Göteborg, Continued
Now it was time for me to actually attend the conference. So after a night
of little sleep (due to jet-lag) we woke and enjoyed the elaborate
breakfast at the hotel. We were far enough north that the sun didn't
really come up until at least 8:30, so combined with the cloudy weather
it was often pretty dark even after I took the tram to the
conference.
Here is the tram, with our hotel in the background. The big "Scandic"
glowing on the horizon made it easy to find your bearings, but at the
same time you had to be careful because it's a chain so there were
multiple Scandic Hotels in the city.
The hotel had a hot tub and sauna (and yes, we were boring and didn't
use either). Here's a picture of what it looks like:
The tram I took went through a long tunnel, seen here at the far end:
And here was the venue itself, at
Chalmers University:
Here are some of the things Kristina saw while I was busy at the
conference. This is the
local
Botanical Gardens:
Here is the Art Museum
which has a fountain in front with a giant naked man holding some fish
(I'm told he's supposed to be Poseidon):
Here is a neat looking water tower:
After the first day of talks, there was an excursion to the local science
museum, the Universeum:
Inside they have a tropical rain forest, a lot like the National
Aquarium in Baltimore:
Kristina ended up with a bird on her finger, which she had to convince
someone else to take away (it bit her!):
After the rain forest, the attendees played in the interactive exhibits for
a while. Then we went up a funicular to the top of the museum,
and down through all
the climate zones of Sweden. At the bottom was an aquarium full of fish,
which is where we ate, surrounded by the fish tanks:
Despite sitting with a large group of Germans and Belgians, no one
drank much alcohol. (Some of them were being picky because the fancy
beer on the tables was two weeks past its expiration date). Instead
the drink of choice was "Zingo" which was orange soda:
After eating, there was entertainment: The Chalmers Baletten,
AKA Comedy Band and Dancers (yes, it was as odd as it sounds).
The party was going on into the night, but since I had to present the next
day we snuck out with some Germans around midnight.
Now it was time for the last day of the conference. I was enjoying myself;
the talks were good, and they fed us well (it was mainly fish dishes with
unrecognizable tubers, but there were good deserts).
My talk was in the afternoon, and it went well.
There were a lot of questions, here I am answering some of them
(picture courtesy Thomas Lundqvist):
Kristina stopped by to see my talk, but she was also doing more sightseeing.
Here is the famous stuffed whale (only one of its kind in the world) at
the Natural History Museum:
The conference was over! We still had 2 more days in Europe though, due
to the weird way airplane ticket prices work. So our adventures continue
in Denmark...
On to København