Sunday

I was at breakfast this morning and looked out the window to see it was snowing. It was just heavy enough to cover the bushes but by morning tea it had melted.

This is the last day of the conference and amongst other things we discussed some new rules for running meetings, a simplification of the rules previously used, the Budget and the location of next years meeting. We also had a presentation from the SIGHT co-ordinators who have had a concurrent conference of their own this weekend.

Despite a very good presentation by the German and Austrian Chairs in combination for Salzburg, the Croatian bid for Dobrovnich was selected. Those views of the ocean views were too tempting for some of us. Our gala dinner will be in a castle on a rock on the coast and this same castle was used in the TV series Game of Thrones. Since I had been to neither city it did not worry me particularly which was selected.

The meeting finished a little bit behind schedule and the visit to the Boyana Church was omitted from the City tour. We covered most of the part of the city that we had visited on Thursday but with a guide we saw a few places we had missed on our own. He also gave us more historical background. The sun was shining despite the dark cl;ouds in the distance and the combinatrion gave a new perspective on the builidings compared with Thursday.

There was an hour between getting home and going to dinner. Unlike the other restaurants, there was beer on the table instead of Rakia. I had one bottle and then got some sprite for the second. This restaurant also had, shall we say unusual, toilets, with the gents having life size pictures of sexy women looking at them over the urinals and the ladies having an equivalent poster behind the doors.

The final event was the Helsinki party, so called because that was where the first one was held. (not to be confused with Stockholm syndrome). This has become a traditional, if not official event and is a BYO booze up to celebrate the end of the conference. In our case most people donated 10 lev ($7) to a common kitty and the locals bought the booze and nibbles. I drank vodka all night, because I'd started on it before I saw there was some scotch.



They had a DJ and karaoke and I actually sang quite a lot of songs. Those Asians have converted me after KL. It seems I was not the worst of the singers and even got invited to a duet or 2. I gave up about 3am and was told it wound up at 4.