22.06 --23.06 Dubrovnik Croatia, arrival. First 2 days.

Auf Deutsch.

I'm in Croatia now, for a conference which runs from 23rd through the 27th of June. It's in honor of the 60th Birthday of the  founder of my sub-area of Topology (Goodwillie).  I'm happy to see my colleagues again -- and the sun as well :) .
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Arrival -- day 1. 

Croatia -- from the plane, everything seemed very hilly (really, mountainous), sunny and beautiful. I'm here for a conference, and immediately had the feeling that I should come back to visit again, when I really have enough time to enjoy the place.




After we landed, we took the shuttle (not the public bus, which we didn't see) into the city -- it took maybe 20 or 30 minutes. It was a beautiful ride along the adriatic coast.



What I had not understood when booking a hotel, was that its location necessitated schlepping my 16kg suitcase up ~100 stairs -- I chose to hold it over my head, and cursed not wearing my ankle brace.

Well, I guess I'll get in shape this way.

When looking up the ``street", what you see:



And here's the view from half-way down:



I sent an SMS to a friend who's also here, so we could meet up and find some dinner. We opted for the old city ---which is ``close" as the crow flies, and a little less close when you take into account the stairs. We ate at the ``favorite" restaurant of our host, which was not that great.

Here's a picture of the main street of the old city (it's about 300m long):


 We discovered that the old city *also* has a lot of big staircases (thankfully, the restaurant-street was only up about 5 or so steps) :





After eating, we took some time to go to the/a harbor (the one on the east end of the city), had some ice cream and looked around.



There was a fake submarine:





Outside of, but near to the old city:


A nice vantage point, looking south-east ish:



2nd Day (First Day of the Conference)

On the second day in Dubrobnik started the conference. For breakfast, we ate in a restaurant which is adjacent to the conference center (it's called "Sesame"). Good coffee, and I could get a totally normal breakfast of müsli, yogurt and fruit.

We had sandwiches from the "Sandvich Stand" for lunch and sat on the pier (which was in Game of Thrones):




While we were sitting there, one of the other people mentioned that on a nearby island they saw an octopus along the coast. This was said while we were watching little crabs scuttling around an outcropping.

Afterwards, we walked up a hill towards a fortress and looked out over the city:




Looking in the other direction, we saw a cove where one could go swimming (which also showed up in Game of Thrones). Later that evening I even went swimming there:




The water was amazingly clear, which you can kind of see in this picture:




In the city, we saw a lot of pretty little side streets (which is called an "Ulica" in Croatian):

After lunch and after another lecture, I gave my own talk. I felt it went quite well :).
I swam later (after all the talks were over and after dinner), sort of in celebration. The water was a bit cold, but sort of "marbled" warm-cool and the saltiness was nice (and different from just pool swimming).

[Next: more pictures, more of everything!]