On the Banks of Constance
Woke up at 9 a.m., and couldn't care less. I missed Sunil Bharti Mittal's speech. Wonder if it was good. Kofi Annan was supposed to give the closing address that afternoon but he didn't turn up (sore throat, he claimed.. :P) so it was Mah Bow Tan, minister of National Development, Singapore. Talked about SARS (what else?), and he was actually pretty good. A few Indians in the Singapore contingent had some tough questions to ask him so we stayed through his presentation, and then ripped him apart on Singapore's policy of making students renew their student pass (65 bucks to the government's pocket) and pay a $1000 deposit if they went overseas during these holidays. Ha. He tried to wriggle out of the slightly tight situation but it was pretty clear to everyone he was just spouting rehearsed propoganda garbage in the end. Sharp contrast to his speech, see. He should have known better than to sound intelligent during it. :)
The final Symposium lunch was an outstanding asparagus soup with salad and bread and the usual awesome dessert. We stocked up.. Vinay in particular was planning to starve the next four days, having spent a lot of money the night before.
I went back to Caroline's, packed, slept some more, and by 6 p.m. she was back. We'd made plans the night before to go around St Gallen today, so we got out and took the tram downtown. Small town, cuuuute place. The city centre was a 10 minute walk from Caroline's place, and it took us about 20 minutes to walk all around it. Some very nice buildings, an impressive abbey, a huge church and churchyard, lovely cafes fringing the roadsides..
The Church and churchyard..................... and a view of the spire from a street.
A friend of Caroline's (I forget her name.. ) met us at a cafe after a while, and we joined Caroline's flatmate Max and his girlfriend and went to another cafe on the banks of Lake Constance. It was just a short drive away.. and the place was soo cool. It was sunny that evening.. and it was just lovely sitting on picnic tables under a tree with the lake right next to us, watching the sunset and talking generally. Max was drinking something he called 'liquid bread'.. it was that heavy, apparently, and he was drinking almost a litre of it. Whew. There weren't any un-fizzy drinks there, which was stupid. I was getting thoroughly tired of not having decent water to drink at this place.. all the water they gave us was fizzy. In the end I ordered the same as Caroline.. a coke. Hated it. Nursed the same drink till we left, and I hadn't even finished half of it. Ugh. How do people drink fizzy stuff? Makes you burp.. ugh. But we had potatoes there as well.. the same fried cylindrical ones I'd had on the first day at Schindler.. and they were good.
Went back and fell asleep early.. at about 10.30 or so.. and if you're thinking it isn't exactly *early* even if it isn't late, think of it as just an hour after sunset, and you'll get what I mean. I had an 8 a.m. bus to catch to Zurich the next day.
