Morey-Saint-Denis

zurück nach Wien

Today, I am travelling to Vienna for a few days, primarily for assessing a grant renewal for a research consortium federating most Austrian research groups on a topic for which Austria is a world-leader. (Sorry for being cryptic but I am unsure how much I can disclose about this assessment!) And taking advantage on being in Vienna, for a two-day editing session with Sylvia Früwirth-Schnatter and Gilles Celeux on our Handbook of mixtures analysis project. Which started a few years ago with another meeting in Vienna. And taking further advantage on being in Vienna, for an evening at the Volksoper, conveniently playing Die Zauberflöte!

slow food all’italiani

Coste-Moynier

at the foot of Monte Rosa

After last-year failed attempt at climbing a summit in the Monte Rosa group, we came back for hiking on the “other side” of Monte Rosa, at the Italian foot of Dufourspitze with less ambitious plans of hiking around this fantastic range. Alas the weather got set against us and thunderstorms followed one another, making altitude hikes unreasonable because of the fresh snow and frequent fog, and lower altitude walks definitely unpleasant, turning the trails into creeks.

While we had many nice chats with local people in a mixture of French and Italian, and sampled local cheese and beers, this still felt like a bit of a wasted vacations week, especially when remembering how reasonable the weather had been the week before in Scotland. However, all things considered, the previous week had seen a deadly heat wave cross the south of Europe that very week, so I should not be complaining about rain and snow! And running a whole week checking the altimeter instead of the chronometer is a nice experience.

conference carbon footprint

As a local organiser of the recent BNP 11 conference in Paris, and hence involved in setting and cleaning coffee breaks and [now famous] wine&cheese poster sessions, I was rather shocked by the amount of waste generated by those events, albeit aware of the importance of the social exchanges they induced… And thus got to wonder how the impact of those conference events could be reduced. One solution is the drastic one, namely to provide exactly nothing at all during the breaks between talks and expect anyone hungry or thirsty enough to bring one own’s food or drink. Another one, as suggested by my daughter at the dinner table, is to provide Ecocups, namely reusable plastic glasses that can given to all participants at the beginning of the conference. Or sold (or rented) to those who have not brought their own mug or bottle. (Of course, this may be a poor idea in that manufacturing and shipping a hard-plastic glass that most likely will be discarded after a few days may be more damaging than producing the equivalent number of “disposable” thin plastic glasses. And in the end all this agitation is peanuts compared with the impact of flying participants to the conference. For which I have no handy solution… As biking to the conference location is a privilege very few can enjoy.) Still, and even though this puts another stone in the already rocky organisers’ garden, I wish we could adopt more positive policies at the meetings we organise and sponsor.

vendanges tardives