More business and pleasure, this time in Monaco

From the meeting in Paris (see previous post), I flew on to Monaco for the next week-long meeting. Actually, it was supposed to be a multi-purpose week: attend the International Symposium on Isotopes in Hydrology, Marine Ecosystems and Climate Change Studies; but also meet and discuss with my colleagues in Monaco. You see, my IAEA division is actually split into two: the Terrestrial environment labs in Seibersdorf, Austria (where I work) and the Marine environment labs in Monaco. Being relatively new staff, I was supposed to go there to get to know my coworkers, the projects they are working on, discuss ways to better harmonize our efforts. Or that was the plan, anyways. However, the earthquake, tsunami and resulting situation at Fukushima has taken over some of our worktime, and made everything complicated. So my time with my coworkers was extremely limited. I spent most of the week attending the symposium.

OK, enough about work. What about the fun stuff?
First of all, I was supposed to go to the opera in Monaco with a coworker. However, he was called to Vienna (Fukushima work!) and wouldn't be able to attend. So he gave his ticket to another symposium attendee and introduced us. Kathy is also Canadian, a nice person and also a bit a fish out of water at this symposium (just like me) so we hit it off. At the first evening mixer, we also randomly met a Czech lady working in Germany (Dana) and  South African scientist (Jacques). This made up my "core group" for the week. So between lectures and posters, at lunchtime and in the evening, we mostly hung out together. I still did the work thing, and mingled and answered questions. Lots of questions. You see, we all had name badges. The attendees' were blue and those of IAEA staff were red. But since I was often one of very few (or the only) IAEA staff there, people kept coming over and asking about stuff.  Which is fine, I like to talk about what I know. In between all that, and due to walking from the symposium location to my hotel, I got in a bit of sight-seeing.

The symposium was held at the Oceanographic Museum, which was  convenient. Some of the topics at the symposium went above my head (as in, even some of the units were new to me). During those presentations, I'd sometimes slip out and go down one floor to the aquarium to look at fishies for a while.

On Tuesday evening was the symposium's "cocktail party". It was the strangest cocktail party I've ever been to, as it didn't actually inlcude cocktails (it had a cash bar instead, with Monaco-appropriate price$). All the finger foods were served within the first 45 minutes, so too bad for you if you were late, which we were. We did get a bit of food, but nowhere enough to compensate for the entrance cost of this silly event. Needless to say we blew that popsicle stand fairly early, and went to a wine bar instead.

On the Thursday afternoon, the schedule had a bunch of discussion groups, to which I could bring nothing interesting. So my new friends and I played hookie, and took the coast bus to Nice. (I figure I'd worked many extra hours in Paris and some also in Monaco in the evenings, so I deserved a half-day off. OK with you? Good.)We went up the rock for the view, walked around the flower market and had a nice lunch. Jacques' food was quite rude and insisted on staring at him. :-)

On Friday I returned to Vienna rather exhausted, but happy with both the meetings and the fun times. Business trips can be fun!

Note: How often can you say you took a picture of an ENTIRE country?

2nd note: Of course, I was unable to stay calm and composed all week - the silliness had to come out, and was happily met by Jacques' silly streak!

Business and pleasure in Paris

Towards the end of March, I had to attend a technical meeting in Paris. This was a 3-day meeting, from Wednesday to Friday. I arrived at my hotel late Tuesday afternoon. I had booked a "boutique hotel", which of course means there is something unique about it.  In this case, I opened my hotel room to a waft of peach scent (there was an oil diffuser in a corner of the room). When I stepped into the room, I first noticed the bed - hard not to, as it took up almost the whole room. I literally only had space to open my suitcase on the floor OR walk around the bed. But the small size of the room was not unexpected for a European hotel. What was noteworthy were the rose petals strewn on the bed (fake ones, which is really too bad but a pretty touch nonetheless). Even more interesting were the twinkle lights inserted into the wall and ceiling around the head of the bed. I love this idea, very nice atmosphere!

This concept extended into the bathroom. Not only was there a reading light next to the toilet (I kid you not), there were twinkle lights in the wall of the shower stall. Even better, there was a light in the shower head that changed colour according to the water temperature. I tried it with the overhead light off - very psychedelic shower experience!

So I got installed in my room, and then unfortunately had to do some prep work for the next day's meeting. On Wednesday, the meeting was only starting at 13h, so I was able to go for a nice long walk around the banks of the Seine and the Ile de la Cité. I also went into the Notre Dame cathedral to get some pictures of the stained glass windows (which I love).

Then, it was work, work, work. On Wednesday evening, my IAEA colleague and I wandered into the Latin Quarter (very close to our hotel) around rue Mouffetard. We found a lovely tiny littel retaurant and had a great meal of duck breast with peaches and a port sauce, followed of course by crème brûlée. Fantastic!

More work all day Thursday. After that day's meeting, a Belarussian colleague and I went to the Arc de Triomphe (which she wanted to see), and then we walked down the Champs Élysées. Unfortunately, I had to cut the evening short to get more work done (it was a businesstrip, after all).

On Friday, the meeting ended at about 12:30. We then went to the café next door for lunch. Of the offered dishes, I chose the andouillette, as I had never tried it before. Oh, what a mistake! When I got my plate, I thought it smelled rather bad - at best like offal, at worst closer to shit. But I thought, Hey! Maybe it's like smelly cheese: smells awful but tastes good. Wrong! Andouillette is also known as pig-colon sausage, and a coarse-grained tripe sausage. It didn't taste quite as bad as it smelled, but I was unable to stomach more than a single bite. I felt bad, as the French colleague was sitting across from me, but then I noticed no one else could eat the darned thing!

OK, after the disastrous lunch, I dropped off my work things at my hotel and wandered off into Paris. I went to the opera house, to the Sacré Coeur basilica (up all those stairs), and to the Galeries Lafayette. The Galeries are non-descript on the outside, but inside: gorgeous! Somewhere along the way my feet started to hurt, so my solution was... to buy a new pair of shoes. :-)

Saturday morning I slept in, vegetated a bit in my room, and then left the hotel towards Versailles. On the way to the train station, I passed through a little farmers' market. It was lovely, no tourists at all, just me and a bunch of French shoppers. Amazingly, when I returned mid-afternoon, almost all traces of the market had disappeared. The refuse was already collected into neat piles evenly spaced along the street and the sidewalk had been spray washed. On the street, a garbage collection team were going from one pile to the next, closely followed by a street cleaner to pick up any little thing that might have dropped into the street. How incredibly efficient!

Then on the train, the wagons kept filling up with people dressed in serious running gear, and with race numbers pinned on. While squished between several of them, I wondered out loud what was going on. Turns out they had registered the evening before, and were now taking the train to the end of the line to the starting point of their race: 80 kms back to Paris!!! Better them than me!

OK, Versailles. I got there late morning, which I knew was not the best plan. Quite lovely, if extremely ornate. Same goes for the inside, with emphasis on the ornate, the heavy fabrics and rich but dark colours. I took an audio guide, but about 30 minutes in to the tour, it got extremely crowded. I mean, really bad. I started just trying to get out of each room as fast as I could (which was not easy at all), and got the hell out of dodge. But that's fine, before it got to be such a crush, I got to see the best part: the hall of mirrors.

Here's the thing about Versailles: the best part is the gardens, especially with all the fountains and pools running. Now, this being late March, not only were the pools and fountains empty, most of the trees had yet to get leafy. I went around a bit anyways, but will definitely have to go back in the summertime some day. I did trek out to the Grand Trianon, a retreat towards the back of the grounds. Imagine a garden house, but on scale with Versailles palace. My favourite room of all Versailles was in there, very light and airy and a great use of windows and light.

Back to the hotel, last bit of work, pack and sleep. Sunday morning, on to Monaco!