Yesterday was the first day of the Robotics in Education Conference at the Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava. It was a long, but rewarding day filled with many lectures on various topics relating to hardware platforms, teaching methods, research projects, and more. It was very interesting to attend and hear how educational systems work in other countries.
After the conference we had a walking tour of the city of Bratislava, which was very interesting. It was nice to learn the history of all the places I walked around and saw the day before.
This, for example, is St. Martin's cathedral, which was used for the coronation of 19 Hungarian kings.
And this is Michael's Gate, the only remaining medieval gate in the city.
After the tour was a welcome dinner at the Hotel Arcadia, which was very delicious. I enjoyed good food and good conversation with some new Austrian friends.
Today was my day to present at the conference, and I think the presentation went quite well. I did receive many questions afterwards. After the conference lunch, I decided to head back to Vienna to get settled in my hotel before the final conference dinner. I am starting to feel the beginnings of a cold, so I wanted to get some rest.
Unfortunately, as I write this, I am not feeling much better, so will probably skip the conference dinner. It is sort of far from my hotel, and I'm not sure how safe I feel taking the U-Bahn at night. Plus, I still have two more meetings to make and would like to be in top health for them!
Overall I enjoyed the conference very much. I was pleasantly surprised at how friendly and welcoming everyone that attended was. (When one woman overheard that I was starting to feel sick, she offered her cold medicine!) I very much enjoyed this experience and am excited to share what I learned with everyone else at Parallax.
Tomorrow I am taking the train from Vienna to Zurich. With going to bed early, I am hoping to catch the earliest train so that I can get settled in my hotel earlier. I am excited for this trip, as well as to meet our distributor and visit the International School Winterthur.
Keeping good health while abroad is very important, so you made a good decision about skipping that dinner. If you get sick abroad, you have to deal with it, which adds stress on top of being sick. Being conservative and playing safe is the best way to go.
ReplyDeleteI think that you didn’t mention jetlag yet and you may be overpowering jetlag with exhaustion. This means that you don’t sleep when your body tells you to sleep, but when it’s the local time to sleep. To sync in the local schedule you need to be very tired and then you crash until you wake up the next day. Exhaustion keeps you sleeping at the time your body feels it should be away. Between trying to catch up with the schedule, travel stress (having to be sharp to understand the ways in the new place) and work stress (having to perform tasks that you don’t do every week in California), your defenses get lower and your are more open to foreign bugs that would not affect the locals that much since they already developed immunity.
Better safe than sorry is even more valid when traveling abroad, so be safe!
I agree, thanks for the insight!
ReplyDeleteI haven't been feeling the effects of jetlag so much since I got into Vienna around 4 pm, ate dinner, went to bed around 6 and didn't wake up until 8 the next morning.
But I agree about the travel stress! I've been running around all over the place to make meetings, and I'm sure there were lots of germs on the trains that I rode that probably contributed to this cold.
Well, at least I'll have immunity to this cold after its over, right? :)