The beaver is a proud and noble animal

I’ve discovered that I like Rome, and that November is a great time to visit.

I attended the EMBL Council meeting that was held in Rome in the last week of November, and the weather was balmy. People were sitting outside, eating in terraces and walking in shorts and t-shirts. The tourist volume was also very low, according to locals.

I’ve also come to the conclusion that Ryanair are bastards with carry on luggage allowance. They had us queueing in the departure lounge for half an hour while they measured that all carry-on bags fit in the little blue rack. There was drama in the queue as overloaded italians were complaining. I saw a man trying to close his suitcase by sitting on it, while wearing 2 winter coats. He also had fabulously chavtastic bling and designer stubble. Fantabulous!

We made it to Rome without major hiccup. It was amazing to see Roman aqueducts from the air, right next to modern train tracks. The hotel, apparently a very posh one, was rather bemused at my dietary requirements but they did their best not to kill me. One thing I discovered about Italy is that everybody – and I do mean everybody – says that “the rules are just a suggestion”. Crossing the street becomes a challenge. Apparently the key is to show no fear. If you blindly set out from the corner, the traffic will stop. If you’re hesitant, they’ll ignore you. Either way, you run a good chance of still being run over :)

There was a little memo card on the desk in the hotel, saying that local fire prevention regulations prevent ironing/tea making facilities from being made available in the rooms. This little memo card was located right next to an ashtray and complimentary pack of matches.

Indeed.

I made a tactical error when I thought that the formal council dinner was on the Tuesday and our informal Staff Association dinner was on the Monday. Turns out it was the other way around, so I ended up going to a very posh dinner with all the council delegated wearing blue jeans and a sweater. The good news was that I was with the rest of the plebs, way at the back of the room, so nobody really noticed or cared. The food was good, the wine was ample, which was a very good thing considering that there was about an hour of speeches with a non-functional microphone. The people at the head tables seemed to be enjoying them, but the only thing we heard of the speeches were sounds of Charlie Brown’s mother. This again being Italy, a dinner that was supposed to be ending at 10 was cut short at 11:30, when we were told that the buses were leaving in 5 minutes (and most people had just been served their pudding).

I had a decent breakfast the following morning, fuelling up for a full day of listening to people (thank god for wifi). I had lunch with the council delegates from the UK, Luxembourg and Finland. The council meeting went well and we got through the agenda in one day. All the contentious points passed (though one required a bit of back-room deal-making, but such is politics).

I ate more pineapple and rocket than I can remember in recent times, and drunk way too much (good!) coffee, which is probably a good thing considering all that wine.

We had time to go walking on Tuesday night, before going to our SA dinner. We went to the Pantheon and then crossed the Tiber to go to a restaurant in Trastevere called Ripa 12 that is supposed to be well known for its fish. I tried some really nice tuna carpaccio and had excellent swordfish. And more wine. And then GELATO! At midnight. In November. Brilliant :)

The italian mentality for not giving a damn about the rules came up again while we were heading back to the hotel. We were told never to buy a bus or tram ticket. They have to pay people to check them – so they don’t – and if they do happen to find you without a ticket, they generally just drop you off at the next stop.

On Wednesday, I channeled my inner Italian and decided to go to the Colosseum and to the Forum in the time I had before my flight back to the UK (I even took the bus without a ticket on my way back!). I had a really good time at the Colosseum and my piece of advice is to always book a tour guide. It cost me 20 euro to get ticket entrances to the Colosseum and the Palatine gardens, with guided tours for both. This might seem a lot, but if you consider that entry fees for both are generally 12 euro, and you get 3 hours of tour guides in total, that’s not a bad deal. What’s the clincher though is that you bypass all the normal queues! That’s worth the money by itself.

I wish I had had more time to visit the Palatine and the ruins of the Forum, but I had to cut my tour short so I wouldn’t miss my cab to the airport. Still, I had a very good morning and took lots of pictures.

   
   
    

All of these, and more, are available here: http://www.flubu.com/various_pics/rome_nov_2009/

My flight back was uninteresting and I wanted to kill the drunken lot behind me, but such is cheap air travel. The airport gods were clement on the way back though, because I managed to get through immigration and baggage reclaim at Stansted in less than 10 minutes. Unheard of!

Random quote of the airport, as said to a custom’s officer: Excuse me sir, but somebody’s sausage fell out near the baggage carousel.

The gods giveth, the gods taketh away. Our cab driver managed to misplace his parking ticket, so he had to make his way back to the terminal and get that fixed. We came back fairly chipper though, and when I asked him what sort of fine he had to pay, he said it was only £2. I asked him was his secret was and he said that he looked pitiful and sorry for himself. I said that that normally only works if you’re blonde and perky, but he said that it also works if you’re old and senile :)

Made it home, kissed Katy, ate take-away. All in all, a good trip :)

Current Mood: Amused

http://www.flubu.com/various_pics/tuscany-sep2005/

Thursday – day 1

I've been in Italy for less than 30 minutes and my first impression is that it's a very photogenic country. I've just put away my camera in frustration because I can't take a decent picture through the coach windows – there's too much glare from the sun and I always see my reflection superimposed on the scene I want to capture. We're driving through mountains right now and I'm salivating at the number of pictures I'd love to take. It's beautiful. The countryside is lush with greens and browns, the mountains are impressive and you see the odd roman ruin to add a bit of spice once in a while.

[later]

The view from the hotel is impressive. We're rather high up in the mountain and the view on the valley below is, in a word, panoramic. My room in the hotel is comfortable, though I'm in one of the little chalets. The room is nice, but apparently it doesn't compare with the ones inside the hotel proper. For one thing, I don't have a jacuzzi in my room. Rank doeth have its privileges, apparently. The one thing that's going to be bad is the buzzy thing situation. I've been strafed too many times already and I'm rather jumpy… silly europeans with the utter lack of proper window screens *grumble*

[later]

Whoever thought it would be a good idea to hold 5 hours of talks on the first day might want to reconsider that one… I stopped counting at 7 the number of times I fell asleep during that session. That was just painful. Getting up at 2:30 am definitively doesn't help. At least the espresso is good and there's plenty of it.

Friday – day 2

We went to Pisa today. I walked up to the top of the tower; I even went above the bells. It's really weird. I get vertigo looking down a 2 story building or riding up glass elevators. I was 60 meters in the air with only a rather flimsy metal railing to keep me from falling and I wasn't even bothered in the slightest! The view from up there is … wow. Took lots of pictures – the usual touristy thing. Amusing anecdotes – we ran into a group of tourists from Quebec/Montreal (but the lound aunt type of tourist, the ones that keep saying inane stuff like “Do you realize that we're going the leaning tower of Pisa? Do you realize the number of people who touched this wall and climbed these stairs? Do you?? Do you??? really!”. It was amusing to hear proper joual again :D

What really impressed me from the tower is that there are two inches of stone completely worn off from the stairwell. You really have to be careful when you come down, especially when your legs are rubbery from having climbed 300 stairs. The staircase leading to the uppermost level is so narrow that my shoulders rubbed on either side and I had to crouch down to avoid braining myself on the stairs twisting up above me.

The amoung of junk sellers is impressive. And on that note, let me just mention that anybody dumb enough to buy a rolex from a dude on the street should have a sign on his back saying something along the lines of “please feel free to rape my ass” – it's just asking for trouble.

The food situation is hit-and-miss. Even though they were warned about my allergies beforehand, I couldn't eat most of the lunch buffet yesterday. Dinner was completely ok, but again lunch today was buyer-beware. Same for dinner – they had to cook me a special meal (for which I had to wait another 20 minutes). At least the bread is good and there's lots of wine. I'm going to be eating salads when I get back to Cambs though…

Saturday – day 3

I slept badly last night. One reason, I found out later, is that there's a troup of italian Morris dancers (or the equivalent thereof) that's at the hotel and apparently, they were up all night running around the hotel last night and there was a lot playing the drums outside on the terrasse near my room. I think they're a mix of marching band, drama group and ^SCA† types. It takes a lot of confidence for a man to dress like a fool in tights and not be self-concious about it. They also crashed our breakfast buffet this morning like a pack of seagulls and ate everything in sight… bastards. Another reason I slept badly is that I kept dreaming about my presentation today. It's really weird. Whenever I'm worried about something, I always dream I'm back in school. I had rather disturbing dreams last night… bad imagery and worse situations. Somebody was putting on a play and one of the characters was saying shit like “Do what you want to me cause I'm worthless and I'm going to kill myself anyway”. Weird. Not nice. Even Parsley couldn't ensure a good night's sleep. Left me a bit off-kilter this morning.

[later]

Long day today. I was uber worried about giving my presentation. I dislike public speaking, even when it's only in front of an informal group. I tense up. I was utterly convinced I was spouting inane gibberish all the time I was giving it. It really didn't help that my powerpoint presentation was being given off my boss' micro subnotebook computer and I couldn't read off the screen (it was being projected behind me). I could make out the slides themselves – so I knew what I had to say about all of them – but I couldn't read the details I'd written on the slides because the damn screen is too small so I had to wing it for the most part. Apparently I pulled it off because the feedback I got from it was very positive and I didn't look as nervous as I felt. One of the very positive points of this retreat though is that I got to really interact with a lot of the people that work in the Sequence Database Group that I only see in glancing at the office. A lot of them are really nice people and some of them are scarily intelligent.

[later]

I went shopping. I bought some olive oil, a nice bottle of red italian wine. A good dinner awaits (after the salads, that is).

[later]

Dinner was disappointing again. The soup was ok, and the pasta was good (though the portion could have been more generous for both of them, especially considering that I could only eat half of what was served to me afterwards). Blergh. That's the really big downside of my allergies and group travelling. At least when I'm on my own, I can pay a premium to have a decent meal that I can eat. I'm getting fed up of bread and wine, as good as they may be.

Off to bed now.

Sunday – day 4

I slept poorly again last night. I woke up at 5:40 and couldn't get back to sleep, so I ended up reading until it was time to get up and go for breakfast. I'm tired and I don't feel so hot physically and psychologically. I think I caught the cold that's been running around the EBI folk and I miss Katy. Travelling for work is fun for a while, but right now, I want to get home and cuddle my sweetie :( The conference ends right after lunch, then we have a few hours to kill until our 10pm flight. I'm going to get back home in the wee hours of the morning again. That's getting old really, really fast.

† Society for Creative Anachronism – people who like to dress up in medieval garb.