel in the '80s and burned down in 2001, the hotel's revamped interior melds sleek Scandinavian design with floral wallpaper, doilies and other eclectic granny favorites to create a place where you can pad around in your socks yet still feel stylish. Cloudlike beds, deep baths and inspiring views are standard in each room, but my favorite is 23: a clawfoot bathtub lies just...
...century. If the trend continues, former Dutch Prime Minister Wim Kok suggested in a report to the European Council earlier this month, within a generation spiraling pension and health costs will bust European state budgets - and cripple the Continent's economic growth rate. Like Sweden and its Scandinavian neighbors, Britain, Ireland, France and the Netherlands are faring relatively well, with fertility rates above 1.7. Yet nowhere in the European Union does fertility approach 2.1, the level needed to keep the population stable. "A people that doesn't have children, that grows old, is a people without a future," says Tiziano...
...leave, health care and education benefits. And it's a level of social spending some say Europe can no longer afford. But the alternative - too few young people to take care of the old - may be even costlier. In Spain, Zapatero is hoping to push his country in the Scandinavian direction by urging companies to set up child-care facilities, subsidizing university fees and promoting long-term employment over short-term contracts. More generous policies like those of France and Scandinavia would require higher taxes, a trade-off many European governments aren't willing to make. "What we need...
...Last May Lufthansa introduced a high-speed wi-fi Internet service called FlyNet on flights between Los Angeles and Munich. Its Charlotte, N.C.--Munich and San Francisco--Munich routes will have it by the end of the year, and the airline wants its entire fleet equipped within two years. Scandinavian, Singapore and at least half a dozen other airlines have announced plans to follow suit...
...social charges have risen sharply over the past 30 years and are now among the highest in the world. Adding together corporate, personal, social security and value-added tax (VAT), the highest-taxing countries in the world are in Western Europe: France, Belgium, Austria, Italy and the four Scandinavian countries - Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Norway. (Germany and Britain are further down the list, but still ahead of the U.S., Japan, Canada, Mexico and Australia.) This week, a French antitax group is taking out newspaper ads to celebrate "the day of tax liberation." Given the nation's tax burden, it calculates...