Well, good morning everyone.

This is the second start at typing for the blog, here at London Heathrow airport. I started off thinking I had plenty of time: the flight was leaving at 9.30 and I got to the airport at about 7.30. But once parking, check in etc were all factored in, I was no better than ‘comfy’ (i.e. not running for the gate).

I’m glad the check in desk is already open for me. I’m taking the smaller corporate exhibition stand etc with me, which consists of a 1.3 meter high bright yellow plastic drum on wheels (needs them) and a small suitcase with lights and cables. I’ve also got a back for the laptop and a very small bag with overnight essentials. A pleasant lass 2 people in front turned to look at my ‘effects’ with amazement. It’s obvious it’s all equipment, and I can see she wants to comment, so I wave my tiny O/N bag and say “and this one is for me, OK?” which gets a smile.

Managed to grab a bite of breakfast at the Café Uno in the departure lounge. All the cafes are hidden on the 3rd level, but what the heck. Start writing and breakfast arrives, so I can’t complain. Sat across from me are 2 older guys and 2 younger girls, one of who is one of the loveliest looking women I’ve seen for a long time. Well, until she lights up and puffs away. I’m slightly puzzled, because the women look too much younger to be wives, but they’re all chatting away very intimately, and less like bosses and employees. I don’t know if people watching is good or bad, but at least it gives the imagination something to work with.

Anyway, off to the plane. I should have 10 mins before we start to board, but the laptop is painfully slow to start on battery power now I’ve installed XP SP2. 3 or 4 mins of waiting screens I reckon, plus another half minute while word awakes up. I type the first 2 sentences and then we get called.

*edit* I’ve just started the laptop while waiting to return at Basel airport. It’s been charging all day, and started almost as quickly as if it were plugged in. Who knows what’s going on? Not Bill Gates, certainly.

In the tunnel it’s like a family reunion. Everyone seems to know everyone else, backs are slapped, hands shaken, a few introductions made. Both the lass I spoke to in the check in queue and the people from the café are there. Onto the plane, find the seat and then settle down for the next 1.5 hours. The inflight magazine is finished before the plane even taxis to the runway, and I’m gently steaming. A key feature is about Switzerland and banking services for High Net Worth Individuals (or HNWI as the article repeats). All the way through there are overtones about what money can buy you and how it makes you worthy of notice and honour. After takeoff I read a paper I got from the net yesterday about singlet oxygen degradation of Vitamin D, which is actually interesting.

Landed. Basle/Basel (depending on whether you’re Francais or Deutsch speaking) is blinkin’ hot and steamy. 28’C in brilliant sunshine (it was raining when we took off) is too much when you’ve a shed load of baggage and have to wear your jacket too. The cab driver from the airport drives like his wife’s giving birth in the back.

As the city flashes past I get a bit of a feel for it. Between the airport and centre is a major industrial area, all stainless steel tanks, chimneys and fabricated sheet buildings. Moving into the residential areas, it appears a little scruffier than Austria: roughly on a par with Germany and quite a lot tidier than France. There is a uniformity of colour scheme to the buildings that is immediately striking. Most houses are cream with green shutters or window frames and doors. It’s all quite homely and attractive though, very pleasant looking.

The conference centre and exhibition halls (Messe) are huge. I manage to get a bit overawed, but eventually get to the booth, get the stand up etc. By this time it’s 2.00pm, and a need for lunch is starting to press, so I head for the restaurant on the street outside.

This is where things start getting linguistically interesting. Basel is close to the border by Germany and France, and you can see these racial origins well represented on the streets, as well as what I think of as classically Swiss looking people. On top of that, Swiss German (the dominant language) is a different dialect, with a very ‘English’ sound to it, to the point that if you can’t hear words clearly it’s easy to think someone is speaking English. Now when I sat down in the restaurant outside and I got the menu, all the dishes were listed first boldly in French, then in German and finally in English. So when the waitress turned up to take my order I requested “Roti Epaule et une bierre, shlossgold si’vous plait” (or however it’s written). After a little rapid-fire German I was told “sorry, but I don’t speak French”. Then “ you would like to order the…. pause, then flaps arms like wings…. roast pork and a beer? Jah!

Dinner was good. What was advertised as ‘butter beans’ meant long green beans covered in garlic butter, and with roast new potatoes too, all quite delicious. I was thinking how good the beer seemed, only to find it was alcohol free!

Back in again, the exhibition area was chaos, with many of the bigger stands are still in the early stages of construction. I won’t bore you with the registration saga, but eventually I got fed up, found my hotel (got a bollocking from Frau Manuela Kroll, the resident Mrs Terrible for making an internet booking when they didn’t have any rooms free) before going out for a walk.

Basel is a fascinating place of contrasts. Just round the corner from the hotel and conference centre was a sex bar, a pole dancing bar (advertised as ‘American dancing’ – insight into how Europeans view America?) and 3 shops selling the kind of underwear that normally never leaves the house etc etc, plus a few slightly seedy conventional shops. However I kept walking and things became progressively better. By the time I reached the Rhine it was really rather nice, although later in the afternoon I came across what look like deals being done. I’ll try to get the pics up ASAP (yeah, said that about the holiday pics too).

Don’t EVER get an Orange phone.

Mine ran out of credit, and I couldn’t get it recharged without either A) using a 4 digit PIN number that I didn’t have) or B) a swipe card obtained in Switzerland. And you can’t call customer services for help if you don’t have any credit. Faecal.

While walking round I came across the main church building, which is a focal point for the city. At one end there seemed to be a bit of a wedding going on, but I avoided the participants and wandered through the cloisters and into the open square at the back, overlooking the Rhine. It was fairly busy for 4.30pm on a hot Friday afternoon, however while I was there I noticed 2 crowds gathering: men on one side, women on the other. The Men all had a single snare drums and the women all carried short flutes. Aha thought I – authentic spontaneous Swiss folk gathering. Took some pictures as they started playing, then noticed than I seemed to be standing in a rather large gap. When I looked round, there was the bride and groom from the wedding! Exit stage left, and try to become as inconspicuous as possible.

After walking round the city for some hours my legs have virtually given out.

I bumped into the lass that I’d spoken with at the airport, back at the exhibition. She was over from Israel (there was a significant Israeli contingent) and we passed the time of day. She mentioned how much safer it seemed over here than in Israel. I also bumped into a couple of people here from the UK, eventually spending the evening after the last session has finished in their company. Got to bed with a tummy half full of smoked ham canapés and a half litre of weissbier. Mrs. Terrible got the last laugh on me though. The (smelly) room they found me faces out on the main road past the Messe. The Hotel has a bar attached, and there was a group downstairs that were having a party until after 2.00am. It’s too hot to shut the window, and in any case, the Tram’s bells and the laughter penetrate through the glass.

Saturday 11th Sept, 6.45 am.

Bluerghh.

Amazing how one word covers it all.

Sore throat (been developing since Thursday, made worse by talking) legs *really* hurt from walking on top of circuit training, generally crappy from insufficient sleep.

Crawl back to the meeting after breakfast and checking out. Breakfast was lovely, except for the coffee (which had more bitterness than a Thomas Hardy novel) and the grapefruit juice that seemed to remove any remaining skin in my throat at first swallow.

The first session starts well, with Zinkernagel bringing some reality back to experimental data, explaining why experiments sometimes don’t follow reality. It then deteriorated into a semi-coherent mumble, with the otherwise eminent JF Bach from France struggling with English while talking about immunotherapies to handle diabetes. When he finishes there is an ‘invitation’ to the delegates to look around the exhibition, and a cue for me to get my backside downstairs. Fast.

I ‘enjoy’ a coffee even more aggressive than my first, plus an excellent choc-chip muffin while manning the stand. We have a very small (3M x 3M) booth with a simpl,e backdrop and posters, plus a few catalogues. Some of the (now completed) stands are vast edifices, temples to the art of attracting the idly wandering punter. Thus we have Pfizer running a quiz show, complete with compere. Next door to me, Sanofi have a couple of nice coffee machines and a supply of croissants, pastries etc. Novo-Nordisk have set up an internet café. Even Astra Zeneca (with a stand the same size as mine) attract punters with freebies like sweets, pens, notepads and a special modem cable in a credit-card sized device that retracts so fast it threatens to take a finger off J

The upside is that I only have to deal with real customers – those that actually want our products or want to ask questions. At least. feeling as rough as I do, I haven’t got to beat off crowds, and it has given me time to write this up, live from the conference, as it were.

I mentioned the family atmosphere earlier. Well that has continued. Everywhere people greet each other like long-lost brothers. I have seen a number of couples walking round, holding hands completely un-selfconsciously. I’m amazed at the number of pregnant women here too – I believe there are around 1400 to 1600 delegates, and I must have seen at least 10, probably more like 15 pregnant ladies. There are 4 or 5 couples with children.

It‘s a very international affair too. Last night I struggled to find anyone else that spoke English automatically (I don’t know the people in this field, so fraternising wasn’t so easy). There are Turks and Greeks, Jews (complete with skullcap) and Arabs (women wearing clothing covering everything but the face and hands, Egyptians, Slavs, Serbs, Lithuanians, Russians, Koreans, Poles, Argentinians and Americans, as well as all the traditional western European races. The Italians are the most noticeable. Every time they meet there are loud cries of greeting, hugging, kissing on both cheeks etc. Quite a show.

Right, 3.05 pm. Time to break the stand for the return home. It was OK first thing, but for the last hour or so no-one’s come into the booth. There have been people constantly milling however, so I couldn’t just escape to the meetings.

5.00pm sat in the departure lounge. Well, that was relatively painless, if a little more hassle than the outward journey. I got the stand down and packed, thanks to a little help from Paul of Astra Zeneca, who were next to me. Reached the airport by 4.30pm. First oddity, all the airport staff speak to each other in French. Except when they don’t, of course. Next, my luggage is 2Kg overweight, so I have to pay another 34CHF for the priviledge (no one minded on the way out). Then, because the yellow box with the stand is so large, it has to go through a special door and different X-ray scanner. Finally I’m offered the opportunity to use a special lounge at a bargain price. 30 CHF seems rather a lot to me, so although I’m assured it is a “very lovely lounge” I try to decline graciously and wander through to departures.

On this side of the gate it makes the Marie celeste look like the London underground in the rush hour. The airport is beautiful (although it stinks of cigarettes everywhere). I don’t know how it’s economical to run the place though, unless mid-week traffic is a great deal higher. Anyway, I’ve just made the interesting discovery that although I need gate 24, despite the fact I’m sitting by gate 22 and 23, the next one along is gate 25. Ummm.

Stay with me. I’m just going to hibernate you while I look for the gate.

Awake again now? Good.

That wasn’t so bad really, since it was just around the corner after all. The sign for 25-30 actually indicated for passengers to walk down some steps. For a little while there I thought the Swiss might be more like the French, rather than the Germans, as I suspect them to be.

Since this posting is now 4.5 A4 M$ word pages long, I’ll stop there unless anything entertaining happens. Hope you found this entertaining.