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Published: March 20th 2006
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University Centre
The location of the meeting - very fancy! Listen up people - important information for all…
If I could give you all one piece of useful travel advice in your lives, this is it…DESTROY ALL EXPIRED PASSPORTS! Failure to do so may result in you doing what is now bound to eternally be referred to as “a Tracey”. In brief, you will not concentrate as you pack your bags for a trip (doesn’t help if you are doing this at 3am like I did), and you will turn up at the airport with an expired passport containing a photo of you in early teenage years, that barely looks like you today! Just so you know, they will not allow you to board an aircraft with this documentation. Surprise surprise!
Well, in my case, the guy that checked me in obviously wasn’t paying attention and thought my expired passport was fine. So that didn’t give me any chance to realise the issue and get my correct passport to the airport before the flight. Instead, I wait for my flight as normal, and don’t notice anything bizarre until I’m about to board! Surprisingly, I remain reasonably calm, especially for someone so sleep deprived. The guys at the gate were
Fortress from above
A fortress photo borrowed from the website. I couldn't get this high for photographic purposes! great - they were even apologising to me!
So, I go back through immigration and fight to make them understand that I hadn’t flown anywhere so they had no reason not to let me through their post. Kindly, I am changed onto a later flight without charge - yay for the British Airways staff. Back I go on the train to Guildford, grab my valid passport, and back to the airport. I am now on a flight that doesn’t get into Bologna until 11pm at night. By this time I have well and truly missed the shuttle organised by the meeting group and have to find my own way out to the small town of Bertinoro where the meeting is located. Bearing in mind, no-one speaks English here - I’m on my own in these investigations. I go with any transport available and get lucky. The adventure involves getting a bus from the airport to the train station and running to make the last train going in the right direction. I rush on and find a compartment to myself, only to find that this carriage (which is in the middle of the train) is not continuing on with the
Meeting room
When the presentations are boring, you can lose yourself in the art on the walls and ceiling! rest of the train. For some reason, removal of these middle carriages takes well over an hour - I had been warned about the rail system in Italy. Eventually we move and about an hour later we arrive in Forli. By this time it is almost 2am and I need to find a taxi to the next town. 2 people in the station, neither of which speak English and no taxis in sight. After a wait, I decide to head in a direction that seems it might lead to the centre of town to increase my chances of finding a cab. The whole time I’m thinking “my mum is gonna kill me when she finds out that I’m doing this in the middle of nowhere”. Not long and a taxi comes looking for me. The people at the station obviously understood enough to send him hunting for me. Still no English but he recognises the picture I have of the conference location. Obviously a well-known castle. 2:30 am and I hit bed for 5 hours of sleep before the meeting begins. Needless to say, I struggled with sleep deprivation for the rest of the week.
The meeting was held
pink guest room
The Italians are obsessed with pink! Somehow I got lucky (yes Ash) & was the only attendee with their own room -a good thing given I would have woken any roomate when i rolled in at 2:30am! in a fortress at the top of a big hill in the centre of Bertinoro. The castle dates back to the first decades of the tenth century and has now been set up for seminars etc and is run by the local council and the university. On the last night, we got a tour of the "Museo Interreligioso", the inter-faith museum inside the Fortress that is dedicated to the three monotheistic religions - Judaism, Christianity and Islam. There were some really interesting displays and some great statues. In fact, there seemed to be statues all over the grounds of the Fortress. In fact, I think I took photos of just about every one of them - I'm turning into Anna!!!
For the sleep-heads reading this, the meeting was a ESRS European Course on Sleep Medicine and Sleep Research. It is restricted to 40 participants, so you have to prove that you have had at least 2 years experience in the sleep field to be accepted. Topics included cyclic alternating pattern, sleeping disorders (including my own famous bruxism), neural regulation and genetics of sleep, sleepiness and driving, etc. Much of it was very interesting, other sessions not so much. But
what a view!
The view we had on a clear day from outside the fortress it was good for networking, and increasing my appreciation of research being conducted around Europe. They were long days that extended late into the night. I don't know how Italians can stand not eating until at least 9pm at night. No wonder there was a weight increase during this week! Plus I of course had to try everything that was put in front of me, and you have the waitresses wandering about behind you yelling at you to eat more! Geez, I didn't stand a chance!
I met some wonderful people here, including first meetings with some of the other people working on the same Marie Curie project as myself, in labs in Munich and Helsinki. Lucia is a beautiful Italian that holds a postdoc position in Munich and was fabulous as a translator and cultural guide during our time here. It was a pity that we didn't get more time to see the area of Bertinoro itself, but that wasn't what we were there for, and I got some time to see other areas of Italy over the next couple of days...
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Anna
non-member comment
Noice!
Nice work Lacy-Lu! Love the adventure! Not so good about the passport! (although it made me giggle!). I dare say you won't be making that mistake again!!! xxxx