Wednesday 8 May 2011

Conferencing...

Today was the first day of the New Directions in Humanities Conference in Granada, Spain...I should have been up bright and early and at the conference registration desk at 8am. However, my system has decided that it quite likes working on Spanish time, and I woke up only to realise that it was almost 10am!

Mad dash and scramble to get clothes on and get out the door - thank goodness I wasn't presenting today - and arrive at the bus stop just in time to see the No. 8 bus pull up. "Fantastic!" I think as I hop aboard. The No. 8 goes right to the University and I should be there within 15 min. I find a seat and settle in...we drive past the road I thought we should be taking..."Oh well, maybe there's a detour as there seems to be a fair bit of construction going on", thinks I. Fifteen minutes later, we're no where near the university, and I'm noticing that none of the bus stops that we're stopping at are listing bus No.8....Hmmmm. "Is is possible that the bus could have changed it's number after I got on? Why would they do that? Surely it's not legal...", I muse. Eventually the bus stops, the driver looks up and says "Termino, termino" Uh-oh...it's the end of the bus line, 30 minutes later, and I'm definitely not at the university. Oh well, nothing for it but to stay on the bus and go back to where I started....except I have to pay for another ticket to do so!! Cheeky bastards!!

Anyway, the moral of the story is to check carefully which bus you board when travelling, and when 6s resemble 8s it's either time to have your eyes checked...or to go easy on the tinto verano!

I eventually arrived at the conference and, despite my tardiness, managed to attend some very interesting sessions.

This evening was by far more fun though as I joined up with a walking tour of Granada organised by the conference organisers. We walked through the Albacian, the historic Moorish quarters, and then headed into the area around the cathedral. While I had seen some of the areas either with R. or on my own this past week, it was such a fantastic tour in terms of bringing the city together and making sense of the place. We ended the evening at a little tapas bar run by some Brits. I found myself sitting chatting to two South African women from Pretoria and two Romanian women, and we had such a fun evening with so many laughs.