You know it’s spring when travels to Berne, Switzerland, hit you again. Regardless of the weather of course. Although this time, it did feel like spring over there and on the day I left for Oslo again, it was really warm, too warm actually for my thick woolen jacket. On the other hand, the jacket was more than needed on my walk from the bus stop to my apartment in Oslo.

Ah well, back to the subject…

After my disastrous train trip South, in Bern itself all went rather smoothly. The hotel was easy to find and I fell into the bed right away. On Wednesday morning, we quickly set up our booth at the OpenExpo and started the day with strong coffee and Gipfeli (a.k.a. Croissants in the rest of the world). There was some confusion with the original hall layout but after some reshuffling, everybody was happy.

Exhibitions are always extremely tiring but also provide great ways of learning about new things and meet new people as well as those one hasn’t seen for a while.

I finally managed to find someone who could establish a contact to Scribus for me – Alessandro who staffed the booth for Libre Graphics – and had the pleasure to meet Liz who works on the OOo Project Renaissance. We had a nice conversation over coffee and I am looking forward to meeting her again next time.

It was the first time I gave a talk wearing my new Qt Software hat and I have to admit that it exactly felt like that. I guess it went rather well though and I didn’t make a complete fool out of myself. Wouldn’t it be boring if there was no room for improvements anyway?

I want to thank Eckhart and Luca for running the booth and patiently answering a zillion partly pretty tricky questions, the openSUSE crew for the DVDs, Fabian from Fedora for hosting Eckhart so uncomplicatedly, Pascal for good spirits and of course /ch/open for the great organization.

Sidenote 1: I had to run to the gate again although Luca and me arrived really early at the airport. Will I ever learn to estimate the time I need correctly?

Sidenote 2: I have to buy a proper camera. Sorry for the constantly blurry shots I take with my mobile phone. If you have a suggestion for a compact model, please be so kind to leave a comment.