I spent last week at the International Conference on Digital Libraries in New Dehli, India. The transit worked perfectly (kudos to KLM), the organizers had someone to meet me at the airport at midnight on Monday and to take me back for a 1:30 AM flight on Saturday. The accommodations were comfortable, the restaurants good, and I met a number of delightful people. Nonetheless I am happy to be back home in Berlin.
I say home with some deliberation. Berlin feels like home even though I have often said that home is where the wife is, and Joan is not here yet. But Berlin was part of my childhood with stories about my father growing up here. My grandfather lived in Berlin when I was a young man. I did some language training at the Free University as a student at Earlham, and then came back here to do a significant part of the research for my doctoral thesis here. I did research in Berlin for the first article I wrote for Library Hi Tech. In some sense have more past here than anywhere in the US except perhaps Chicago. Home is where the past is. Perhaps that is why I was so pleased to get back.
It helps, of course, that Berlin in beautiful. This picture is of the lights of Potsdamer Platz as I walked back to the catch the S-Bahn after a visit to the paintings gallery.
I did have a few adventures in India. I came back in the middle of the day on Thursday to discover water leaking from the bathroom ceiling. The guest house promptly moved me to another room (they even did the packing and carrying), but it took a while for my toiletries bag to dry out.
Earlier in the week I sat outside at tea time on Tuesday with the dean of an Indian Library school. After we stood up I discovered that the local birds had left my blue suit thoroughly spotted with droppings: not quite the ideal sartorial conditions for impressing foreign colleagues. I proceeded to make the spots worse with a wet paper cloth in the WC that added large white smudges to my tasteful pinstripes. Happily a towel back in the guest house cleaned up most of the mess. Or at least so I think. The suit definitely needs a trip to the cleaner!
I say home with some deliberation. Berlin feels like home even though I have often said that home is where the wife is, and Joan is not here yet. But Berlin was part of my childhood with stories about my father growing up here. My grandfather lived in Berlin when I was a young man. I did some language training at the Free University as a student at Earlham, and then came back here to do a significant part of the research for my doctoral thesis here. I did research in Berlin for the first article I wrote for Library Hi Tech. In some sense have more past here than anywhere in the US except perhaps Chicago. Home is where the past is. Perhaps that is why I was so pleased to get back.
It helps, of course, that Berlin in beautiful. This picture is of the lights of Potsdamer Platz as I walked back to the catch the S-Bahn after a visit to the paintings gallery.
I did have a few adventures in India. I came back in the middle of the day on Thursday to discover water leaking from the bathroom ceiling. The guest house promptly moved me to another room (they even did the packing and carrying), but it took a while for my toiletries bag to dry out.
Earlier in the week I sat outside at tea time on Tuesday with the dean of an Indian Library school. After we stood up I discovered that the local birds had left my blue suit thoroughly spotted with droppings: not quite the ideal sartorial conditions for impressing foreign colleagues. I proceeded to make the spots worse with a wet paper cloth in the WC that added large white smudges to my tasteful pinstripes. Happily a towel back in the guest house cleaned up most of the mess. Or at least so I think. The suit definitely needs a trip to the cleaner!
posted by Michael Seadle at 8:45 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home