I arrived in Milano in the afternoon of saturday two weeks ago, I had left earlier than my colleague because I was looking forward to seeing Milano again. However the weather was not at all as nice as I would have expected from going to the South. Saturday was a bit foggy, so I just shortly walked around the centre of the city. The hotel was very nice though with quite a posh lobby and the room quietly on the back side of the building.
I had tried to contact two friends I met through internet, but neither were available on saturday.
In the evening I went to the thermas sauna. It was quite crowded in there, while the building is not really big enough to hold all the people in a comfortable way. But the people present did not seem to be very interested in me. :-)
The next day my colleague had arrived. It was raining all day, so we only visited the Brera museum and sat in a cafe for quite a while, we did not have much pleasure in walking around in the rain. In the evening I met with one of the two friends I met over internet. While most italians seem to be very talkative, he seemed to talk too little to my opinion. I got the impression that he wanted to do other than talk, but it did not come that far.
The other days were for the meeting at the European Institute for Oncology. It is a new cancer hospital, but had nothing to do with E.U. or something, they just decided by themselves that they are European. The hospital building was new also and according to one of the attending scientist looked very 'snazzy'.
The meeting seemed to have a very high scientific value. A bit like I imagined scientists to be when I was very young: Some with a very heavy russian accent. Another one was said to have published brilliant articles on mathematics in the 1950's; at the meeting he had worked overnight to improve the overhead sheets for his talk, which made him fall asleep during the session of tuesday; and when he was finally giving his lecture on wednesday, I think not any of the others could really follow what he was talking about.
When I asked a question to some of the others who gave a talk, there was not a clear answer, which made me wonder if my question was so stupid that he thought it not worth while to answer it properly, but later I heard from my colleague that during lunch he was answering my question to my colleague. Apparently he did not really distinguish the two of us because we are both from Rotterdam and usually together, while he had needed more time to think up the answer. It was of course a bit of a relief to me that my question was not so stupid after all.
It was also a pity that most of the other people working on cancer screening modelling were not there, one had just not appeared, though she was originally invited, another had the flu. We were left with just one other from Cambridge, who seemed not easy to work with regarding the discussions we had.
The worst part of the trip was going back. The plane was scheduled to leave at 16h, but soon appeared to be retarded. When we were finally on board two hours late, the captain explained that they had some problems with the right wheel, but that everything was alright now. Which it was not. Because soon after the plane had started to ride to the take-off lane it stopped and could not move further. They tried to fix it again while we were in the plane, which did not succeed. After we were out again, we had to stay near the gate to wait for what was going to happen with us. There were only three personnel to take care of that problem, and they appeared to be utterly incompetent. It took hours before that had decided that we were going to stay overnight. In the mean time we had nothing to eat or drink. I think one might expect better from a more expesive company like KLM. Luckily when we finally arrived at the hotel at 23h, the personnel there showed more competence in handling an unscheduled event. Half an hour later we had quite a reasonable dinner.
It made me arrive at Amsterdam at 10.30 the next day, which I thought too late to go on to Manchester which had been the plan to do the evening before.
The next day the was another meeting on modelling of chronic disease at the Royal Dutch Academy of Arts and Sciences. I felt honoured to be invited to that quite prestigious institute and felt even more so when there appeared to be a table with people with their name on a plate on the table, while most of the others were supposed to sit aside of that table while I was supposed to take a seat at the table. :-) I did not say very much there though, but the meeting was quite interesting and is maybe leading to some real progress of which I shall spare you the details here.