Realm: Berlin - Subrealm: Meet and Greet
Mar. 11th, 2006 08:58 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
choco_froshSunday, 5 January: 1:40 PM
The Park Inn Hotel is a late soviet-era building (now privatized and equipped with a mini casino), located on Alexanderplatz near the center of what used to be East Berlin. Alexanderplatz was apparently some major center, and still has some actually rather nice 1960s murals on one of the nearby buildings. At the moment, though, it’s mostly a big construction pit. So pretty much typical for Berlin on both counts. I arrived by airport bus, disheveled and somewhat later than I’d planned, but still before anything officially started... and more importantly, before the many of my fellow grantees who’d had even bigger travel hells than myself (only one train got out of Munich that day, for example). Checked in with reception and with the conference (getting a “goodie bag” with my nametag and schedule), and went up to my room to freshen up.
Most of us at the conference had taken double rooms (that being the most Fulbright was willing to spring for), frequently with fellow-Fulbrighters we’d never met before as roommates. This made the fact that the showers in the rooms were separated from the main part of the bedroom only by a glass panel a little odd. But there was a curtain, and in my case my roommate (Thomas Patteson) were rarely in the room and awake at the same time.
Having showered, I headed back downstairs for the research presentations, designed to let s scholarly types let everybody else know what, exactly, we were working on. I’d thought about doing this myself, but the call for papers arrived while my computer was still in the States, so I decided this was NOT the best time. In addition, I didn’t see that my topic had a lot to do with the perported theme of the conference (“Fulbright. For a Better World.”). As it turned out, I needn’t have worried about this later consideration—nobody else’s talk had much to do with the topic either. Instead, we had talks on teaching at Finnish universities, the debate on rebuilding the Frauenkirche in Dresden, and Entrepreneurship for engineers. Mostly, I took the opportunity to catch up with some people who'd been with me in Frankfurt and Ravensburg for orientation and language courses--inc. Javier (Religious neutrality and the German education system) and Amanda (The global face of German Engineering). Javier talks like a frat boy and Amanda looks like a ditz, but their talks proved to those who didn't already know that appearances can be VERY deceiving. Especially since, unlike some of their colleagues, they managed to use Powerpoint effectively and keep their talks down to the (eep!) five minute time limit, which was imposed by the eminently sensible means of having Reiner Rohr, our fearless leader, stand up after four and a half minutes to let them know they had to finish.
Afterwards, we all trooped downstairs to meet a few more Fulbrighters who'd been in town for a few days already for a science conference. Alaina (whom I immediately greeted as "Kenyon"! and who's working on chickens as a model system for Alzheimer's), and Kelly (from Regensburg) had apparently blown off most of that day’s Conference activities and gone to the Zoo, which is destinguished by its Pandas and by the fact that it has a railroad station named after it. I told them that this was a tradition of conferences. (skipping out to do other stuff, that is, not naming railroad stations after zoos).
And THEN we had a massive opening buffet in the hotel. The food was ok, and we all milled around socializing with old friends and random new people (whole tables full of English TA's, for example, a type of grantee I didn't even know existed). Matter of fact, we stood around enjoying the free drinks until they kicked us out so that they could clean the place. It was still too early to go to bed, though, so we then stood around outside for an eternity, with James making snarky comments about his fellow schwülen and the rest of us trying to decide what to do next. (This would be a feature of much of the conference...) Javier had snagged a spare bottle of wine, but I eventually elected to go with Mike to go check out the casino. Mike's from Texas and looks rather geeky (and I still think of him as "that guy who set fire to his hotel room by accident") but he's...well, he's the sort of guy who goes up to check out the casino. Unfortunately (or fortunately?) they required ties, so we ended up hanging out in the adjoining, overpriced bar with a Fulbrighter who'd just arrived. A bit of an anticlimactic end to a good evening.
The Park Inn Hotel is a late soviet-era building (now privatized and equipped with a mini casino), located on Alexanderplatz near the center of what used to be East Berlin. Alexanderplatz was apparently some major center, and still has some actually rather nice 1960s murals on one of the nearby buildings. At the moment, though, it’s mostly a big construction pit. So pretty much typical for Berlin on both counts. I arrived by airport bus, disheveled and somewhat later than I’d planned, but still before anything officially started... and more importantly, before the many of my fellow grantees who’d had even bigger travel hells than myself (only one train got out of Munich that day, for example). Checked in with reception and with the conference (getting a “goodie bag” with my nametag and schedule), and went up to my room to freshen up.
Most of us at the conference had taken double rooms (that being the most Fulbright was willing to spring for), frequently with fellow-Fulbrighters we’d never met before as roommates. This made the fact that the showers in the rooms were separated from the main part of the bedroom only by a glass panel a little odd. But there was a curtain, and in my case my roommate (Thomas Patteson) were rarely in the room and awake at the same time.
Having showered, I headed back downstairs for the research presentations, designed to let s scholarly types let everybody else know what, exactly, we were working on. I’d thought about doing this myself, but the call for papers arrived while my computer was still in the States, so I decided this was NOT the best time. In addition, I didn’t see that my topic had a lot to do with the perported theme of the conference (“Fulbright. For a Better World.”). As it turned out, I needn’t have worried about this later consideration—nobody else’s talk had much to do with the topic either. Instead, we had talks on teaching at Finnish universities, the debate on rebuilding the Frauenkirche in Dresden, and Entrepreneurship for engineers. Mostly, I took the opportunity to catch up with some people who'd been with me in Frankfurt and Ravensburg for orientation and language courses--inc. Javier (Religious neutrality and the German education system) and Amanda (The global face of German Engineering). Javier talks like a frat boy and Amanda looks like a ditz, but their talks proved to those who didn't already know that appearances can be VERY deceiving. Especially since, unlike some of their colleagues, they managed to use Powerpoint effectively and keep their talks down to the (eep!) five minute time limit, which was imposed by the eminently sensible means of having Reiner Rohr, our fearless leader, stand up after four and a half minutes to let them know they had to finish.
Afterwards, we all trooped downstairs to meet a few more Fulbrighters who'd been in town for a few days already for a science conference. Alaina (whom I immediately greeted as "Kenyon"! and who's working on chickens as a model system for Alzheimer's), and Kelly (from Regensburg) had apparently blown off most of that day’s Conference activities and gone to the Zoo, which is destinguished by its Pandas and by the fact that it has a railroad station named after it. I told them that this was a tradition of conferences. (skipping out to do other stuff, that is, not naming railroad stations after zoos).
And THEN we had a massive opening buffet in the hotel. The food was ok, and we all milled around socializing with old friends and random new people (whole tables full of English TA's, for example, a type of grantee I didn't even know existed). Matter of fact, we stood around enjoying the free drinks until they kicked us out so that they could clean the place. It was still too early to go to bed, though, so we then stood around outside for an eternity, with James making snarky comments about his fellow schwülen and the rest of us trying to decide what to do next. (This would be a feature of much of the conference...) Javier had snagged a spare bottle of wine, but I eventually elected to go with Mike to go check out the casino. Mike's from Texas and looks rather geeky (and I still think of him as "that guy who set fire to his hotel room by accident") but he's...well, he's the sort of guy who goes up to check out the casino. Unfortunately (or fortunately?) they required ties, so we ended up hanging out in the adjoining, overpriced bar with a Fulbrighter who'd just arrived. A bit of an anticlimactic end to a good evening.
Date?
Date: 2006-03-13 09:23 pm (UTC)