People love a panda! Panda art makes traveling less sucky!

The panda art at Charles de Gaulle airport, July 2013.

In honor of the surviving giant panda cub at who was recently born at the National Zoo in Washington, DC , I couldn’t help thinking about how much people like a panda (there is a Latvian band who used to dress like pandas) and how often pandas make people happy.

This works even in the airport!

Every time I travel somewhere, I can’t help noting the idea that our modern word “travel” comes from the old French travailler–a word meaning to “work strenuously.”
Yet there are a few ways that some places have gone to some effort to make modern travel less sucky. One of these tiny bits of non-awfulness is the panda “art” installation at the Charles de Gaulle airport.
It’s a pleasure to see a panda when you are cranky and carrying luggage!

Yet you should also give actual pandas their space, because it isn’t pretty when pandas attack.

Latvian band Instrumenti, back when they used to dress up as Pandas.