World travel

I am sitting now in the Charles de Gaulle airport, in a giant room of arched glass and steel, where it is blessedly quiet. There is a plug outlet just over my left side. And I could even sign up for wifi provided that I give Hello Bank all my personal details and let them bombard my computer and email account forever with advertisements. What a deal! I signed up!

I'm heading home, Reader. Finally. Briefly. What is home?

My job requires a lot of travel. It sounds very exotic. And it is. Very exotic. But not as exotic as you think.

Long before I knew I was moving next week, I agreed to speak at a conference at the Universite de Paris Sud, in Orsay, France... last week. And then a project with an Israeli collaborator became fruitful, and he suggested that while I was traveling all the way to France, I might as well stop by Israel for a few days in advance so we could get a research paper put together.

With travel, conferences, and paper writing, I have been working very hard for the last 13 days. And I have been very productive. But it makes the travel less exotic.

I did do a little sight seeing. Last Sunday, after we finished significant work on our paper, my colleague and his wife took me from Haifa, where the Technion is situated, to the town of Akko, or Acre. Just a couple of decades ago, archeologists began excavating ruins under the town, and they have found a huge citadel built by the Crusaders in the 12th and 13th centuries.

Really huge.

Outside the citadel, the town was a crazy mix of old and new: stone buildings built centuries before, haphazardly strung with electrical wiring, plumbing pipes, satellite dishes.

So there you go. Sight seeing in Israel. Otherwise, working.

We did spend an afternoon working at an outdoor table at a cafe perched on a cliff above the sea. That sounds like a lovely place to work, doesn't it? It was. I won't mention that my view was of the wall opposite, and that the air smelled heavily of cigarettes and cigars, because the smoking patrons were the other ones who used the outdoor tables. But I won't mention that, because I like to accentuate the positive.

If one wants to catch an 8am flight from the Tel Aviv airport, it is recommended that one arrive at 5am. If one has been staying in Haifa, 90 minutes away, it is recommended that one leave one's hotel at 3:30 in the morning.

My host thought this was ridiculous, and put me on a taxi at 4:30am. And I was able to get through security and passport control and catch my flight to Paris right on time.

From Paris, take the RER B all the way south, nearly to the end, to the village of Orsay, a beautiful little town nestled in a wooded valley. Who knew this existed so close to the city center?

The weather was hot, and the University was terribly pathetic about labeling their buildings. The first talk was already underway when I arrived, in building 450. Dragging my luggage, I circled building 450 about three times before I finally found it! In the heat. Up the hill. Migraine.

But the conference was lovely. My hotel room had a balcony overlooking the woods.

Isn't that lovely? Did you know there was such a hotel only a 40 minute ride from the city center of Paris? Neither did I.

I gave my talk. I listened to other talks. I tried to be social and talk shop over lunches and dinners and Network! and all those things you do at a conference. But I was tired. I fell asleep during a working meeting with collaborators on Friday afternoon.

And then Saturday morning I caught the train into Paris, arriving at 10am, at which time I met a colleague, staked out a table in the hotel lobby, and proceeded to work again for 8 hours, with a break for lunch and then dinner.

Sunday, 8:45pm, after another long workday in the hotel lobby, I suggested we go for a walk, since we were in Paris, after all. And we had accomplished a great deal and would not be accomplishing more. And so we left the hotel and turned left, and walked for a while until we saw this.

You see that tiny building in the center? That is the Eiffel tower. I told you I was in Paris.

I am in Paris. For 40 more minutes. Time to pack up and board the plane.

And to answer my earlier question, what is home? These two guys.