What you can’t hear in the picture is the live jazz band. It was a bit odd to hear American jazz in such a opulent old world setting, though.
The conference organizer, Alberto Ferrus, spoke briefly...
In particular, he mentioned a group of people who were among the first people we met when we landed in Spain, dressed very distinctively (picture from conference Day -1):
Green was the conference colour, as I mentioned before. Green tote bags, green lanyard, green name tags, green fan... and the ever present, ever helpful green shirts. I never quite figured out if the Green Shirts (as they were universally known) were students, volunteers, or what have you. But they were indispensable. Thanks so much to all for helping us disoriented visitors.
The Green Shirt Team got a big round of well earned applause, and had a toast to each other:
As for day five of the conference, alas, I have nothing to report on that last day, scientifically speaking. I miscalculated the length of time it would take to get from Salamanca to Madrid, and had to leave looooong before seeing any of the Saturday talks. If anyone was there, tell me the highlights I missed!
But leaving that particular morning did give me a chance to see a bunch of other sleepy scientists, who hadn’t yet had their coffee, trying to make an escape when the sprinklers came on unexpectedly. Very funny.
On the plane, I was lucky enough to look out the window just as we were transitioning from land to sea, making this the last of Europe I’ll see in a long time. Maybe ever.
More pictures from this trip to come.
We also noted the bizarre combination of jazz and the gala venue, but it was a great dinner nonetheless.
ReplyDeleteI really liked the reception at the bishop's palace as well. It had a real surreally lavish feel to it, and reminded me of the scientific community gatherings in 'The Life Aquatic'.