Saturday, May 8, 2010

Just one picture from Poland

I am going to post some Poland pictures on facebook if I get the energy, but I thought I'd pick one picture to put here. And this is it:

My new favorite soup: chlodnik. I'm going to try making it this week.



Monday, May 3, 2010

More from Poland

Talk went ok – I was a little disappointed that there wasn’t a bigger audience, but I was in the last session of the conference after a late lunch so the crowd had thinned quite a bit. And I was scheduled against a rather more famous person (me being not at all famous). Did have some nice questions, which was pleasing. Then we dashed out of there to get to our train to Krakow, which we are still on. Seven hours – but no change in Warsaw this time. We were dismayed to discover that there is no restaurant car. Needless to say we are getting a little peckish and hoping for some delicious possibilities in or near our hotel.

Update - peanuts from the minibar and some wine also from the minibar. Looking forward to that breakfast buffet.

Sunday, May 2, 2010

New Sounds 2010

This conference rocks! I love the people, the talks are fabulous and they serve us delicious central European food (and, no, that is not an oxymoron) at regular intervals. My talk is tomorrow after lunch so I shall have to forgo the lashings of goulash so that I don't fall sink into a post prandial stupor. Immediately following my talk, we rush to the train station for the return journey to Krakow. Mum has insisted on first class tickets for this trip. When we walked through the train last time, it was clear that those folks had air conditioning. And we are all about not getting heat stroke again. I have taken some pictures so will upload tomorrow so you all can vicariously enjoy Poznan. We had a walking tour yesterday evening and we ended up in the group with the guy who didn't really have enough English to be doing the English speaking tour. But he was one of those souls who transcends such things as linguistic obstacles and by the end he had the group eating out of his hand. Some of our favorite moments: "I want to say you something about this building" pointing through the trees across a park "well, you cannot see the building, but..." and then he told us all about the building that was not visible. He had also aquired a pronunciation for 'century' that sounded more like 'sanctuary' which was unfortunate for a tour guide with a historical remit. We learned a lot about things that happened in various sanctuaries. And then we came home to our sanctuary-- the Sheraton.