Thursday, Friday and Saterday morning. Again three days of paper sessions, brought to us, by people from all over the world.
We went into the town of Sibiu, for some sightseeing, which mainly consisted of visiting an old orthodox church, eating in the center, and visiting the old parts of the town.
One of the days was prepaired as an intermediate day, visiting a few fortified churches.
The symposium week is quite a busy week. Starting early in the mornings, and before you know it coffee break is anounced. Two speakers stood at the desk talking about diferent aspects of our molinological world. Presentations have improved over the years. Gone are the days of the handwritten slides, that had to be put on a lamp lid projector in the middle of the room. Gone are the days of whiteboards and pencils. Everybody nowadays prepares a powerpoint slideshow. Mind you even now things can improve. A twenty minute presentatiion with over a hundred slides is not the way it should be done. Of course not every one is a trained speaker nor presenter, and for some people coming from a country where English is not integrated into the school system, it is sometimes hard to find the right words or even pronounce them correctly. Standing in front of an audience, can also be tricky, if you are still young and not experienced. Papers on a good subject, well written, are of great value, and sometimes let us forget the way they are presented. Young attendents should be encouraged to dig deeper and further into the molinological side of all the mills in this world.
David Jones, almost ninety, still going strong.
Two more presentations before noon.
Late lunch outside in the Astra Museum, where the big wooden roof keeps the heat away. In Romania nearly every day hot soup is served, mostly with spring vegetables. Being a vegetarian in Romania is something else. The idea of living on vegetable food has not really taken off in these parts of the world. I imagine, they are still thinking on the lines we did some seventy years ago. We are free now, please feed us with lots of meet, meet, meet…. Anyone in need for a hartcondition? Eventually they will understand, I hope.
In the afternoons lots of free time, nearly three hours, could be spent on wandering through the grounds of the Astra Muzeul, that is the Astra Open Air Museum. Many old buildings, from all over the country, are collected as this museum. An amazing collection of mills can be found on the grounds. From simple watermills, with horizontal wheels, to mills with vertical wheels, to boatmills, to fulling mills. Yes, nearly every kind of mill, or related objects, like oil presses can be seen here. Of course the main goal was to preserve these buildings from dissapearing. Most of them are not operational. They have a small collection of windmills.
After five, time to get back to the conference room for another three or four shorter sessions. In the evenings the presentations, are informal, but some of them are as good as the papers presented in the mornings. The informal sessions were attended by most of the symposium participants.
Did I present something? I was not inftending to do it. For the main reason that the preparation on the topic I was going to bring forward was not ready. Instead I used the audience, to raise a question on my little project: mills on record sleeves. I have to say I am really pleased by the response to it. More on this in a future featured article.
Dinner at eight, like they say, usually in the dinningroolm at the entra,nce of the museum. After dinner people sit together outside, enjoying white wine or palinka. Friendships are started or renewed. Stories are told.
