home again

today I went to our capital city (Berne) for a workshop at the ministry of agriculture. In the morning some very interesting projects were presented and I was there to help run a SWOT analysis in the afternoon. It was kind of weird to be doing that job in German as I usually do things like that in English - it was also weird to realise that I know the equivalent group of stakeholders better in other European countries than I do in my own country. But now I know them and they know me. A few people I knew anyway from other swiss events or because they also hang out at international events like me. It was a good warm up for a more intense, four day, version of the same kind of thing next week in Serbia.
On the way home on the train I was busy powerpointing for next week when my laptop battery decided to empty itself. I was pretty sure that our ex-intern had told me that there are plug sockets on the trains these days so I vaguely looked around a bit, then thought "sod it" and put my laptop away and went to sleep. Shortly before I got off the train a voice said "why is there a plug socket by every seat?" and all the other elderly people in her group started making silly jokes about what one could use them for (some of the jokes were pretty rude :-) and I looked and yes, there in a very obvious place were plug sockets - two per compartment.....

Anyway, I'm home again now, tired, was hungry, have eaten, got tea, stuff to do, mails to catch up on - that kind of thing.....and I guess that tomorrow will come around pretty quickly too.....