The mist/fog over the Rhine this morning was remarkable - one of those early morning misty atmospherics I'll remember for ever. When dawn was first breaking, the grey clouds were up the river - and then within ten minutes they came sweeping down, swallowing up even the opposite bank into a thick grey.
Then later, after I talked, and after I'd been taken to a pretty square for coffee by a graduate student, I walked to the spectacular Botanical Gardens - spectacular for many reasons, including a huge gunnera plant (I love gunnera - there was one at Naworth when I was little, and it was marvelously huge), and some extraordinary water lilies. I'm deeply grateful to the conference organizers for bringing me here - I doubt that otherwise I'd have dropped in on Bonn, and that would have been a mistake. And I could well come back - I never, after all, had the time to go to the art museum (and here's the conference dilemma, when one's a keynote: does one, as I did, play one's part, and go to panels, or does one - well, go to the art museum? I never have a dilemma if I'm giving a paper and on my own (or rather, my university's) dime - but when one's being put up with this kind of an amazing view, it always seems right to me that one gives back. If only I could stay another day ...
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