After my shower and nap, I headed down the street to the University to wait for Mark. The University itself was a striking yellow color and really stood out. Fortunately, the map Mark gave me was just perfect and I got there just before 5:30. As he mentioned, there was a great sign outside telling me where ILP's sign-in room was. following the signs I went in, skirted the courtyard, up a flight of stairs wide enough for giants and straight into a large assembly hall with a beautiful organ in the back.

While reading my book, Sue Grafton's K is for Killers, I was entertained with background piano music- while the inital players were just playing around, a pianist quickly got on and I listened to quite a nice performance. Around 7, I finished my novel- one of her better ones, and Mark found me- he had just come from a fustrating discussion about where next year's conference should be held- the decision was Spain. That vote ended quite quickly, but the hold-up came when they discussed changing the name of the conference (ILP- Inductive Logic Programming to something else). People were still avidly talking about it in the gathering area.

After a quick trip to the toilet (not restrooms like the US), everyone headed out to the boat. Along the way we talked with Dr. Page, Hector and some other fellows that Mark met at the conference. We headed through the courtyard and out the back of the University- viewing the large hofgarden, over some coblestones and to the docks. With the nice weather (Mark said it had been raining all the prior days he was there), everyone headed to the top to talk out on the deck with their drinks. I got to meet Philip who created the Rapid Random Restart method within ILP that Mark is using in his research along with some other big-wigs of the business- this is the place to be if you are researching in ILP.

Next the buffet was set up with a selection of cold items including sliced meats, cheese platter, salad fixins, bread basket, and warm items of beef with gravy, scaloped potatoes, mix veggies. We headed down below to eat until the smoke got to us- then back on the cool deck to enjoy some of the scenery. The Rhine was traveling very fast, and we were slowly making our way up stream. The atmosphere after the buffet was rather party-like with loud Porto Rican music playing over the loud speakers and ropes of red lights outlining the deck. After a brief presentation of gifts downstairs by the organizer, we talked with Dr. Page about his life in Oxford and Chris who told us that in winter Scottland only gets daylight from 10-3 (2 hours less than Wisconsin- which I find rough).

In no time at all, we were back at the dock (going down the Rhine is very fast) and we walked back to the hotel. It felt very safe walking around at night in Bonn and I was ready for a good nights sleep!