Jonas's travels: Genoa
Alps
I started this conference trip quite early, since my flight was
leaving quite early and the plane tickets I had were not mine. A
colleague was supposed to go, but he fell sick and I got to go
instead. Changing the name on airplane tickets takes a lot of time, it
turns out. Then I met up with another guy from Stockholm going to the
same conference and we flew over the Alps. Then we tried to go by
train from Milan, where the plane landed, to Genoa, where the
conference was supposed to be. This was quite exciting, since we
bought tickets in a hard to understand machine and had no idea if we
were on a train heading in the right direction (and no one spoke
English or Swedish).
Soccer
While trying to find a train to Genoa, we found some soccer
related event. Though it seemed to be about guys playing, only girls
were wearing shorts.
Polanski
Outside the Jolly Hotel in Genoa, the pirate ship from the movie
Pirates! can be seen.
Hotel
My hotel was quite nice, though small. Bad things included
breakfast, which consisted of coffee (which I don't drink) and cakes.
The opening hours were also somewhat disappointing, they lock the door
at midnight. Since I have been to previous LREC conferences, I knew
this would never work, and I received a set of keys that made it
possible to return to the hotel at more reasonable hours (like 03.00)
too. I did get back to the hotel before midnight one evening out of
four though. The location of the hotel was excellent, with the conference
center and the train station in walking distance. I later heard that
people living in other parts of Genoa had been warned by their hotel
staff that one should never visit a certain part of town at night,
since it was too dangerous. Even during the day it might be better to
stay away. This is the part of town were my hotel lies. There was a
quite creepy alley there, but I got home alive.
Conference
There was of course also a conference to attend. There were quite
a lot of people there. I had my presentation on the first day, which
is nice. Then you can feel free to relax the rest of the
conference.
Conference reception party
The reception of LREC is always the same: a very nice place is
invaded by computer geeks and linguist geeks, lots of free alcohol is
handed out and there are a few small food like things to chew on
between drinks. The free alcohol is only open for three hours
though. This year we were in a huge house with painted walls and
ceilings.
Genoa
Genoa is a very nice town, with lots of old buildings. I was
later told that if you look closely, you can see one of my colleagues
in the first photo. The person sitting outside the museum in white
trousers should, just like me, perhaps have been attending some boring
presentations instead of sightseeing at this time...
Italian food
In Italy, you have to try pizza and pasta. Both of which are
good.
Clothes
Though I actually know why this guy is dressed in gold, and
wearing gold colored make up in the face, it still looks strange.
Dirty
There is dog shit almost everywhere in Genoa, so you have to be
careful when walking. There are also signs saying that this is not a
good thing. We also found a gang of about eight large rats raiding a
garbage can when we were getting lost in the middle of the night. Rats
are very quick, though, so it is hard to get good pictures of
them. There are three in this picture, though they are hard to
see.
Meat
For lunch on the last day, we went to a place were you can take
your pick of different meat courses. I picked the "giant plate", which
had a little something of almost all the varieties available. It was
indeed a huge amount of meat. It is always interesting when the locals
point at your food and laugh.
Conference dinner
The conference dinner was nice, though somewhat less so than at
the last LREC. As a "find new contacts in the field" kind of thing, it
was a total failure for me, since I sat at a table with only people
from Sweden. Nice company though. And lots of food, which made me
regret having had the giant plate of meat for lunch.
Normal LREC activities
LREC consists mostly of meeting lots of people in the field. This
usually leads to a huge lack of sleep and lots of visits to bars,
clubs and restaurants. Here we are at a rock club with live music. The
guests were very impressed when they found out we had a famous death
metal guitar player in our company. I gave up on the events and went
home by four, since I planned to get up around six to catch my plane
home the next day. My guitar player travel companion stayed much
longer, though.
Pollen
Here we are over Sweden. The yellowish stuff between land and
water is actually huge amounts of pollen that is lying around in the
sea. We have too much forest in Sweden for my pollen allergic
tastes.
Complaints should likely be sent to Jonas. If you would like to have a high resolution copy of one of these images (or some other you suspect I have), please feel free to let me know.