Earlier this week I went to Lille for work. I didn’t get to see much of the city, but I did see some nice things! We were staying in this awesome art deco hotel which reminded me a lot of some of the furniture from Bundanoon.

Hotel de la Paix

There were ashtrays everywhere, but surprisingly the place didn’t smell bad. There was even an ashtray in the toilet! (I assume that is what this is anyway)

Hotel de la Paix ashtray

For the first night I met up with a few of the workshop people and we went for dinner at this place called “Omnia”. It was an old brothel and porno cinema turned restaurant. It had the most awesome entrance:

Omnia restaurant

The food was quite delicious, except what I thought would be a hot delicious filling stew turned out to be a cold JELLIED STEW which was completely unexpected but not altogether as gross as I expected.

Of course there were some lovely buildings outside too!

Lille Stock Exchange

Lille Town Hall

Lille clock tower

The streets were just gorgeous though — lots of art deco and older buildings, and a huge storm hit just as we were walking to dinner the second night, I’d not brought an umbrella, but my leather jacket kept me perfectly dry (except for my head) as I walked briskly but calmly through the torrential rain. It was pretty fun actually :)

Lots more photos in my gallery!

There’s a huge festival on in Namur at the moment — the annual Fetes de Wallonie (warning, cheesy sound). I pottered down to the free concert at the cathedral tonight and caught “The Experimental Tropic Blues Band” who were basically a punk rock/hard rock group though they also played some other things too. I ate what was ostensibly a hot dog but really was a sausage in a baguette with ketchup and then like 3 metric tonnes of sauerkraut dumped on top of it. UGH. I ate the sausage and some of the bread and dumped the rest :( I should have waited for the tartiflette to finish cooking ( it looked like a less seafoody paella, with potatoes instead of rice and big slabs of stinky cheese cut up over the top. OK so not much like paella at all).

There’s heaps on all weekend, but I’m off to Finland for another work thingamijiggit early Sunday morning (and I’m going to try a sauna, I swear!).

I have some more stories to tell and some photos uploaded but I will save them for another time!

Oh yeah and I also finished my PhD. Like really and truly. After marking, I fixed up the changes recommended, and then all the changes were accepted, and I’m now a real doctor! :) Yay! Thanks to everyone for supporting and helping me through the last 4 years, love you all <3

11 Responses to “Lille & stuff”

1. Nicholas says:

   September 18, 2009 at 8:44 am

   The toilet thing looks more like a soap dish, but that conjures up some rather dreadful mental imagery so ideally it is not.

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   liedra Reply:
   September 18th, 2009 at 8:56 am

   yeah, I thought that at first, but then given the little indentations that are cigarette-sized I figured it probably was for someone who felt the need to pee while smoking.

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   Nicholas Reply:
   September 18th, 2009 at 8:59 am

   From the small image they looked like drainage striations, but I looked at the bigger pic and apparently the indentations are a level above the bowl part. So you’re probably right. Yuck. Another mystery solved thanks to science.

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   liedra Reply:
   September 18th, 2009 at 9:02 am

   Yeah, thanks science! I’m going to put it down to a throwback to a more… hygiene-relaxed time.

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   Nicholas Reply:
   September 18th, 2009 at 9:00 am

   I know this is the type of comment that would win anal awards, but can you change your blog so that it doesn’t say “New comment is submitting, please wait”? New comments can’t do anything, as they are just text. :) I recommend “Submitting comment”.

   I need a cigarette obviously.

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   liedra Reply:
   September 18th, 2009 at 9:01 am

   I’ll go dig around in the source for this plugin, it has a few weird language issues :(

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   Nicholas Reply:
   September 18th, 2009 at 9:02 am

   Yay! Grep should work. :)

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   liedra Reply:
   September 19th, 2009 at 10:54 am

   Done! :D

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   Nicholas Reply:
   September 19th, 2009 at 10:54 am

   Postin’ postin’ postin’…

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   Nicholas Reply:
   September 19th, 2009 at 10:55 am

   Yay!

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   liedra Reply:
   September 19th, 2009 at 10:58 am

   Testing again!

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   Reply