Black Swans

Well, here we are. One of the secrets of Davos (we'll let you in to more of them as the week progresses) is that there's no easy way to get here. (And of course, once you're here, you're stuck - that's another secret.) The private jet crowd can't make it - they have to take helicopters, which are at the vagaries of the weather. And when it really snows, which it can, you're in trouble. I remember Al Gore coming here in 1999, I think it was, when he had to do the last bit of the journey on foot.

The drive from Zurich is better now that Klosters has been bypassed with a bridge and tunnel, but the real way to get here is by train, which is what I did tonight. (Sans luggage; God knows where that is, but it means I can't join Justin on the slopes.) It takes three hours. You change twice from Zurich airport, eventually snaking through the dark mountains on a local with trees and snowdrifts pressing in on you. I read Nassim Taleb's Black Swan on the way (I'm moderating a dinner with him later in the week) and, so far, the takeaway from the book is: I don't know anything. So that was uplifting.

I had my own Black Swan moment when I got here at 11.00 and found that the hotel where I've stayed for 12 years - a family-owned inn, on the edge of town, not that convenient but wonderfully gemutlich in a Schweizdeutsch way - was under new management. I hadn't expected it and haven't quite recovered. But I managed to bestir myself for a stroll in the cold night air. The chances of getting a meal in Davos at midnight - at least before the conference starts - are minimal, but I did make it to the piano bar at the Europa Hotel, where Barry Colson has been tickling the ivories for 17 years. The early birds were all there, including some of the WEF's crack press team, one of the best I know. Barry sang Creedence Clearwater Revival. So did the bar. The madness is starting.