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Berlin Day 1 : The journey
As with usual Day 1 of our holiday / conference trip primarily consisted of travelling to our destination. It had been an unusually frantic yet fun week the week before what with one thing and another, though we knew the transition to Berlin would be tricky for Simon what with talk, tutorial and various other deadlines, as dutiful girlfriend I was on hand with help and assistance. After two hours sleep in a faceless chain hotel but armed with Uncle Nuri's tasty Turkish canape's as breakfast, we set off for an early flight to Berlin.
We observed of the prettiest sights I have seen when flying, there were so many wind turbines on the flat plains approaching Berlin, the low fog was being interrupted and altered like ripples of rocks under a wave.
Arriving in the airport we picked up a fellow Web2expo-goer and headed forthwith in a taxi so Simon could finish his slides in a corner in the conference centre somewhere.
Our first crisis occurred when we couldn't find the entrance to get into the conference centre! Now this wouldn't have been an issue if we had come from the S-bahn, but having come from the road we could see the main entrance to indoors with the very fancy enormous web2expo signage but we couldn't get in. We bumped into a girl who had been all the way round one side and back to where we were, everywhere was shut and the guard wouldn't let us through the one entrance we did find! it might have been frustration, persuasion or an example of group-think but the four of us decided our only option was to jump the fence, fall down the 2 meter drop to the steep incline of the muddy shrubbery below.
Narrowly avoiding the guard who had told us to get lost, and fortunately away from the industrious gardeners nearby (having landed on it now appeared a freshly planted steep shrubbery) we were down. Running conspicuously and into the main entrance hall and leaving slightly muddy footprints, I can only imagine the impression we four must have given!
The nice web2expo people gave me a pass to watch Simon speak (for moral support, I had seen the same presentation at 2am that morning!) though misreading my passport my name is now 'Natalie Citizen Downe' apparently.
In the speakers lounge setting Simon up to make last minute touches to the slides; we discovered after some investigation that the power cords all around the room didn't actually plug into anywhere, nor did there appear to be any plugs in the room. Today was a day of workshops, the actual talks didn't start till the next day so construction of the venue was still going on.
Some searching led to the fire closet where there was one solitary plug. Some dangerous daisy-chaining later 4 power hungry geeks were satiated, if there was still no wifi there was at least some power now.
A little while later power was no longer enough - 5 of us went on a little wifi hunting mission which culminated in a small room behind the keynotes centre with cardboard boxes as a table, where a woman had a laptop plugged into ethernet. It looked promising ... though investigation proved the exceedingly long ethernet cable didn't actually provide internet. Never mind.
Slides done but too late for me to hunt a printing press for handouts - Simon commenced a very fine 3 hour tutorial
Talks done our happy band of fellows trudged back to the 'Hotel California' to change for dinner. We ended up having dinner in a lovely - 30 years back in time - traditional German restaurant, with fantastic foods if slightly odd coloured traditional Berlin beer!
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