This is looking from the Charles Bridge back to where I was walking yesterday. If you enlarge the photo you can see the wall I was talking about on the extreme left of the picture and the tower I climbed over to the right. My legs are still aching but my calf muscles are TIGHT!
After my late afternoon constitutional I headed back to my favorite street-side cafe to eat dinner. It was only about 6:30 which is early here, but my body is so messed up I don't know what meal I should be eating--all I know is that there will be potatoes and/or pancakes involved.
By now the waiter grins inanely when he sees me. I don't know what I do wrong or strange but he's loving it. He's very tall and skinny (weedy) with black hair and big bulgy black eyes--and very white skin. A bit like a vampire, now that I think about it. Anyway, whatever I order he tells me is an "excellent" choice. (I was even told that the buttered string beans were "Excellent!"--and, actually, they were pretty good and, as Simon knows, I know green beans.) I read through my paper which I am giving tomorrow and cut out about 1000 words because everyone is going over their time limit and people are starting to get really resentful. By the time I present there may be a riot.
2 comments:
Are all philosophy conferences like that?
Like what--getting hostile if talks run over? Absolutely not. Anyway, this isn't really a philosophy conference; it's "interdisciplinary" which means you have philosophers and legal scholars (who can think analytically but often only theoretically), scientists or others "in the field" who can describe amazing and fascinating events but don't know what to make of them and then a bunch of nut jobs (self-described as "literary theorists") who can't think their way out of a paper bag. The whole gig is really strange: on the one hand, the administrators who run this have clearly drunk the Kool Aid and worship a guy named Rob Fischer who set up this business. Yet the participants are, for the most part, really keen and write on interesting stuff. They are also from all over and so that makes it even more interesting--I met someone today who is Greek and she and I have amazingly similar intutions about things. It was weird. But a few are either very silly and annoying or power freaks who like to bully; either way I am finding myself regressing to a high school-like state of belligerance and wise assery. Despite trying to by myself most of the time (like during coffee breaks when I see people coming I run off to the bathroom for some alone time) a gay guy from Australia has palled up with me and, fitting the stereotype, is a really witty, bitchy sort of guy that I can get giggling hopelessly by muttering smark ass remarks during solemn moments--I'm slightly ashamed at how easily I am baited into becoming a really immature person. This isn't like a philosophy conference; it is just...strange.
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