Italian Peanuts

• My flight out of San Antonio was so late that I almost missed my connection in Chicago. I would have, except in an amazing coincidence our arrival gate was changed to the one next door to my Munich flight. United had already changed my itinerary to route me through DC, but it turned out to not be necessary. Fortunately, I missed my flight home, restoring cosmic balance.
• The conference sent me two hotel reservations. One was correct. Unfortunately my first stop was the one that was not. The nice German lady at the front desk was starting to get anxious, but once I got online I found the other reservation. ... Yes, the first one had _free internet_, probably the only hotel in Italy. Not that I'm bitter.
• Dude running the conference: "Why are you walking so fast?" Me: "Because my talk was supposed to start ten minutes ago." DRTC: "This is Italy. Relax."
• Talk went okay, modulo the heckler who had too much to drink during lunch. That's a new one for me. Especially since the heckler was the speaker who preceeded me. I thought maybe he just overdid celebrating that his talk was finished, but he was drunk during the speaker panel the following day, too. Then after the conference I saw him at the first cafe outside the university with a beer in front of him. So I revised my hypothesis: he's probably just alcoholic.
• Our lunch table was roughly divided into English (two Americans, a Brit, and a Hungarian) and Italian halves. Three of the Italians got into a spirited debate, arms waving everywhere. When they started raising their voices the English side paused, then smiled. Me: "Nobody argues like Italians." One of the Italians heard, and also smiled. Then he raised one finger: "Greeks."
• One of the speakers had his name on his slides as "Prof. Dr. Martin ..." I thought it was because he figured just "Dr." might leave us ignorant of how special he is, but it turns out this is normal in Germany. Maybe I was overcompensating for being one of the few people in the room who neither had a Ph.D. nor intended to get one.
  
• The weather was great the day before the conference, and the day after. Cold and rainy for the two days I was there. Oh well; I had work to do anyway.