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aryanhwyThe second day of the workshop went very well, other than the chair of the afternoon session losing her voice! (Luckily chairs are easy to substitute). Because we ended up with two talks in the afternoon session instead of the planned three, we finished earlier than planned. Daniele's and my train to Brussels wasn't until about 8pm, and Nicolas, from Paris, was also not leaving until about that time, so the three of us and Pietro, who wasn't heading back to Amsterdam until today, went off and found a cafe for a few rounds of beer before we had to leave. I'm glad about that; Nicolas's tutorial, the one I was most interested in, was the last of the day, and I hadn't really had a chance to talk to him about abstract argumentation and obligationes before then. And besides, everyone knows that the most important part of a workshop/conference are the coffee breaks and the trips to pubs, since that's where the real work gets done.
We had about 45 minutes between arriving in Brussels and when the next (slow) train to Amsterdam left; Daniele had made arrangements to meet up with his sister, who lives in Brussels, and spend the night with her, rather than going all the way back to Amsterdam last night, but she was out of town and not getting back in until a bit after my train to Amsterdam left, so we sat around and killed time together, which was nice. And in retrospect, he's going to be very glad that he opted to stay in Brussels last night rather than take the train. The 21:18 train was supposed to arrive in Amsterdam around 12:06am, but that didn't happen...
I boarded a few minutes before departure and booted up my laptop to process the pictures I'd taken the second day of the workshop, and then happened to look at the clock at 21:20 and realized we were still in the station. About five minutes after that, a cloud of train officials and uniformed security guards burst into my car and zero in on someone sitting a few rows behind me, shouting "Français, Nederlands, English", to find out what language he spoke (French). There was a bit of an altercation, the guy getting pretty worked up and rude, and then the security officials left, and we continued waiting. About half an hour after that, they all come back on, accompanied by three or four police officers, one of whom takes the guy's passport, exits the train, and starts making phone calls. Security and police are coming and going, and by now we're about 45 minutes delayed, still haven't left the station, there's been no announcements (in any language) other than "we're sorry for the delay". Finally all the police and security come back on and start interrogating the guy again, he starts shouting, and it was only when the police start shouting back, and the security guy blocking the aisle next to my seat put his hand to his gun that I started getting a bit nervous. But eventually they were able to escort him off the train, and then on the other side of the platform a train to Rotterdam arrived, so we were all disboarded and put onto that train and we finally left Brussels about an hour late.
First we were told that once we arrived at Rotterdam, there'd be a train to Amsterdam 6 minutes later on the other side of the platform; but I think the train we were on was also delayed, and it kept getting more delayed, because we should've gotten in to Rotterdam around midnight, but we'd barely reached Dordrecht at that point, and there we got another announcement that once we got to Rotterdam the next train to Amsterdam would be at 1:02am. At that point, I was seriously considering getting off at Rotterdam and finding a hotel, and making the rest of the trip in the morning. But five minutes later they announced that they'd made a change and that the train we were on would be going all the way to Amsterdam instead of terminating at Rotterdam as it normally would have, which was nice. By the time we got to Amsterdam CS it was cold and late and I really was in no mood to wait for a night bus or walk so I took a taxi home, and finally got in around 2:00am, two hours late. So yeah, that was my drama.
But the workshop was great, the talks were good, there was a lot of discussion, a lot of plans for future collaboration were made, and overall it was very successful. And then this afternoon I got a completely unexpected email, a short (~3 page) thing I'd written up over Christmas and sent off on the 27th has gotten its referee report and a positive review, so I just have to do minor revisions and it'll be published. Woo, go research!
We had about 45 minutes between arriving in Brussels and when the next (slow) train to Amsterdam left; Daniele had made arrangements to meet up with his sister, who lives in Brussels, and spend the night with her, rather than going all the way back to Amsterdam last night, but she was out of town and not getting back in until a bit after my train to Amsterdam left, so we sat around and killed time together, which was nice. And in retrospect, he's going to be very glad that he opted to stay in Brussels last night rather than take the train. The 21:18 train was supposed to arrive in Amsterdam around 12:06am, but that didn't happen...
I boarded a few minutes before departure and booted up my laptop to process the pictures I'd taken the second day of the workshop, and then happened to look at the clock at 21:20 and realized we were still in the station. About five minutes after that, a cloud of train officials and uniformed security guards burst into my car and zero in on someone sitting a few rows behind me, shouting "Français, Nederlands, English", to find out what language he spoke (French). There was a bit of an altercation, the guy getting pretty worked up and rude, and then the security officials left, and we continued waiting. About half an hour after that, they all come back on, accompanied by three or four police officers, one of whom takes the guy's passport, exits the train, and starts making phone calls. Security and police are coming and going, and by now we're about 45 minutes delayed, still haven't left the station, there's been no announcements (in any language) other than "we're sorry for the delay". Finally all the police and security come back on and start interrogating the guy again, he starts shouting, and it was only when the police start shouting back, and the security guy blocking the aisle next to my seat put his hand to his gun that I started getting a bit nervous. But eventually they were able to escort him off the train, and then on the other side of the platform a train to Rotterdam arrived, so we were all disboarded and put onto that train and we finally left Brussels about an hour late.
First we were told that once we arrived at Rotterdam, there'd be a train to Amsterdam 6 minutes later on the other side of the platform; but I think the train we were on was also delayed, and it kept getting more delayed, because we should've gotten in to Rotterdam around midnight, but we'd barely reached Dordrecht at that point, and there we got another announcement that once we got to Rotterdam the next train to Amsterdam would be at 1:02am. At that point, I was seriously considering getting off at Rotterdam and finding a hotel, and making the rest of the trip in the morning. But five minutes later they announced that they'd made a change and that the train we were on would be going all the way to Amsterdam instead of terminating at Rotterdam as it normally would have, which was nice. By the time we got to Amsterdam CS it was cold and late and I really was in no mood to wait for a night bus or walk so I took a taxi home, and finally got in around 2:00am, two hours late. So yeah, that was my drama.
But the workshop was great, the talks were good, there was a lot of discussion, a lot of plans for future collaboration were made, and overall it was very successful. And then this afternoon I got a completely unexpected email, a short (~3 page) thing I'd written up over Christmas and sent off on the 27th has gotten its referee report and a positive review, so I just have to do minor revisions and it'll be published. Woo, go research!
