Science castle FTW !

Every year, the European ALMA ARC nodes hold an all-hands meeting to discuss mostly very uninteresting logistical issues. The ALMA Regional Centres are responsible for providing support to ALMA users, from writing telescope proposals to helping with the data reduction - that one being especially important. They're also involved with software development and whatnot. Meetings tend to have very little science content so they're not really worth lengthy descriptions, but this year the venue was especially nice : Chateaux Liblice, just north of Prague. This is one of two castles owned by the Czech Academy of Sciences and I'm fully in favour of science institutions being castle-based.

The actual seminar room was entirely normal and not worth describing. But the coffee and dining areas, those were proper marble-columned chateaux awesomeness.

I didn't get a room in the castle itself, but in a small town a few miles away. I didn't care though because it was super-opulent. It had TWO balconies ! TWO ! Whoever heard of such a thing ?

Such opulence, gentle reader, is not standard. Usually we get mid-level hotels, and sometimes extremely bad ones. This one was probably the most luxuirant conference venue I've ever had.