I was up early and snuck out to breakfast while everyone else was asleep, then returned to shower and give N a quick hug before making it to the first talk of the morning session. At the coffee break I hurried out and found them in the breakfast room, which was just shutting down; they were off to the art museums a short distance away, around a small octagonal artificial lake. They returned in time for lunch, the kids bubbling over with details and anxious to show me.
After a bit more piano playing, and an update on the difficulties the organizers were having in finding a violin for A, it was my turn to see some art. The first building housed the Rasmus Meyer collection; the ground floor was a rather uninsipiring collection of antique furniture and small dark paintings, but some bold Munch works greeted us as we came up the stairs, and the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Norwegian works were more pleasing. Z recognized a Dahl painting of an eruption of Vesuvius; she had seen the identical composition, probably by the same painter, in one of New York's museums in March.
The next building contained the Stenersen Collection of modern art, a small sample of works by Picasso, Klee, and their contemporaries; much of the building was given over to large exhibitions which cost extra and which did not interest us. The last building we were eligible for on the NOK 35 combined entrance fee was the Bergen Museum of Art, the city's collection, and this was quite nice, ranging from some large-scale landscapes by Dahl and others to etchings by Goya and Durer.
It was time to meet N, and we headed back to the hotel. The kids complained that their feet hurt, so in lieu of another expedition we let them play in the room while we boned up on our next destination. We bathed them and got ready for the conference banquet, which was to be held on the top of nearby Mount Floyen (320 metres).
The attendees met in the lobby at seven-thirty and walked to the funicular station. The weather had suddenly turned cold, almost foggy; we were wearing several layers. The view from the top was pleasant; we could see over the hills to the south to fjords beyond, and the whole of the downtown area. But it was too windy to spend much time outside, and we moved into the restaurant.
The banquet was not as sumptuous and convivial as at the similar conference we had attended in Denmark in 1994, but it wasn't as disappointing as most North American conference banquets are. We had salad with a rosette of smoked salmon, unfortunately overdressed in sweet mustard-dill sauce; roast beef tenderloin with steamed vegetables and scalloped potatoes; and a slice of frozen berry dessert. The serving staff would march out from the kitchen in quasi-martial unison. They were rationing out inexpensive wines (I was amused to spot an Inglenook label) and offered glasses of cognac and Bailey's for an extra charge afterwards (finding few takers).
There were a couple of speeches, and an attempt at a singalong, but apart from a couple of Swedish ditties sung by that country's contingent, and a spirited rendition of Tangled Up In Blue by one of the American program committee members, nothing else seemed to materialize. (They had been unable to procure a violin for A; she wanted us to sing O Canada, or move everyone down to the piano on the main floor so she could play, but we talked her out of it.)
The last funicular down was at midnight, and we'd been warned not to leave it that late; Z started to fade, so we caught the 11:00, walked quickly back to the hotel, and collapsed.