aggienaut | Entries tagged with apimondia

   Every two years the World Beekeeping Federation "Apimondia" holds a congress (founded in 1895 this was their 49th so they missed just a few). I first attended in 2017 in Istanbul, and again in 2023 in Santiago, Chile. This last week it was held in Copenhagen, Denmark.

   I had always planned to attend, though its a very difficult time of the year for us here in Australia, practically the busiest part of the beekeeping season at the best of times, and in my current job as a varroa extension officer, the invasive pest mite varroa is just burgeoning across my state at probably its most critical rate right now, AND my colleague the OTHER senior extension officer also wanted to attend Apimondia! So I booked flights to just be there for the conference and the few days before and after during which there would be "technical tours" -- which I've found one of the most rewarding parts of these conferences.
   I booked my flights and tickets on June 30th so I could write them off on the financial year ending on that date ;) at the time I didn't think Cristina would be coming along, but later it was decided she would. Unfortunately, you know how flights are, you reload a page practically and the price goes up $1000. The exact flights I had booked were, well, $1000 more so we got her on flights matching as closely as possible to mine that ultimately I think were only like $300 more (my round trip flights were AU$2,300) -- the outbound flight matched so closely in fact that we departed melbourne within ten minutes of eachother, arrived in bangkok together, and arrived in Copenhagen also within ten minutes of eachother!

Saturday, September 20th - The Journey There
   Even though I booked through Luftansa I was a bit horrified to find my Melbourne - Bangkok flight was on Jetstar, our budget airline. So that was predictably fairly uncomfortable. I'd never been to Bangkok before, I found the airport both on the way out and again on the way back to be one of the more confusing airports I've been in. I'm a veteran of a lot of airports so I can say this with confidence. Guidance signs were sometimes vague, confusing or missing and asking airport staff, they were usually friendly but sounded like they were only taking wild guesses at instructions on how to get to places merely around the corner from them.
   But I did have a moment to eat some thai food in thailand so that was nice.

In Flight Movie Reviews
The Accountant 2 - I had seen the preceding movie in this series, which I recall as "like Rainman if Rainman happened to pick up being a badass cold blooded killer as a random hobby" and in fact trying to remember what happened in the first one I kept conflating it with Rainman. Ultimately the movie was of the genre of people trying to solve a case with frequent gunfights but the plot didn't really make sense, numerous parts of it required people to know things they didn't know until later for their motivations to make any sense. C
Troy - I actually hadn't seen this movie before! And I've been on more of a Greek myths kick than ever, had actually downloaded the Argonautica, Illiad and Odyssey onto my phone before the flight for light reading. All that being said, maybe I'm becoming too hard to please with movies because my feelings about it were just kind of meh. Fun to see all the actors who later became more well known looking so young though. B-
Flow - This was actually the only movie I saw on the flight back. After perusing the movie listings and seeing nothing I was interested in, I noticed more than one fellow passenger watching a beautifully animated film about a cat in a boat with a capybara and became intrigued. In the "Family" category of film options I seldom venture into I found it -- Flow -- it was actually really nice. Not cartoon animations but like, actually trying to be beautiful kind of animations (CGI to be sure but nicely done). For unexplained reasons the forest is flooded and the cat and various other animals escape in a boat. There's no dialogue, no talking animals, but they convey personality with not-implausible behaviors and noises. Sadly we landed when I still had about half an hour left (note to self, I was 59 minutes in). A

   I had a short layover in Munich during which I went through EU passport control, which I only realized when I arrived in Copenhagen stuffed up our plan to go through passport control together. As we had discovered in Mexico, just because Venezuelans officially have visa-free entry into a place doesn't mean it will be granted, so I'd brought our wedding certificate and intended we'd walk through passport control arm in arm, but alas I arrived in Copenhagen outside passport control and she arrived inside passport control. Fortunately she didn't have a problem but I was very afraid for a moment there.

Sunday, September 21st - Arrival
   I've been to Copenhagen airport a few times before and as I recalled it IS a very easy-to-navigate airport. Simple walk from the baggage claim out to the metro where the machines are straightforward (unlike for example Amsterdam where I once spent nearly an hour trying to figure out how to buy a ticket and was nearly reduced to tears). Our AirBNB was literally just ten minutes down the metro. Short walk of a few blocks (400m?) amongst pretty five story apartment blocks, cobbled streets, trees and shops on the first level of the buildings. I immediately noted that even though it being nearly the equinox and the north and south hemisphere's therefore getting very close to equal sunlight and daytime right now, the climate in Copenhagen was MUCH NICER than Melbourne. I forget there's places where you can go out without multimple layers at times other than the one month of a year it might be summer (maybe). Whether was delightful all week, then had a similar shock when we returned to Melbourne and blisteringly cold winds (actually it was freezing rain when Cristina arrived).
   We were unaffected by Russian drone activity a the airport as that began Sept 22nd, though I was worried it could effect our eventual departure, and with the upcoming Trump summoning of all his generals and admirals I wasn't sure WW3 wasN'T about to break out while we were there.

   Our AirBNB was a room in a flat. I thought it was well-reviewed (4.27 stars) though just now looking at it again tehre's an AirBnB note advising that that's in the bottom 10% of available places in Copenhagen. The host, apparently from Shanghai originally, was very friendly and obliging, letting us check in early, apparently getting up early after a late shift to clean the place early for us. Well I would have been content but Cristina who is more discerning about these things noted that while the floor had clearly been hastily mopped and there were fresh bed linens and such on the bed, there was also a large amount of visible debris on the floor under everything, and the window and mirror could use some cleaning. The host's flatmate apparently got deported to China the second day we were there, which didn't really effect us but was, like, a thing that happened.

   We got some delicious pastries at a bakery across the street and then did some sight seeing around Copenhagen. It was a very easy trip of just a few minutes by the same metro to the center of town. Wandering along Stroget street and surrounds, we marveled at all the beautiful architecture and just how clean and safe it was and how happy everyone seemed.
   As can be expected with jetlag we perservered as long as we could but by early afternoon we were fading and returned to the room where we continued to try to stay up until a decent time to go to bed but it was a struggle. (on the flip side of things, which I'm writing this the day after returning, I pretty much passed out just before 21:00, but then was lying awake at 2:30am so got up and began this at 3 or 4am)

Monday, September 22nd - The Equinox
   The morning of this day we had to return to the airport because Cristina was flying to Mallorca to see one of her good friends (she'd be in Spain the duration of my conferencing days, first Mallorca and then Madrid). Fortunately due to the aforementioned proximity and easy of access to the airport this was no problem at all.
   As best I can recall I then strolled around town some more, exploring some fortifications, ate some more delicious food (in this case "Copenhagen's smallest restaurant." Oh I toured the museum of the Danish resistance to the Nazi occupation. It was a well done museum with immersive audio tour though I was mildly annoyed that with lots of individual exhibits sometimes they'd begin with like a minute of scene setting ambiant noise and one wanted to get on with htings, and in general I have a preference for reading exhibits which I can proceed through much more quickly.

and then I stumbled upon German frigate Baden-Wurttenburg, always cool to see a state of the art warship but also a reminder of the crackling tensions with Russia, the Russian drone mother-ship to be discovered off the coast of Denmark a few days later.

Tuesday, September 23rd
   I began this day by trotting down a block or two to a really well reviewed little cafe for breakfast. Sitting outside, Cristina video called me from Mallorca and we chatted a bit in our usual spanglish. Just as I was saying goodbye to her the guy sitting at the next table cheerily waved to the camera and said something simple in Spanish (I forget what exactly but it was thematically related to goodbye). I was greatly amused by this and began talknig to him once I was no longer on the phone with Cristina, we ended up talking for an hour and a half, he was a very interesting and friendly Danish fellow named Ole who had also traveled a bit. I'm not sure what his current project is but he had run and then sold a kayak related company. So I made a new friend (spoiler alert we caught up with him again the last evening but we'll get there when we get there).

   I had meant to spend as much time as possible in the national museum but this delayed me a bit. On a previous visit Ii had spent several hours and only succeeded in seeing the first floor (of like five) of the museum which covers from earliest prehistory through the vikings. The rest of the history museum was also really interesting. I particularly liked a room full of things one might think of as sort of "steampunk" but they were real historical items from the middle ages at a time when gunpowder was becoming a thing and people were experimenting with making combination gun-warhammers and crazy things like that.
   Another big exhibit they were promoting was titled "the viking sorceress" which was an audiotour through some surreal rooms while it talked about viking mythology, which I already knew beyond the level covered therein so I was once again feeling annoyed with the pace limiting effect of audio tours. Also, starting to run out of time I finally got to the fnial part of the exhibit which actually did have a lot of artifacts that looked interesting, but at this point I didn't have time for the audio tour to take its meandering-ass-time to explain them to me. There was also a whole other wing on the traditional clothing of various people throughout the world I would have liked to see but by now we were really getting up on running out of time for me to get to the opening ceremonies of Apimondia and my colleague Ashton was texting me to hurry up and get outta there. I ran into the traditional clothing exhibit just to see if I could quickly find anything on the native people of Venezuela but at least cruising through the exhibit at nearly a run I was not able to discern such.

   Took the metro down to the conference center (the Bella Centre) arriving a comfortable 20-30 minutes before opening ceremony, but I think I'll begin a new etnry for the conference itself (:

Current Music: Linhy - She Rises and She Glows

Friday, September 8th [cont] - shortly after where the previous entry left off i went to go have another extremely lackluster lunch in the dining area. On the way i ran into my friend, a Chilean beekeeper and phd student named Isadora whom I'd met the other day, and she was headed to lunch offsite! I gladly went with her. We proceeded about two blocks to a cluster of restaurants. I have found without exception the staff of restaurants here have been really friendly. Isadora was translating things on the menu for me and i decided to order aji gallana (or something like that) even though she couldn't translate aji. It just sounded good. It turned out to be shredded chicken in a yellow sauce. For a drink i ordered traditional lemonade, and she ordered lemonade with mint, and after the order had already been placed she mentioned in conversation that they often make lemonade with ginger and i longed for it but it was too late. But regardless my food amd lemonade were deliciouso.

Then we both went to the expo, I was going to buy a thick very thorough scientific book about honey from the GIZ booth (the very people who sent me to Ghana) but they'd already abandoned the booth. Then i knocked off another thing on my to-do list and made a video tour of the expo which came out to seven minutes even in a mad rush. The idea wag to insert it into a talk about the conference but I'll have to find someone with video editing skill and see if they can somehow edit it down because i think seven minutes is too much for that purpose. Talked to a very friendly Irishman who seems very pleased to introduce me to people as a fellow Irishman and is generally good craic and he mentioned being a voting delegate, so i started in about how he should vote for Tanzania, but he said his vote was already mandated from the home office and he wouldn't reveal who it was for, which seemed ominous. But the nearby Frenchman amd Aussie seemed enthusiastic for Tanzania over Dubai at least.

And then we headed back in and caught some talks about various honeybee pests. Since she wanted translation headphones for the English speakers and i needed them for the Spanish speakers we found me could just trade the same set. (And btw if you're getting scandalous ideas that we were having a romance i assure you i gushed about Cristina through half of lunch)

Then it was time for closing ceremonies! We ran into our friend Nico just outside the hall, a cheerful fellow I've hung out with a bit here. So we three sat together at closing ceremonies. It kills me to say cheesy things like this but sitting with these two friends whom i hadn't known before the conference was really like yes this is what it's all about.

So of course there were a bunch of speeches. I noted in the list of new and cancelled memberships that Russia has "withdrawn" membership if the world beekeeping congress. Tanzania and Dubai both had two minutes to make their case, the Tanzanians presented a well produced two minute promotional video, the Dubaians just had a Dubaian woman make a speech about how great it would be for Apimondia. It really felt like they weren't even trying, but was that because they'd already bought the votes??
then the voting delegates voted but the results would be counted and announced at the end. There was a performance by a musical group of Chilean traditional and classic music, some more speeches and... just when i felt we were moments away from the announcement of who won to host in 2027 i started getting whatsapp messages from the staffmember that i left my luggage with that he needed to leave and i needed to come get my luggage.

So very regretfully i gathered my things and exited the hall. Found the guy with my luggage actually gave him 20,000 pesos because i was feeling like i had to get rid of it and he'd seemed very helpful. Rushed back in with my luggage. We were fortunately by an aisle so i left it just beside Nico in the aisle.

Amd then.. it was time for the big announcement! The Apimondia president came out, saying he hadn't even looked at the card they'd handed him yet. Anddd the winner, by a vote of 65 to 39 is...

TANZANIA!!!! Wooooo! I'd hardly dared hope! I'm gonna take Cristina on a safari amd to the baby elephant orphanage amd the giraffe rescue and... (-:

Amd closing ceremonies were over. We got up, i thought about saying goodbye to Nico lest i lose track of him in the crush but i lost track of him in the crush.

Since it had often taken half an hour to get a ride i opened didi (specifically, not uber, so i could get rid of some more cash) thinking I could have it looking for a ride while i said goodbye to people. But a minute later it had a ride for me coming in four minutes. I suppose i could have cancelled but well i had a ride might as well take it. Quick goodbye with Isadora, ran into the Irishman again on the way out which was another riot of Irish in jokes amd scampered to the road amd leapt into my didi car which by then was on a final countdown for how long it would wait for me amd only about 30 seconds left. Pulled away feeling regretful that I'd had to make such a quick getaway.

During check in found out i needed to apply online for a transit visa for new Zealand, but two airline check in employees carefully walked me through it. I swear anyone in service or hospitality jobs here is so friendly and helpful. I would've expect any of this in Australia ("nah mate I'm on smoko" sums up the classic attitude towards helpfulness).

Stopped in at a restaurant inside security just to have a lemonade with ginger, delicious!

At the gate encountered a Chinese young lady I'd talked to at one of the equipment stands in the expo. She and her boss will take this same 14 hour flight to Auckland, be there basically a day (from 5am to midnight) amd then another 14 hours to China!

Just now just boarded the plane. Still at the gate. Can't upload though as already don't have internet!

For some reason neither my phone nor battery will charge from the seatback USB chargers on any flight I've been on, so now I've exhausted the external battery and the 36% on my phone is non renewable for the foreseeable future.

Mad tight transfer in Auckland. I let some hysterically panicked passengers cut past me in the security line only to find later they were on my flight. The security checkpoint in the middle of the international transfer was quite the traffic jam, i think most people were only getting to the front when they triaged amd called their flight to the front of the line.

Was going to post this in Auckland but the transfer was so hurried i didn't even get a moment to use the loo. Yes i can hold it the entire 14 hours of a normal longest haul flight (i am like a reverse camel 🤪) but now I'm fit to bursting and back on a plane! Flight is very empty but i definitely have someone on my aisle row, i do so hate to be a bother and displace someone to go to the heads.

But miracle of miracle my battery does seem to charge off the USB here!

Update: can still get airport wifi here on the plane at the gate, posted from Auckland!

Current Location: Auckland, New Zealand

Okay you'd think I'd know better by now about trying to write an LJ entry directly in the browser on my phone, having had a similar thing happened too many times already. But i thought it would be safe if i was in a place with a stable internet connection, so I was writing an entry here in the conference center during presentations i wasn't interested in. I was almost done when the browser refreshed itself and the "restore from draft" brought in the previous day's already posted entry, the one I'd just spent maybe an hour altogether on was lost completely. It's not just a waste of my time but it seems to use a fair bit of phone battery having it open to the writing screen for awhile and i only have a finite amount of battery that needs to last me from now (Friday afternoon) all the way till i arrive in Australia now.

Amd anyway i absolutely hate rewriting the same thing twice so as happens in this case you'll get a severely shortened version of what I'd just written.

Thursday, September 7th - at the conference all day. I had written several paragraphs about it but well you can look at some slides https://photos.app.goo.gl/ikvMDsSFTXVsktRM7

One cause of frustration for me had been that you needed a different pair of translation headphones for the upstairs two halls versus the downstairs two halls. You needed to give your ID card as collateral for the headphones and re exchange them between floors. But this day i realized i could get one pair with my US drivers license amd the other with my Australian DL, I wish I'd thought of this earlier!

As i was leaving at 18:30 a friend asked if i was going to the party. What party? Turns out "the Scandinavians" were hosting a reception upstairs. Free booze!

I don't know why, they don't need to "wine amd dine" us, they already have the next Apimondia in Copenhagen 2025 locked in.

Speaking of wine amd dining, I was recounting in the presence of a Slovenian how the Russian delegation had literally taken every voting delegate out to dinner in 2017 to secure the 2021 conference, amd he said Slovenia actually had it more or less locked in until an hour before the vote the Russians started slipping voting delegates envelopes of money!

I'm really concerned Dubai will do something like that this year to beat out the Tanzanians, who have a much bigger friendlier delegation but I'm sure Dubai has deep deep bags of money.

After only half an hour Doug asked me if i was ready to go yet. I rather think not! He then went home. I was a bit surprised i thought he'd love mingling at the event but he is 74 after all and i think feels pretty tired after a long day of conferencing.

I stayed, it turned into quite the dance party. It was funny seeing a tall Dane in a horned viking helmet amd cape dancing away with a Tanzanian woman in maasai robes, the moderator of one of the sessions who had seemed so serious amd professional now totally rocking out, etc etc people from all over the place amd a wide range of ages, among the top people in their industry from around the world, totally rocking out to the latest Latin hits (the Scandinavians really restrained themselves amd only played one Abba song).

Took an uber back to the hotel, arrived at first 12:00.

Friday, September 8th - Doug declined to get up when i did at 7, saying he didn't feel like going to the conference today, would rather go play table tennis somewhere. Packed my stuff amd came here to the conference center with all my luggage.

Arriving, asked the young man at the front registration desk if there was somewhere i could put my luggage, he said not officially but he could watch it unofficially for a tip of any amount ("even just a dollar, whatever"). I think I'll leave him with all my extra pesos over what i need to get to the airport, which might be as many as 10,000 ($12), I'd rather give them directly to someone who has done of a favor than re exchange them at a huge loss. If he doesn't run off with my bag!

Amd that brings us to now, it's 13:00, middle of the day. This evening there's closing ceremonies (amd the Tanzania vs Dubai vote!) then i go to the airport to fly just after midnight to Auckland (14 hours) amd thence on to Melbourne (4 hours)

So starting last night actually, just after i got in bed i received a text from the biosecurity department of New South Wales asking if I was still interested in working for them and if so to please fill out the application linked in an email they sent me August 21st -- I'd been anxiously awaiting that email amd had missed it! But the application wants me to upload a resume amd cover letter amd i didn't bring my laptop. I'm going to have to see if i can find a copy of my resume I've perhaps emailed somewhere amd i guess type a cover letter on my phone which sounds really tedious to me but i suppose is doable.

Wednesday September 6th - i feel like i already don't remember this morning very well. More interesting talks. I take a lot of pictures of interesting slides, i put them all in a google album for some interested friends, if you want to have a look, they're here: https://photos.app.goo.gl/ikvMDsSFTXVsktRM7

The poster session was actually kind of interesting, like dozens of mini presentations, usually the person behind the poster was standing next to it to answer questions.

I found the food for lunch, there's only like three food carts, not many options.

At 18:10 I started looking for Doug so we could leave before the rush at 18:30. Couldn't find him until 18:30 anyway though. Took half an hour on both uber amd didi before the latter found us a driver. It was raining heavily which is probably why it was extra hard today. Taking pity on all the other people still waiting we asked around if anyone else needed a ride to the same neighborhood amd found a Brazilian couple.

With the bad traffic it took an hour to get to our hotel. The Brazilian couple was very nice AND I feel like i had a brush with a celebrity:

You've heard of the Africanized ("killer") bees right? They were accidentally released by Dr Warwick Kerr in 1956 in Brazil. This Brazilian man said his father worked for Dr Kerr at the time!

I've heard conflicting reports how it exactly happened so i was eager to ask. I asked if it was true someone accidentally removed the queen excluder that released the queens amd he confirmed it was. But he said even though it quite probably wasn't Dr Kerr himself, Dr Kerr would never tell who actually did it, taking all responsibility himself.

For dinner i talked Doug into accompanying me to the same restaurant i went to yesterday. Once again the very friendly staff eagerly welcomed us in. The same waiter who spoke some English helped us amd we found out he's Venezuelan!

Once again food came quickly, was delicious, amd was more than enough. Doug will have more than half a sandwich for lunch tomorrow.

Tuesday September 5th - to get to the conference in the morning i checked DiDi which could have a driver to me in 11 minutes for 12 Chilean kilopesos and 11 min, and then uber, which could have a driver to me in 4 min for 6,000. So i hit cancel on the didi. But i only noticed hours later i had notifications that seemed to indicate DiDi found amd called a new driver who came to look for me i think. Which is pretty dumb of the app because i had clicked "no longer need a ride" as reason to cancel.

not the Africa symposium

The Apimondia world beekeeping conference is organized as five halls simultaneously going with different topics in each. The regional symposium for African was in one of the halls this morning so that's where i was for that entire session.

Despite being very clearly not ethnically African, i find i feel so welcomed in Africa groups like this, amd to hear familiar phrases in swahili, it just makes me feel so welcome and happy to be there.

The ambassador of South Africa was present and i sat behind the mayor of Arusha, Tanzania, amd talked to him during a break. I was able to ask him about my friend the former governor of neighboring Singida state (he's doing well, retired). Arusha is where i attended a regional Africa conference in 2015, amd i learned a contender for hosting apimondia itself in 2027! (It's every two years, 2025 is already set for Copenhagen) the other contender is Dubai, which i feel is a gaudy, crassly "luxurious" place, so I'm heavily rooting for Arusha. Incidentally in the expo section i came across a booth dedicated to already promoting Hungary to host in 2029.

Sitting next to us we met a couple from UK based Bees Abroad amd i learned they are distinct from UK based Bees for Development, i think I'd probably conflated them in my mind previously. i had met the leaders of Bees for Development at the previously mentioned Arusha conference amd personally i felt they expressed a patronizing attitude towards Africa that rubbed me the wrong way so it's nice to know Bees Abroad is a different organization.

I also learned there'll be a smaller regional conference in Burkina Faso next September. I probably wouldn't attend on the basis of Burkina Faso being on the US State Department "do not go" list. It's one of the recent spate of African coups, though the representative of Burkina Faso seemed to be a genuine enthusiast of "our young captain" ("the youngest head of state in the world!"), sincerely mentioning his rule as a positive ("there's been some insecurity but our young captain is quickly cleaning it up!")

After that i bounced around a bit between halls. You're probably not interested in my detailed notes on them ;)

At lunch there seemed to be no restaurants anywhere nearby. I just bought a muffin amd doughnut from one of the Cafe carts on site, which were both really good for what they were but what they were wasn't lunch. Doug apparently found a cart selling pizza but then found it indelible.

Sessions ended at 18:30. Tried to get an uber but uber told me no one was available, probably everyone was trying to get an uber. So ordered up a didi. For 8,000 a driver who turned out to be Colombian picked us up. He, like nearly all our drivers so far, was really friendly, trying to speak to us a lot, though he spoke no English amd Doug speaks less Spanish than i. But we were able to establish that he'd immigrated here five years ago, Santiago is muy lindo (very pretty), as is Bogota amd Cartagena, amd that he has relatives in Houston amd Kansas City.

Returning to the hotel, we dropped our bags in the room amd headed out again for food, being as you can imagine quite hungry by now. Another frustrating thing hotels often do is entirely cut off power to your room if a card isn't in a slot, which is fine amd makes sense except in the not-unheard-of case that you want to leave a phone charging, as i now did. So i left my phone charging amd my key card in the slot, since we had Dougs.

Just a few doors down on the corner we found a nice looking Chilean restaurant named Fuente Chilena (which means Chilean Fountain apparently though, with the fancy cursive-esque font it was written in i had harmlessly misread it as Fuerte Chilena - "strong Chilean woman"). A waiter cheerfully ushered us in with a few words of English but when asked if he spoke English shook his head apologetically. He seated us amd then departed. We were left without menus, just QR codes on the table, me without my phone amd Doug without network, amd have i mentioned at the best of times i hate how restaurants have often resorted to these QR codes, I'd much rather read a physical menu than stare at my phone.

Anyway Doug in particular was feeling very impatient, no doubt grumpy with hunger. After about a minute amd a half he got up declaring he'd just find some street food. So i got up to go out with him. A waiter amd waitress intercepted us with alarm by the door asking as best they could what was wrong. I did my best to quickly express we couldn't figure out how to order (in a helpless non rude manner, i wasn't feeling grumpy myself). They in a flutter of Spanish amd a few basic English words assured me they'd sort me out amd turned me around, though Doug slipped away and disappeared into the night calling back to me he was going for street food he'd catch me later.

I was seated, the waitstaff quickly found me an English menu amd a waiter with sufficient English was conjured up who very patiently explained the menu, quickly consulting google translate once or twice. I ordered his recommendation, a classic Chilean pork sandwich with saurkraut and mayonnaise amd generally overflowing with stuff, amd a pisco sour (classic drink of Chile/Peru). Sandwich came pretty quickly, made the mistake of trying to eat it like a burger, but stuff was falling out all over the place amd looking around saw everyone else was eating with knife amd fork. Proceeded to do so, honestly it was the most delicious thing i can remember eating in recent memory i think (not counting In-N-Out burger in California of course ::crosses self with the sign of the In N Out crossed palm trees:: ). Total came out to 12,870.

Got back to my room amd of course couldn't get in. Told the front desk I'd left my key in my room amd they made another one, but apparently that disabled both previous keys so when Doug arrived five minutes later his didn't work but i let him in.

He declared he'd had a huge delicious burger for 15,000, though he, always frugal, seemed slightly deflated to realize mine plus a drink had been substantially less (amd faster!).

Amd tomorrow is another day!

Not sure what this "poster session" is all about, guess I'll find out.

Monday, September 4th, Santiago, Chile - having had terrible sleep or lack thereof on the overnight flight, after breakfast i slept till 11:30 or so. Then my friend Doug came over.

I had met Doug in Nigeria in 2012. Later we went to the beekeeping conference in Tanzania together in 2015 amd he's visited me several times in Australia. He's also here to attend the beekeeping conference and we're sharing a room, though he was already in country a few days at an airbnb.

He hadn't had breakfast so we went to a restaurant a few doors down from the hotel amd i just had a coffee while he had scrambled eggs.

Then it was 13:00 amd the conference opening ceremonies would begin at 16:00. I had wanted to do a city tour but now there wasn't time. My other thing i wanted to do was go to this preColombian museum but it was apparently closed on Mondays so we just walked around the area. The hotel seems to be in a modern central business district area. We found a nice park.

Presently it was 15:00 so i called up a ride on DiDi to take us to the conference center. Our driver didn't speak any English but seemed very friendly amd personable. Ride took maybe fifteen minutes amd cost 4,000 Chilean pesos ($4.70).

Registration consisted of having a QR code we'd been emailed scanned which apparently brought up all our registration information immediately, was handed our bags amd name tags. Had to surrender my driver's license to get the translation headphones.

Instant translation only available in English, Spanish amd Portuguese, sorry France. Bunch of speeches, some traditional dances.

Then we all retired to the expo room for free wine amd cheese. Doug got to talking to some people he knew amd through them we made another friend or two, that's how we do.

Wine glasses ran out just before i got to the front of that very long line. 😒 they still had wine just no glasses. Those of us still in line then scavenged abandoned empty wine glasses, scoured them clean with paper towels amd partook.

It finished around 19:00 amd I was surprised to find it still light outside, it'd've been dark by now in Colombia but, though they're on the same longitude Colombia is two hours earlier (this always ties my brain in knots but it means when the clock says 17:00 in Colombia it says 19:00 in chile but it's the same "real" time relative to the sun)

My phone was at 3% so i couldn't use didi amd Doug had no internet connection. We tried just going to the street to get a cab amd it seemed most of the participants were there trying to figure out how to get to their hotels. Cabs were trying to get customers but the one we talked to wanted 25,000, six times what it had cost us to get here.

So we went back into the convention hall where Doug could connect to the wifi to get an uber, amd there we found the Apimondia president Jeff Pettis doing the exact same thing.

Uber took us back to our hotel for 12,000. Cabbies are always complaining about rideshares but if they didn't always try to take advantage of us we wouldn't always go to rideshares for a fair rate.

I was looking forward to a hot shower after last hotel didn't have hot water amd so i felt very alarmed amd displeased when the shower never got more than slightly less than lukewarm. I was just going to grumble to myself but Doug exhorted me to call the front desk amd complain immediately amd so i actually did so. I cynically didn't expect it to accomplish anything but they sent a maintenance guy up who, i felt kind of with a bit of attitude demonstrated that the water was indeed hot. But it definitely hadn't been five minutes earlier so he must have fixed something before he came knocking. Either way, problem solved.

Tomorrow, it begins!

October 4th, Istanbul - This day began with a bit of a panic. Five hundred people were milling around in front of the conference building, there were a rumoured 14 busses coming along to pick us up for the technical tours, miraculously people formed into a giant single file line without even being told, and got their tickets out and... wait, what tickets?? I had paid online for the technical excursion when I paid my conference registration, but never got a physical ticket. I tried to go in to the conference building since I knew the secretariat had an office on the subterranean floor the conference took place at, but security wasn't letting anyone in, there were a few other people with the same problem trying to talk to someone but the only people in the lobby were security personnel who knew nothing. There were no conference staff anywhere in sight! I joined my Australian friends in line, anxiously hoping the staff would be checking names on a list or something.
   The primary reason I had signed up wasn't so much I felt the urgent need to see yet more bees so much as I recalled from the conference in Tanzania that it was on the technical tours that I actually met most of the people I met, since there's not nearly as much opportunity to meet people during presentations or passing in the halls as there is on the busses and such. Sure enough, whilst I was in line I met a nice young man from Tanzania who wants to go into business with stingless bees!
   Well there wasn't a list... but the person a few people ahead of me showed them the invoice in her email on her phone and they let her on. Quickly I started scrambling to get my email open but then we were at the door, my Australian friends were boarding and I was still dredging through my emails. Then they were saying "we can get one more person on this bus" and I got the requisite email open and triumphantly showed it to the guy manning the door, who looked at it so briefly I figured I coulda probably shown him anything, but he handed me a ticket and waved me aboard.
   At this point of course there was only one seat left and it was beside a bearded Argentinian who quite rudely I felt kept leaving his bag on my seat taking up my space.

   We drove an hour, across the Bosporus bridge to the Asian side and north-east up to the Black Sea coast. I was surprised by how quickly we left the city and found ourselves going up and down bushy rugged hills. We arrived at a cute little village in a narrow valley, the buses had a hard time navigating the narrow roads. We all trooped down a cobbled street, beekeepers excitedly pointed out a hive on a balcony like they'd never seen one before, and we arrived at a construction site where we sat in plastic chairs and watched a promotional video for the beekeeping informational center which was being built there. Then we all trooped right back up the hill back to the buses.

   Then we drove just a little bit to the town of Sile itself (pronounced "Silly"), where we were let out by the traditional outdoor market, and given our lunch. The market seemed to possibly have been set up just for us, it wasn't the busy local market I've often seen, with closely packed tables heaped with vegetables and crowds of locals buying their daily food, but rather was a quiet affair with booths set around the outside of a square -- we appeared to be the only customers. We were encouraged several times by official announcements that we should buy the famous local cotton cloth. It was also announced that after this we'd go down to the beach and we could have coffee there. At this point many people started approaching eachother to ask if they were on the right tour, and were we going to see any bees?? Some Romanians approached me to ask these questions and pointed out as well that only half the busses were here and half their friends were missing. "What's going on??" they urgently wanted to know. I was similarly approached by some Czechs. Nothing brings strangers together like confusion and fear that something's gone wrong. I asked if the Czech Republic had ever hosted Apimondia and they said "yes, in 1966, before the Soviet tanks came in 68," "well you're overdue then!" I said cheerfully, and when he gave me kind of a weird look I added "for another Apimondia, not more soviet tanks!!"

   The Tanzanian lad was marveling at the size of some chili peppers being sold in the market. He told me they don't have such big peppers in Tanzania, I said he should get some seeds and plant them, and his eyes lit up like this was a genius idea and he immediately bought some chilis to get the seeds out of. And here's some weird fruit that were next to the chilis.

   We then reboarded the bus to travel just a few minutes down the main road through town to the waterfront. There we found ourselves separated from the lapping waves of the Black Sea by merely some rocks and a low concrete wall. People immediately began scrambling down to the water, which was blue, clear, and inviting. One unabashable old fellow immediately stripped to his skivvies and dove in, proceeding to swim to an island about 200 meters out. On another nearby island stood a square castle towerA, which I thought was a delightfully dramatic place for a castle, since the island walls were very steep. It looks like it could have been connected to the mainland by a narrow causeway, I think I saw what could have ebeen the remains of stone pilings. At the time I had no particular information about it, but now that I can look it up on wikipedia (recall, wikipedia is blocked in Turkey), it's apparently a 14th century Genoese castle and apparently there's a controversy! I thought it looked a bit crisp, it was recently renovated, but there seems to be a weird amount of outcry that they went too far and it "looks like Spongebob now." An inquiry was even openedA. I don't really see it other than yes both the tower and spongebob are rectangles. My only concern would be if they really departed from the original design and it does look like there were big arch-windows that are no longer there. At least they got rid of that ugly sign that had been in front of it.
   Then I had some turkish coffee (confession time, this was the turkish coffee I posted a picture of earlier), and was joined by a Swedish beekeeper, who broke Swedish stereotypes by being a bit overweight. A bit balding, he looked like someone you'd expect to find hating their life in a cubical in some midwestern US city.

   We reboarded the busses, traveled for about twenty minutes and spent another twenty minutes as the bus repassed the same area repeatedly trying to find the turnoff it was looking for. Finally we arrived at a cleared area among the hills where beehives could clearly be seen in many places. Finally!! Everyone eagerly disembarked the busses. Also sometime around now we learned that the total group of 500 had been divided in two so the other half had done the bees first and the things we did second.
   Anyway this area turned out ot be really cool! All the honeybees you see are generally all the same species, Apis mellifera (there's about seven other species of Apis but they're only found in southeasern Asia), but there's some 250 different subspecies and a handful of these are used by beekeepers. In this yard each set of hives was a different subspecies, and were on hand with smokers lit to open up hives and show us the bees! ... really there wasn't too much difference to see even for the discerning eye, the differences would be found in honey production and seasonal behaviors that you wouldn't see in a minute of looking in the hive, but at least we could determine which ones were the most stingy!!
   There was also a bee truck -- a big-rig with a trailer that was filled with beehives with their entrances to the outside, and a walkway down the middle. Each hive had it's own thermostat and temperature control. Afterwords talking with my Australian friend we agreed it was cool but probably totally overengineered ... probably had just been made to impress us.
   I met a couple from Nigeria and greatly amused them by breaking out my one phrase of Nigerian pidgen English ("hw u day?" (how are you), "I dey kampe (com-pey)" ("I am well and strong")).
   As we reboarded the busses here I noticed the Tanzanian lad was carrying a lavender plant he had purchased "we don't have these in Tanzania!" he told me cheerfully. He's gonna have quite the interesting luggage.

   From here we proceeded about an hour back into the Eastern suburbs of Istanbul where we arrived at a honey processing facility. Specifically, it was the "R&D" facility for Turkey's biggest honey packing company, which, incidentally, is one of the biggest in the world (Turkey itself is the third largest exporter of honey in the world and considering the population is a lot less than numbers 1 & 2 (US and China), clearly honey production is big business in Turkey.

As you can see in the above picture not only did they have an impressive laboratory, but basically the floor above the laboratory was a dedicated viewing platform of the lab floor! I felt like I was in some Bond villian's evil laboratory lair!! At first this seemed to me to be a baffling use of space but talking about it with my friends we came to the conclusion that actually the entire R & D facility is a giant marketing thing. When you're in the business of making contracts for thousands of tons of honey worth millions of dollars a year, when you have potential visiting clients you want to absolutely wow their brains out. When they're standing on your Bond-villian red carpeted viewing platform gazing down at the impressive lab equipment in the shining white laboratory floors, and the dozens of industriously busy and strangely uniformly kind of attractive mid-20s aged female lab workers, you feel like you are IN on the evil plan and it is a solid investment for world domination!!

   From there it seemed to be at least an hour through traffic back to the conference center. Arriving there, had dinner with the unofficial Team Australia one last time. The overly-lengthy journey home, which I came to think I must not have been in my right senses when Ii booked, will be detailed in a subsequent entry!